From CIMMYT, by Brenda Wawa / February 23, 2017 “Smallholder farmers in eastern and southern Africa are facing a new threat as a plague of intrepid fall armyworms creeps across the region, so far damaging an estimated 287,000 hectares of maize. Since mid-2016, scientists with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and national […]
The high-quality sequencing of a quinoa genome brings new potential for global food security. “Quinoa was the staple ‘Mother Grain’ that fueled the ancient Andean civilizations, but the crop was marginalized when the Spanish arrived in South America and has only recently been revived as a new crop of global interest,” said KAUST Professor of […]
Today the BBSRC strategically funded John Innes Centre has announced a potential breakthrough in broccoli production that will aid in UK food resilience and global food security. Scientists at JIC are developing a new line of fast-growing sprouting broccoli that goes from seed to harvest in 8-10 weeks. It has the potential to deliver two […]
“A curiosity for disease and a passion to cure led Mezzalama to a career as a plant pathologist. While studying for an undergraduate degree in agronomy in her hometown of Turin, Italy, she visited nearby vineyards to study plant pathogens for the first time. “It was working in the vineyards where I first saw plant […]
In this Open Access article, Wullum Nielsen et al. explore the “innovation dividend” that comes from greater diversity. They point out that “maximizing gender diversity’s benefits requires careful management.” As examples, “motivating managers to voluntarily engage in the recruitment and training of underrepresented groups better supports the advancement of women and minorities”, and “Research also […]
Xa4 is a durable rice disease resistance gene that confers resistance against Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae (Xoo), causal agent of bacterial blight. Hu et al. show that Xa4 encodes a wall-associated kinase (WAK) that promotes cellulose synthesis and suppresses wall loosening, thereby strengthening the cell wall. Suppression of disease is due to Xa4’s effects on […]
Landraces are native varieties that have been selected for adaptation to their native environment, and as such they provide a wealth of largely unexplored genetic potential. Romero Navarro et al. used a new approach called F-one association mapping (FOAM) in combination with genome-wide association strategy (GWAS) to query an initial population of nearly 5000 diverse […]
Every gardener knows that pulling off a shoot is not sufficient to kill a plant. Plants are able to reprogram cells in order to regenerate missing tissues. Pulling off a shoot removes photosynthetic tissues, but the root responds by activating chloroplasts to take over this role. Kobayashi et al. (Plant Physiol. 10.1104/pp.16.01368) examine the signals […]
Chemical genetics is an approach that enables small molecules with specific effects on phenotypes to be identified. Through a screen for small molecules that would reverse the inhibitory effect of ABA on seed germination, Ye et al. identified AA1 (ABA Antagonist 1). AA1 interferes with the interaction between all of the ABA PYR-PYL receptors and […]