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…

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…

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.…

There are many accessions of Arabidopsis thaliana beyond the ecotypes predominantly used in research laboratories.  In this article, The 1001 Genomes Consortium describe a resource based on whole-genome sequencing of 1,135 A. thaliana genomes from Europe, North Africa, and North America.  This data…

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…

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…

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…

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…