Month: December 2018

These days everything from cookies to orange juice carry labels boasting that they’re GMO free – a marketing ploy that assumes consumers still hate, fear or at least disapprove of genetically modified organisms despite reassurances from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. While science journalists have bemoaned this as irrational fear, people might… Continue reading Finally, a GMO to tempt the crowd at whole foods

The climate is not only warming, it is also becoming more variable and extreme. Such unpredictable weather can weaken global food security if major crops such as wheat are not sufficiently resilient—and if we are not properly prepared. A group of European researchers, including Professor Jørgen E. Olesen from the Department of Agroecology at Aarhus… Continue reading European wheat lacks climate resilience

Plants absorb the mineral sulfate from groundwater. An international research team led by scientists from Heidelberg University has uncovered how sulfate controls the production of the drought stress hormone ABA in plants and thus contributes to their drought-resistance. These findings improve scientists’ understanding of how the drought-stress signal travels from the roots to the leaves.… Continue reading Sulfate helps plants cope with water scarcity

Researchers from the University of Passo Fundo (UPF), Embrapa and the University of Kansas (KU) have developed an app with the aim to encourage surveillance of the crops and to form a database on wheat blast epidemics in the world. Pic-a-Wheat-Field can be accessed from any cell phone. The app can be downloaded to a… Continue reading Brazil and US scientists create app to monitor wheat diseases worldwide

Wheat is a cool season crop with an optimal daytime growing temperature of 15 C during the critical reproductive stage. Here on the Prairies, we can see 30 C during this stage. Eighty percent of wheat plants exposed to 30 C during a three-day period around anthesis had abnormal anthers, both structurally and functionally. For… Continue reading Breeders help wheat beat the heat

December 21, the Argentina Seed National Institute (INASE) published its Order 228/2018 in the Official Register establishing the use of DNA molecular markers, known as Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP), to verify the identity of soybean varieties inscribed in the INASE’s registers. The INASE is the authority in charge to enforce de Plant Breeders Act, the law… Continue reading A giant step: Argentina uses molecular markers to identified soybean varieties

Forget boots on the ground — the future of crop monitoring could well be the eye in the sky. One of the discussions at last month’s Joint Conference of the Canadian Wheat Symposium and the Canadian Workshop on Fusarium Head Blight explored how remote sensing is opening up possibilities for monitoring soil conditions and crop… Continue reading Satellite and drone technologies are changing the face of agronomic research

European law currently requires food packaging to be labelled GM if more than 0.9% of any one ingredient is genetically modified. But Rothamsted’s Professor Johnathan Napier, who has pioneered the GM production of Omega-3 fish oils by camelina plants, said the nature of the changes brought about by the technology would make it almost impossible… Continue reading Gene edited food imports into the European Union will be almost impossible to spot

Tomatoes have been bred to create a wide array of colors, shapes and sizes, but not much commercial work has been done on breeding tomatoes that taste good. That may be because — despite the public’s love of tomatoes — there’s been no commercial demand for a better-tasting fruit and because breeding for taste is… Continue reading Human taste testers and modern genomics: University of Georgia scientists aim to breed better tomatoes one bite at a time

Researchers from CIRAD and INRA recently showed that inactivating a gene, RECQ4, leads to a three-fold increase in recombination in crops such as rice, pea and tomato. The gene inhibits the exchange of genetic material via recombination (crossover) during the sexual reproduction process in crops. This discovery, published in the journal Nature Plants on 26 November 2018,… Continue reading Inactivating genes can boost crop genetic diversity