Month: May 2019

It’s almost summer, and Georgia gardeners are eagerly awaiting their first tomato harvest. Just in time for those first tomato sandwiches, researchers at the University of Georgia have helped to unlock the mystery of what separates today’s tomatoes from their inedible ancestors. Plant geneticists in the lab of UGA department of horticulture professor Esther van… Continue reading Researchers ID genetic traits of modern tomatoes

Cornell researchers have weighed in on a high-stakes debate between crop experts and scientists: Which of climate change’s challenges – higher temperature or stress from drought – poses the greater threat to U.S. rain-fed agriculture? “There is a big divide in this field, and we thought there must be some way to resolve this puzzle,”… Continue reading Heat, not drought, will drive lower crop yields, researchers say

Seed companies around the world deploy drone solutions to collect high throughput plant data and unlock the phenotyping bottleneck with aerial drone data. Collecting large-scale, field-based plant phenotypic data with sufficient resolution and accuracy in a reproducible manner, represents a challenge in plant science research. Seen as a real bottleneck for the effective use of… Continue reading How drone data significantly improves seed breeding and seed production

The agriculture scientists of Muhammad Nawaz Sharif University of Agriculture (MNSUA) have developed climate resilient hybrid wheat seeds, which offered 35 to 40% more wheat production as compared to other commonly used wheat seeds. Due to climatic variations especially during last stage of wheat crop this year, the production of wheat suffered huge damages, with… Continue reading New hybrid wheat seed to give boost to crop yield

Determining how one species becomes distinct from another has been a subject of fascination dating back to Charles Darwin. New research led by Carnegie’s Matthew Evans and published in Nature Communications elucidates the mechanism that keeps maize distinct from its ancient ancestor grass, teosinte.   Speciation requires isolation. Sometimes this isolation is facilitated by geography, such as… Continue reading How corn’s ancient ancestor swipes left on crossbreeding

Corn in a Waksman Institute of Microbiology field in Piscataway, New Jersey. – Photo: Hugo Dooner/Waksman Institute of Microbiology Researchers may be able to improve corn yields and nutritional value after discovering genetic regulators that synthesize starch and protein in the widely eaten grain, according to a Rutgers-led study.   The research, published in the journal Proceedings… Continue reading Genetic discovery may improve corn quality, yields

Almost everyone agrees that most store-bought tomatoes don’t have much flavor. Now, scientists from the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and the Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI) may have spotlighted the solution in a paper just published in Nature Genetics. Molecular biologist James Giovannoni with the ARS Plant, Soil and Nutrition Research Laboratory and BTI bioinformatics scientist… Continue reading Tomato pan-genome makes bringing flavor back easier

“Approval of genetically-engineered maize is currently being considered in Pakistan. It would offer farmers a tool to increase their production and reduce use of agricultural chemicals,” claimed Casey E. Bean, USDA official based in US Embassy in Islamabad. — AP/File The Foreign Agricultural Service of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has said that… Continue reading US to help Pakistan introduce genetically-engineered corn

Dr. Shuyu Liu makes a cross between TAM 114 and a wild wheat relative at the Texas A&M AgriLife Research greenhouse near Bushland. Credit: Texas A&M AgriLife photo Wheat curl mite, greenbug and Hessian fly have long been troublemaker pests for Texas wheat, but a team of Texas A&M AgriLife Research scientists is ready to… Continue reading Wild wheat relative genes to aid in battle against trio of pests

Brazil’s agriculture minister will ask Chinese officials on Thursday to greenlight exports to the Asian nation of sugar made from genetically modified (GM) sugarcane, which is expected to be widely used in Brazil in coming years. Minister Tereza Cristina Dias told Reuters in Beijing on Wednesday, on her first visit to Brazil’s top buyer of… Continue reading Brazil seeks China’s OK for genetically modified sugarcane