The next time you bite into that perfect, sweet and succulent watermelon, you may want to appreciate that it’s a product of millions of years of evolution in the making. The delectable fruits of the family of plants, known as Cucurbitaceae , are of considerable biological, economic, and agricultural importance, …
Rutgers scientists have found an efficient way to enhance the nutritional value of corn by inserting a bacterial gene that causes it to produce a key nutrient called methionine, according to a new study published online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The discovery could benefit millions …
The National Biosafety Authority of Kenya published in the Kenya Gazette issued by the Authority of the Republic of Kenya on the 8-th September 2017 under Gazzete Notice 8846 the list of approved GMO applications for the period 2016-2017. The list includes the approval for National Performance Trials targeting the …
Scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL), USA have harnessed the still untapped power of genome editing to improve agricultural crops. Using tomato as an example, they have mobilized CRISPR/Cas9 technology to rapidly generate variants of the plant that display a broad continuum of three separate, agriculturally important traits: fruit …
Researchers from the South Australian Research and Development Institute (SARDI) have created a new oat variety with high yield and increased beta glucan content. The new Kowari variety is of a dwarf-type, with an increased content of beta-glucan compared to other varieties. Beta glucans are natural sugar compounds that help …
Correlations between different traits and interactions between genes represent a major challenge to modern breeding. In a number of cases, traits of yield and quality are controlled by complex networks consisting of multiple loci. As a result, there is a close correlation among many complex traits resulting in heritable covariance …
Development of hybrids between indica and japonica usually leads to male-sterile plants, making it difficult to use the heterosis effect for breeding. The locus Sa consists of two adjacent SaF and SaM genes that interact with each other and lead to pollen abortion in plants bearing the japonica allele in …
Farmers can grow big, juicy tomatoes thanks to a mutation in the Cell Size Regulator gene that occurred during the tomato domestication process. The researchers describe this gene variant in a study published in open-access journal PLOS Genetics on August , 2017. When humans first began cultivating the wild tomato in the …
Growing organic rice has the potential to become a market niche providing good purchase prices for the farmers, but growing organic rice requires much more than just sowing the seeds and letting the plants grow until harvest time. Scientists from Texas A & M AgriLife Research and Extension Center-Beaumont are …
According to the Agriculture Directorate of the European Commission, sunflower production in Bulgaria is expected to reach a 24-year peak of 2.08 million tons in 2017. The forecast sunflower seed output in Bulgaria in 2017 is 15.7% higher year-on-year, which is the highest growth rate among EU Member States, the …
