Water deficit significantly reduces growth and production of apples and is detrimental to the quality and size of the fruits. For this reason, water use efficiency is essential when growing apples. An apple tree of good agricultural quality must be able to efficiently use and transport water, which not only …
International team of researchers has successfully developed a new type of wheat containing 10 times more fiber than common wheat, which helps improve gut health and also fights bowel cancer and type 2 diabetes. The research team consists of experts from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), the …
A new method called ‘speed breeding’ greatly shortens generation time and accelerates breeding and research programmes. The new breeding platform developed by teams at the John Innes Centre, University of Queensland and University of Sydney, uses a glasshouse or an artificial environment with enhanced lighting to create intense day-long regimes to …
Researchers at the University of California, Davis, led by Professor Jorge Dubcovsky, have recently discovered gene conferring resistance to the Ug99 strain of wheat stem rust that has caused significant losses in recent years in North Africa and Asia, becoming a world-wide threat. Wheat is essential for feeding humanity, and …
Parthenocarpy in horticultural crops is an important trait of considerable importance for various industries related to agriculture as well as food quality. A team of scientists led by Risa Ueta of the Tokushima University in Japan developed a strategy for breeding of parthenocarpy in tomato based on the CRISPR/Cas9 genome …
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 …
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 …
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 …
