The John Innes Centre got the green light from the UK government to perform field trials of genetically modified (GM) wheat biofortified to produce high-iron white flour. The three-year field trial (from 2019 to 2022) will be carried out under confined conditions at the Centre between April and September each …
Arsenic-contaminated soil and groundwater pose risks to millions of Americans and hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Cleaning up the toxic metal is a laborious and expensive process, with some remediations of arsenic reaching into the hundreds of millions of dollars. A fern—Pteris vittata, also known as the Chinese brake …
It’s been known for centuries that plants produce a diverse array of medically-valuable chemicals in their roots. The benefits for human health are clear, but it’s been less apparent how and why plants expend 20 percent of their energy building these exotic chemicals. Is it for defence? Is it waste? …
Healthful oils derived from plants are processed by the human body in exactly the same manner as when fish oils are eaten, according to a research led by the University of Southampton’s Faculty of Medicine. Omega-3 fats are mainly present in fish oil and are vital for health and development. …
Rice is a major staple food crop for over half of the global population. It is known for having white grains, but some varieties exhibit pigmented grains such as red rice. Red rice has high concentrations of healthful proanthocyanidins and anthocyanins. Two complementary genes (Rc and Rd) control the red …
Improved pest resistance and drought tolerance are among potential benefits of an effort of scientists from United States, Argentina, Brazil, China and India that have produced the clearest picture yet of the complex genomic history of the cultivated peanut. Scientists undertook this large project to better understand the molecular and …
Scientists from India developed a salt tolerant transgenic rice variety which, under greenhouse conditions, showed normal growth and grain yield. The scientists used genes from the wild rice species Porteresia coarctata. This species, native to some parts of South Asia, is known to be a halophyte, thus a rich source …
Scientists at the University of Illinois have developed new hybrids of purple corn containing different combinations of phytochemicals that may fight obesity, inflammation and diabetes, a new study in mice indicates. The pericarp—or outer layer—of purple and other brightly colored corn kernels also may provide an alternative source of colorants …
Compounds produced by sorghum plants to defend against insect feeding could be isolated, synthesized and used as a targeted, nontoxic insect deterrent, according to researchers who studied plant-insect interactions that included field, greenhouse and laboratory components. The researchers examined the role of sorghum chemicals called flavonoids —specifically 3-deoxyflavonoid and 3-deoxyanthocyanidins—in …
In a new study, a team of scientists at the University of California, Davis, and USDA’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS) used a unique approach to sequence the genomes of the English walnut and its wild North American relative by tapping into the capabilities of two state-of-the-art technologies: long-read DNA sequencing …
