As climate change continues to pose severe challenges to ensuring sustainable food supplies around the world, scientists are looking for ways to improve the resilience and nutritional quality of potatoes. The team have created a potato super pangenome to identify genetic traits that can help produce the next super spud.
Maize roots secrete certain chemicals that affect the quality of soil. In some fields, this effect increases yields of wheat planted subsequent to maize in the same soil by more than 4%. While the findings from several field experiments show that these effects are highly variable, in the long term they may yet help to make the cultivation of grains more sustainable, without the need for additional fertilizers or pesticides.
The two OsRALF peptides are essential for pollen tube germination and elongation, a vital step in the fertilization of rice crops.
Samples of Peru’s varied soils make it possible to predict which parts of the country can produce cacao low in the toxic heavy metal.
A first complete genome map of einkorn reveals evolutionary origins and potential for enhanced wheat breeding. It could help farmers and crop breeders to develop bread wheat varieties with enhanced disease resistance, higher yields and improved hardiness.
Developing disease-resistant, high-quality improved crop varieties to benefit agricultural producers and consumers may seem like a “hairy” task, but scientists may have gotten to the root of the issue.
Scientists have develop healthier sorghum varieties containing significant concentrations of provitamin A carotenoids while also increasing mineral absorption to meet the nutritional needs of mothers and children in sub-Saharan Africa.
Generating haploid plants for the purpose of obtaining pure double haploid lines is widely recognized as one of the most efficient breeding strategies in modern agriculture. Watermelon (Citrullus lanatus), an important fruit crop known for its nutritional value and flavor, has undergone long-term artificial selection resulting in genetic narrowing. Therefore, there is an urgent need for a haploid induction system to enhance traditional breeding methods and facilitate the development of valuable lines.
An international research consortium is developing disease-resistant rice varieties. In the scientific journal eLife, the authors now report on the discovery of a recent bacterial outbreak in Tanzania – and describe how they modified an African rice variety to make it resistant to the pathogen.
Adding silicon to soil could help protect canola from clubroot. Treatment may also help crops weather drought and extreme heat, researchers find.
