PLANT BREEDING NEWS
EDITION 231
January 2012
An Electronic Newsletter of Applied Plant Breeding
Clair H. Hershey, Editor
Sponsored by GIPB, FAO/AGP and
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-Archived issues
available at: FAO Plant Breeding Newsletter
1. NEWS, ANNOUNCEMENTS
1.01 U.N. sustainable development summit
shifts from climate change
1.02 Climate Conversations -
Developing water-efficient maize for Africa
1.03 India's National Academy of
Agricultural Sciences endorses GM technology
for accelerated and sustained crop production
1.04 Gates to
pitch his charity work at Davos
1.05 Research
to increase sugarbeet disease resistance
1.06 Reducing
attacks by parasitic plants in grain crops
1.07 Improving maize resistance to head smut
1.08 New seed
varieties approved in Tanzania
1.09 New tool
for cleaning up soils and waterways prickly pear
1.10 Weed
suppressing wheat put to test in Western Australia trials
1.11 Nourishing
gene in plants for improvement of seed productivitiy
1.12 Breeding better grasses for food and
fuel
1.13 Burundi
releases two new rice varieties for better lives
1.14 Corn
defenses for improved pest resistance
1.15 Molecular
timer modulates branching architecture in tomato
1.16 Big agribusiness
influence threatens to override public interest in Greed Revolution
1.17 UF strives to put aroma, taste back
in tomatoes
1.18 Gene
breakthrough to help Japanese farmers hit by tsunami
1.19 Global
research consortium presents findings on safety of genetically modified food
1.20 Improving
crops from the roots up
1.21 Global Rice
Science Partnership (GRiSP) launches stronger MET and breeding data management
procedures
1.22 L’AIDR outille les producteurs de semences améliorées de la
zone agricole de Lergho
1.23 12th
Society for the Advancement of Breeding Research in Asia and Oceania (SABRAO)
Congress held in Chiang Mai, Thailand
1.24 No limits
to the value of an agriculture degree
1.25 Plantas más grandes y resistentes a la sequía
1.26 Ensayan con éxito papas transgénicas resistentes a virus
1.27 New varieties of
cassava designed to combat deadly viral diseases are officially released in
Tanzania
1.28 A one day
conference to celebrate the founding of the Plant Breeding Institute to be held
at the Conference Centre, John Innes Centre, Norwich
1.29
"Research
data management with spreadsheets and R"
1.30 Science to help rice growers affected by Japan’s tsunami
1.31 “What’s for
lunch? Nutrients and minerals in every day food. How the knowledge on mineral
nutrition of plants can improve human nutrition”
1.32 DuPont to collaborate with Drought-Tolerant Plants (DROPS)
Research Consortium to solve the drought challenges
1.33 Grain crops with lower carotene levels are less affected by
parasitic plants
1.34 The GM crop risk-benefit debate: science and socio-economics
a plea for a new regulatory system for a modern agriculture
1.35 Unraveling the Chinese cabbage genome
1.36 GM trait patent expiration, saved
seed and breeding programs
1.37 Findings prove Miscanthus x giganteus has potential as alternative
energy source
1.38 Sementes da China podem dobrar
produção de arroz em Goiás
1.39 Abundant world wheat supplies
pressure prices
1.40 Clif Bar Family Foundation awards first fellowships in
organic plant breeding ever granted in the United States, through its Seed
Matters initiative
1.41 Breeding better grasses for food and fuel
1.42 Today in Nature Genetics: Good parents are predictable – at
least when it comes to corn
1.43 The hunt for tomatoes with disease
resistance
1.44 Affymetrix and BGI enter strategic collaboration to
co-develop and commercialize genomic microarrays for the agricultural community
1.45 Discovery of plant ‘nourishing gene’ brings hope for
increased crop seed yield and food security
1.46 ‘Gold-standard’ cotton genome sequence will advance fiber, fuel and food
applications
1.47 Burundi releases two new rice varieties for better lives
1.48 Evaluating the impacts of GM crops in the EU: AMIGA project is launched
1.49 New tool offers unprecedented access for
root studies
1.50 From loyalty cards to proteomics and the birth of the super experiment
1.51 FAO-EU project to promote climate-smart farming
1.52 Genomic and metabolic prediction
of complex heterotic traits in hybrid maize
1.53 GM wheat development in China: current status and challenges to
commercialization
1.54 Monsanto
scholars share their experiences
2.01 International Seed Testing Association Publications and Products 2012 –
2013
2.02 Eco-PB’s 10 years’ anniversary: Organic plant breeding does make a
difference!
2.03 Norman Borlaug: The Genius Behind
The Green Revolution
3.
3.01 New pathogen resource launched
4.01 International Potato Center Potato Breeder - Africa
4.02 Estonian Center of Excellence in Environmental Adaptation (ENVIRON) open
5. MEETINGS,
COURSES
6. EDITOR
1 NEWS, ANNOUNCEMENTS
1.01 U.N.
sustainable development summit shifts from climate change
By Deborah Zabarenko and Nina Chestney
January 24, 2012
(Reuters) - Representatives from
around the world gather in Rio in June to try to hammer out goals for
sustainable development at a U.N. conference designed to avoid being tripped up
by the intractable issue of climate change.
But there is concern in the lead-up
to the conference, known as Rio+20 or the Earth Summit, that it risks ending up
as all talk and little action.
In an attempt to avoid too much
confrontation, the conference will focus not on climate change but on
sustainable development - making sure economies can grow now without
endangering resources and the environment for future generations.
U.N. conferences over the past decade
have begun with high hopes for agreements to compel nations to cut
climate-warming emissions and help adapt to a hotter world, but they often
ended with disappointingly modest results. That was the case last year in the
global climate change summit in Durban, South Africa. Participants at that
meeting agreed to forge a new deal by 2015 that would go into force by 2020.
The "sustainable" branding
for this year's summit, rather than climate, is by design, said Ambassador
Andre Correa do Lago, who headed Brazil's delegation to the U.N. climate
talks in Durban and will be a chief negotiator for Brazil in Rio.
Sustainable development is an easier
sell globally than climate change, even though sustainable development is a way
of tackling global warming and other environmental issues, he said.
"Climate change is an (issue)
that has very strong resistance from sectors that are going to be substantially
altered, like the oil industry," do Lago said. "Sustainable
development is something that is as simple as looking at how we would like to
be in 10 or 20 years."
The time seems ripe. Natural
resources are at a premium. The global human population tops 7 billion.
Traditional economies are failing. And the planet is warming. Leaders may
accept the premise that it makes sense to ensure rich and emerging nations can
grow without further damaging the environment.
The focus of global meetings has been
on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, especially carbon dioxide, but
the world's biggest emitters, including China and the United States, have balked,
arguing it would cripple economic development.
Climate change first claimed the
world stage at the U.N. Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro 20 years ago. That first
Earth Summit in 1992 ultimately led to the carbon-capping Kyoto Protocol and a
treaty on biodiversity.
This summit offers a chance to renew
political will to make the world's economies greener.
Since the 1992 summit, successive
attempts to secure a new binding pact to cut greenhouse gas emissions have
failed to produce concrete results, public interest in climate change has
waned, and many world leaders are concentrating on upcoming elections and
financial worries.
"A missed opportunity"
There is concern that this new summit
could fall short.
"The most it will manage is to
set some voluntary goals with a vague timeline, but it will not be clear what
the process is to achieve these goals," said Andrew Light of the Centre
for American Progress think tank in Washington. Without real goals and a way to
reach them, Light said, Rio "will be a missed opportunity."
A U.N. draft document was released
this month as a starting point for the June conference, outlining seven issues
including jobs, energy, food, water and disasters.
"Without clearly defined goals,
the summit will not provide the clarity and certainty that are needed to get
the private sector to actively participate and potentially make the investments
needed to achieve the goals," said Stephen Starbuck, expert on climate
change and sustainability at Ernst & Young.
A narrower climate focus could also
put off some countries, such as the United States, where opposition to
carbon-capping legislation was so strong from Republicans and the oil industry
that it overturned plans for a national emissions cap-and-trade arrangement.
In the past 20 years, the debate has
changed as the world has changed, according to Tim Wirth, a former U.S. senator
who attended the 1992 Rio meeting and will be at this year's conference as
president of the non-profit U.N. Foundation.
"The debate's changed because of
China, India, Brazil and South Africa, the very rapid and surprisingly powerful
growth of the newly industrialized countries," he said.
In 1992 and in the Kyoto Protocol
that grew from events at Rio, these developing countries and others were exempt
from curbing carbon dioxide emissions, while rich countries like the United
States would have had to cut back. In the end, the U.S. Senate never ratified
the Kyoto Protocol, which entered into force in 2005.
"Rio was really
exploratory," Wirth said. "Nobody knew what this was going to be all
about. ... I think Rio+20 becomes an opportunity to be very specific,
especially about energy and development."
Although fast-developing economies
are eager for this shift, Wirth said there may be resistance from big energy
powers like the United States and some oil producers in the Middle East.
"These are the countries that
say, 'Hey, this is our sandbox, you can't get into it,'" he said.
"But I think that's passing by very quickly."
Rio+20 will have to give the private
sector the clarity and incentives they need over the medium term, Starbuck
said.
Any goals set in Rio would likely be
for the next 20 years, which could be too far in the future for most chief
executives whose time in office is more likely to last years, not decades.
Instead, interim goals set along the
way to 2030 would make the private sector more likely to engage, Starbuck
added.
(Reporting by Deborah Zabarenko in
Washington and Nina Chestney in London; Editing by Russell Blinch and Will Dunham)
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/01/24/uk-rio-idUKTRE80N1XT20120124
Source:
SeedQuest.com
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1.02 Climate Conversations - Developing
water-efficient maize for Africa
By Jacob
D.H. Mignouna
For many smallholder farmers in
Africa, maize is life. Since its introduction onto the continent several
centuries ago, maize has become a staple crop in many parts of Africa.
Today, more than 300 million Africans
depend on it as their main food source providing carbohydrates, protein, iron,
vitamin D and minerals. And it is also a crucial source of additional income to
support farmers and their families as well. Yet the impacts of climate change
are threatening maize yields and millions of farmers across Africa.
Three-quarters of the world’s most
severe droughts over the last 10 years have occurred in Africa, destroying
millions of hectares across the continent while also pushing families into
hunger and poverty. The most recent and severe of such droughts has blighted
stretches of land from northern Kenya through central Somalia and into eastern
Ethiopia.
Public-private partnerships provide a
useful approach for addressing the complexities of sustainable agricultural
development and the global food security challenge, especially in less
developed areas.
In Africa, such partnerships are
being developed by
governments, private companies, donors and development institutions to conduct
advanced crop research, develop new technologies and deploy existing tools and
knowledge to small-scale farmers.
In response to a growing call by
African farmers, leaders, and scientists, a new public-private partnership
called Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA), was formed in 2008 to
help address the effects of drought in a way that is cost effective for African
smallholder farmers.
Breeding and biotechnology
Over five years, it aims to help
smallholder farmers and their families by using advanced plant breeding and
biotechnology to develop more drought tolerant maize varieties.
Drought tolerance has been recognized
as one of the most important targets of crop improvement programs. Identifying
ways to mitigate drought risk, stabilize yields and encourage small-scale
farmers to adopt best management practices is fundamental to realizing food
security and improved livelihoods for the continent.
Coordinated by the African
Agricultural Technology Foundation, a not-for-profit organization, WEMA works
with private agricultural companies such as Monsanto and BASF to access
proprietary germplasm, advanced breeding tools and expertise, and
drought-tolerant transgenes for use in its research.
CIMMYT, the internationally funded
non-profit International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, is providing
high-yielding maize varieties that are adapted to African conditions as well as
its expertise in conventional breeding and testing for drought tolerance.
National agricultural research
systems in the five WEMA participating countries, namely Kenya, Mozambique,
Tanzania, South Africa, and Uganda, contribute their expertise in breeding,
field testing, seed multiplication and distribution. The varieties developed
through the project will be distributed to African seed companies through AATF
without royalty and made available to smallholder farmers.
Since WEMA began in 2008 there have
been excellent gains in drought tolerance, utilizing traditional breeding
methods, in each of the five participating countries. Alois Kullaya, WEMA
country coordinator in Tanzania, says, “Our participation in this project
especially the development of confined field trial sites… (has) additional
benefits for our country, which include building our capacity to improve other
important crops.”
Over the past two years significant
progress has been made as a team of more than 60 scientists from across the
partner organizations have worked together to develop maize hybrids, testing
them in field trials across various maize growing environments, and building
the necessary regulatory procedures and protocols for the proper evaluation of
the maize in this project in each of the five countries.
Testing underway
Testing is already underway to screen
for drought-tolerance performance under both optimum watering and managed
drought stress, under leaf disease pressure as well as under both optimum and
low soil nitrogen conditions – all conditions commonly faced by many African
farmers.
Other work is focusing on the
development of hybrid maize varieties that can achieve high yields when there
is too much water.
“We are eager to move forward and
start to use some of the products, especially conventional drought-tolerant
maize lines, to develop an array of varieties in the country,” said Godfrey
Asea, a maize breeder and the WEMA-Uganda country coordinator.
The project’s first phase is expected
to last five years. The first conventional hybrids (developed through
conventional breeding, accelerated doubled haploid technology and
marker-assisted breeding) could be available in three or four years time.
For the transgenic drought-tolerant
maize hybrids being developed, farmer access will depend on research and
development results and regulatory approval, but farmers could have access to
the maize in seven to eight years.
It is estimated that the maize
varieties developed over the next decade could increase yields as much as 20 to
35 percent under moderate drought conditions compared to the hybrids available
in 2008. This would equate to an extra two million additional tonnes of food
during times of drought for participating countries. That could benefit between
14 to 21 million people with more food and crops for market, helping to improve
livelihoods while at the same time adapting to climate change.
Source: SeedQuest.com
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1.03 India's National Academy of
Agricultural Sciences endorses GM technology for accelerated and sustained crop
production
27 January, 2012
The National Academy of Agricultural
Sciences has come out with the latest policy paper on Biosafety Assurance for
GM Food Crops in India that contains science-based recommendations and concrete
actions for safe, inclusive and judicious harnessing of GM technologies for
accelerated and sustained crop production.
Since the moratorium imposed on Bt
brinjal in February 2010 by then Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh, national
and international literature have been generated on the safety of GM food
crops, and six top science academies of India endorsed the safety of Bt brinjal
and recommended its limited commercial release in the "Inter-Academy
Report on GM Crops" released in Dec 2010. The Inter Academy Report on GM
Crops 2011 is available online at http://insaindia.org/pdf/Updated%20Inter%20Academy%20Report%20on%20GM%20crops.pdf
The recent NAAS policy paper
critically examines the current biosafety issues and the prospects of
benefiting from GM technology. It concludes that GM technology is a powerful
tool for developing future crop varieties with in-built resistance to various
biotic and abiotic stresses for reducing crop losses and enhanced input use
efficiency, yield potential and quality traits. It also states that the use of
GM crops is crucial for the food and nutritional security of the country and
research must be continued with the aim of developing safer, more productive
and nutritious food crops. The policy paper also puts forward a tangible action
plan for the development and utilization of GM food crops.
For a copy of the policy paper visit http://naasindia.org/policy.html
http://www.seedquest.com/news.php?type=news&id_article=24059&id_region=&id_category=&id_crop=
Source:
Crop Biotech Update
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1.04 Gates to pitch his charity work at
Davos
By ERIC PFANNER
DAVOS, Switzerland — Some people come
to the World Economic Forum expecting caviar. Bill Gates said he would bring cassava. “I don’t know what Swiss
customs will say about it,” said Mr. Gates, chairman of Microsoft and co-chairman of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. “I’ll put it in a nice plastic bag
or something.”
Assuming he makes it past the border
guards, Mr. Gates is bringing the tubers — some of them healthy, others rotten
— to Davos to underline a pitch for his foundation’s efforts to eradicate
hunger in places where food is scarce and crops are often blighted.
Since 2009, Mr. Gates has published
an annual letter that details his foundation’s work and sets priorities for the
coming year. This time, the letter, which was set to be published Tuesday in
Seattle, highlights the need for innovation in agriculture to improve nutrition
in poor countries.
The foundation, the world’s largest
philanthropic organization, donates about $300 million a year to agriculture
projects, a little more than one-tenth of its overall annual commitments. About
half of the organization’s money goes to health care, including efforts to
fight diseases like AIDS, polio and malaria, and the rest is dedicated to
education and other initiatives.
Last year, Mr. Gates’s letter focused
on the foundation’s efforts to develop and disseminate vaccines. A milestone in
the battle against deadly diseases was reached this month when the Gates
Foundation and other groups announced that last year, for the first time, India
had not recorded a single case of polio.
Mr. Gates said he had decided to
emphasize agriculture this year because he felt it was not getting the
necessary attention. At the same time, he added, the need for food is easily
understood by the public because it is “so primary.”
“We get a strong response on health
issues,” he said by telephone. “But when we show a farmer getting better sweet
potatoes that are more nutritious, the response is even stronger.”
The letter describes the plight of a
farmer in Tanzania whose staple cassava crop has been infected by two diseases
that have attacked the leaves of the trees as well as the roots, which are the
edible crop. Cassava can be used to make a variety of foods, including tapioca.
“The billion people who wake up every
day trying to figure out if they have enough food to eat won’t be at Davos,”
said Mr. Gates. He added that the foundation’s goal was to cut this number,
calculated by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, in half by the end of the decade.
Mr. Gates is a longtime visitor to
the forum, where the foundation and Microsoft typically have a strong presence.
Mr. Gates is not alone in paying more
attention to the issue of hunger. Food has been a top item on the agenda at a
series of meetings of international leaders in recent years. In L’Aquila,
Italy, representatives of the Group of 8 major economies pledged in 2009 to spend more than $20
billion on the problem over three years.
Robert B. Zoellick, president of the World Bank, said last year that recent increases in food prices had been an “aggravating factor” in the unrest that swept
across the Arab world last year.
Yet Mr. Gates said he was worried
about threats to aid in the current economic climate. A growing list of other
concerns, like the crisis in the euro zone and the threat of conflict in Iran,
could overshadow more basic issues, like the need to put food on the table.
As of last year, according to a Group
of 8 report, only about one-fifth of the total pledges made in Italy in 2009
had actually been fulfilled. Similarly, Mr. Gates said he was concerned that
financing commitments to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria
were running behind the pledged amounts.
“The uncertainty level for aid is
pretty scary right now,” Mr. Gates said. “It’s a real concern.”
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/01/24/gates-to-pitch-his-charity-work-in-davos/
Source: SeedQuest.com
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1.05 Research to increase sugarbeet
disease resistance
Scientists from the U.S. Department of Agriculture have
developed a set of genetic markers for beet curly top virus that plant breeders
could use in developing curly top-resistant sugarbeet varieties. They
identified 11 genetic markers that were significantly associated with resistance
to curly top. This development is one of a few research activities aimed to
increase the yield of sugarbeet and produce varieties that are resistant to
known diseases.
Scientists are also focusing efforts on the root disease
called rhizomia which is caused by beet necrotic yellow vein virus. They
discovered that beet varieties exhibiting the greatest resistance to rhizomania
and good storability also had the highest sugar levels.
For more information view at http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/jan12/beet0112.htm
Source: Crop Biotech Update 13 January 2012
Contributed by Margaret Smith
Department of Plant Breeding & Genetics, Cornell
University
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1.06 Reducing attacks by parasitic plants
in grain crops
Strategies to combat the parasitic weed Striga are important
in the quest for food sufficiency in Africa. The parasitic plant affects the
African staple cereals such as maize, sorghum, highland rice, and millet
resulting to huge losses. In Wageningen University, Muhammad Jamil has studied
various approaches to reduce the damage caused by Striga with focus on
strigolactones, the compound secreted by the host that signals Striga seed to
germinate and attack. Strigolactones are derived from carotene.
Jamil found that reduction in strigolactones content in
plants through application of fertilizer and by inhibiting the carotene
production reduced Striga seed germination by up to 75 percent. He further
observed that different varieties vary with the amount of strigolactone
produced, affecting Striga attack. These results may be useful in developing
cheaper and effective technologies to reduce attack of the Striga parasite and
allow African farmers to produce more food and achieve a better income.
Read more on this news at: http://www.wur.nl/UK/newsagenda/news/Ne_Striga_.htm
Source: Crop Biotech Update 13 January 2012
Contributed by Margaret Smith
Department of Plant Breeding & Genetics, Cornell
University
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1.07 Improving maize resistance to head
smut
Head smut caused by fungus Sphacelotheca reiliana is one
of the most devastating diseases in maize. Thus, deployment of resistant maize
varieties is important to prevent widespread of the pathogen. Xianrong Zhao of
the China Agricultural University and colleagues conducted a study to
introgress a major resistance quantitative trait locus (qHSR1) into 10 maize inbred
lines (Ji853, 444, 98107, 99094, Chang7-2, V022, V4, 982, 8903, and 8902)
through marker-assisted backcrossing. The inbred lines used have excellent
agronomic traits but are known to be susceptible to head smut. Each of those
lines were crossed with Ji1037, which is completely resistant to head smut, and
then followed by five generations of backcrossing to their own recurrent
parent.
The 10 converted inbred lines exhibited improved
resistance to head smut. Furthermore, the hybrids derived from the converted
lines showed significant increase in resistance to head smut while retaining
their favorable agronomic characteristics.
Subscribers of Molecular Breeding journal may get a copy
of the research article at http://www.springerlink.com/content/cl66014663133267/
Source: Crop Biotech Update 20 January 2012
Contributed by Margaret Smith
Department of Plant Breeding & Genetics, Cornell
University
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1.08 New seed varieties approved in
Tanzania
A total of 26 new seed varieties have been approved for
planting by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food Security and Cooperatives of the
Republic of Tanzania. The new varieties have improved resistance to drought and
diseases, as well as shorter maturing periods and increased yield of two to
three times than the other commercialized varieties.
According to Mohamed Muya, permanent secretary of the
ministry, the seeds have passed the verification process and were certified by
the National Seeds Committee. The newly approved seed varieties include nine
varieties of maize, five varieties of Arabica coffee, four tea varieties, four
varieties of cassava, and one each of barley, millet, and beans. The
institutions involved in the development of the seed varieties were Tea
Research Institute of Tanzania, the Tanzania Coffee Research Institute, the
Agricultural Research Institute, Naliende Agriculture Research Institute,
Agro-Training and Engineering, Pioneer Overseas Corporation, Monsanto Tanzania
Limited, Meru Agro-Tours and Consultants, and Tanzania Breweries Limited.
Planting of the new seed varieties will start in the next farming season.
"We can now confidently say from now, henceforth
Tanzania is to record bumper harvests and therefore food security in the
country will always be assured," said Muya.
Read more at http://thecitizen.co.tz/news/4-national-news/18900-26-seed-varieties-approved.html
Source: Crop Biotech Update 20 January 2012
Contributed by Margaret Smith
Department of Plant Breeding & Genetics, Cornell
University
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1.09 New tool for cleaning up soils and
waterways prickly pear
Selenium at high concentrations can affect plants, fish
and migratory birds. Land areas which were covered with water in ancient times
have large deposits of selenium which is carried to other habitats during
rainfall. USDA's soil scientist Gary Banuelos discovered that planting prickly
pear cactus (Opuntia ficus-indica) could solve the problem. Bañuelos studied
five prickly pear varieties from Mexico, Brazil and Chile for salt and boron
tolerance in selenium-laden soils, and analyzed the soils and sediments in the
field test plots.
Results published in the journal Soil Use and Management
shows that prickly pear grew well in the poor quality soils with very little
water and the plants took up selenium. Selenium was volatilized by the plant
and some concentrations were found in the fruits and leaf-like stems. A cactus
variety from Chile performed best in the trial plots, showing highest tolerance
to salt and boron in the selenium-laden soils, as well as being the best at
producing fruit and accumulating and volatilizing selenium. The work is
continuing with a focus on selecting specific varieties that can be used as
bioremediation tools.
View the news release at http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr/2012/120118.htm
Source: Crop Biotech Update 20 January 2012
Contributed by Margaret Smith
Department of Plant Breeding & Genetics, Cornell
University
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1.10 Weed suppressing wheat put to test in
Western Australia trials
In attempts to suppress weeds in wheat fields in Western
Australia, the Department of Agriculture and Food (DAFWA) conducted field
trials of "competitive" wheat lines in Eradu and Wongal Hills in 2010
and 2011. The study was funded by the Grains Research and Development
Corporation to test various wheat lines developed by CSIRO Plant Industry.
The "competitive" wheat lines were evaluated
with commonly grown varieties in the two sites and researchers found marked
differences in their ability to suppress weeds. The lines were observed to
double the biomass by the early tillering stage and increased root growth which
proved effective in shading out and competing with weeds. In addition, they
yielded more than the commercial varieties.
See the news release at:
http://www.grdc.com.au/director/events/mediareleases/?item_id=E9AE9304ECEACFB9E6128B7C1B03CEC3
Source: Crop Biotech Update 20 January 2012
Contributed by Margaret Smith
Department of Plant Breeding & Genetics, Cornell
University
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1.11 Nourishing gene in plants for
improvement of seed productivitiy
Scientists at the University of Warwick, University of
Oxford, and Biogemma (an agri-biotech research company) have discovered a
"nourishing gene" labeled as Meg1 which controls the amount of
nutrients transferring from mother to offspring in maize plants. Meg1 is only
expressed in maternal chromosomes, which is a similar with the uniparental
expression of human genes involved the development of the placenta to regulate
the supply of maternal nutrients during fetal growth. This new discovery
implies that scientists can use the gene to increase seed size and productivity
especially in major crop plants.
Dr. Jose Gutierrez-Marcos, Associate Professor in the
University of Warwick's School of Life Sciences, said: "These findings
have significant implications for global agriculture and food security, as
scientists now have the molecular know-how to manipulate this gene by traditional
plant breeding or through other methods to improve seed traits, such as
increased seed biomass yield.To meet the demands of the world's growing
population in years to come, scientists and breeders must work together to
safeguard and increase agricultural production."
For more details, visit:
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/pressreleases/discovery_of_plant/
Source: Crop Biotech Update 20 January 2012
Contributed by Margaret Smith
Department of Plant Breeding & Genetics, Cornell
University
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1.12 Breeding better grasses for food and
fuel
Once an elusive dream, researchers from the Biotechnology
and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) have discovered that plants
can be developed as a source of food and at the same time source of energy for
fuel. In a research article published in the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a family of genes called Gt61 that govern the
development of fibrous, woody parts of grasses has been discovered.
"What we hope to do with this research is to produce
varieties of plants where the woody parts yield their energy much more readily
- but without compromising the structure of the plant. We think that one way to
do this might be to modify the genes that are involved in the formation of a
molecule called xylan - a crucial structural component of plants," said
Prof. Dupree of the University of Cambridge, co-author of the paper.
The Gt61 gene of grasses was introduced in Arabidopsis
which enable the production of a grass form of xylan. The gene on the other
hand was silenced in another study in wheat grain. Both the Arabidopsis plant
and the wheat grain appeared normal despite the changes in xylan. These results
open possibilities in the development of plants with the right balance of being
sturdy enough to grow, thrive and produce food, while also serving as a
feedstock for biofuel production.
For more on this article, view:
Source: Crop Biotech Update 20 January 2012
Contributed by Margaret Smith
Department of Plant Breeding & Genetics, Cornell
University
+++++++++++
1.13 Burundi releases two new rice
varieties for better lives
Two new rice varieties IR77713 and IR79511 developed and
bred for Burundi conditions were recently-released in the country. IRRI-Burundi
developed the new rice varieties in recognition of the urgent need for better
rice varieties adapted to local conditions and matching farmer and consumer
needs.
Consumers, farmers and other agricultural stakeholders in
different regions across Burundi and in three-year participatory variety
selection trials, chose the two rice varieties over the locally-grown varieties
based on yield, taste, and morphology.
"We congratulate IRRI for this achievement,"
concluded Director General of Agriculture Sebastien Ndikumagenge, Burundi
Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock. "By releasing these two varieties,
IRRI contributes a lot to our efforts to find food for Burundians. We encourage
IRRI to go forward."
The original news can be viewed at http://irri.org/news-events/media-releases/burundi-release-two-new-rice-varieties-for-better-lives.
Source: Crop Biotech Update 06 January 2012
Contributed by Margaret Smith
Department of Plant Breeding & Genetics, Cornell
University
Mes25@cornell.edu
++++++++++
1.14 Corn defenses for improved pest
resistance
New discoveries on how corn defend itself from pathogens
have been recently reported in the journals Plant Physiology and The
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Authors of papers from the USDA Agricultural Research
Service in Gainesville and University of Florida found defensive compounds
known as zealexins and kauralexins to rapidly accumulate at fungal infection
sites, impeding the microbes' continued spread. Another protein signal was
discovered in corn called ZmPep1, which alerts the plant to fungal intruders
and helps mobilize a timely counterattack.
In laboratory experiments, kauralexin class of
phytoalexins inhibited the growth of anthracnose stalk rot (Colletotrichum
graminicola) by 90 percent, while zealexins inhibited the growth of the
aflatoxin-producing fungus Aspergillus flavus by 80 per cent. These findings
are important in reducing the yield loss and fungal-derived toxin contamination
issues for U.S. corn farmers.
For more details, view at http://www.ars.usda.gov/News/docs.htm?docid=1261
Source: Crop Biotech Update 06 January 2012
Contributed by Margaret Smith
Department of Plant Breeding & Genetics, Cornell
University
+++++++++++
1.15 Molecular timer modulates branching
architecture in tomato
A new study conducted at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
(CSHL) in New York, USA, suggests that an increase in fruit yield happens if
the molecular timer (also called maturation clock) is manipulated because it
also determines the number of branches that make flowers.
"We have found that a delay in this clock causes more
branching to occur in the inflorescences, which in turn results in more flowers
and ultimately, more fruits," says CSHL Assistant Professor Zach Lippman,
leader of the research team. They conducted high-resolution, genome-level
comparison of the stem cell populations from three tomato varieties that have
diverse branching architectures. "We wanted to define this clock at the
highest resolution, in terms of the genes that modulate the rate of meristem
maturation, with the idea that finding the genes that define the clock would
enable us to tweak it to get the desired level of branching," explained
Lippman.
Results of their analysis showed that the wild tomato from
Peru evolved to have a slight delay in maturation, leading to development of
few branches but doubled number of flowers and fruits compared to the other
varieties. Using the candidate genes involved in time of maturation, the
research team intends to develop domesticated tomatoes with branching
architecture similar to the wild variety.
Read the complete story at http://www.cshl.edu/Article-Lippman/study-uncovers-a-molecular-maturation-clock-that-modulates-branching-architecture-in-tomato-plants
Source: Crop Biotech Update 06 January 2012
Contributed by Margaret Smith
Department of Plant Breeding & Genetics, Cornell
University
++++++++++++++++
1.16 Big agribusiness influence threatens to override
public interest in Greed Revolution
A new 30-page report
that documents the growing influence of agribusiness on the multilateral food
system and the lack of transparency in research funding has been released today
by the international civil society organization ETC Group. The Greed Revolution: Mega Foundations,
Agribusiness Muscle In On Public Goods presents three case studies – one involving the UN Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO) and two involving CGIAR Centers (Consultative Group on
International Agricultural Research) – which point to a dangerous trend that
will worsen rather than solve the problem of global hunger. The report details
the involvement of, among others, Nestlé, Heineken, Monsanto, the Bill &
Melinda Gates Foundation and Syngenta Foundation.
“It is unacceptable
that the UN is giving multinational agribusiness privileged access to alter
their agricultural policies,” said Pat Mooney, Executive Director of ETC Group,
who has been involved in the field for 40 years. “It is ridiculous that the key
organizations responsible for agricultural research have no credible data on
the extent of corporate involvement in their work and that CGIAR’s biggest
funder – at $89 million – is somebody called, ‘Miscellaneous!’ Governments and
UN secretariats have forgotten that their first task is to serve the public –
not the profiteers.”
The report shows that
multinational corporations are now seeing their future profitability in
“emerging economies,” and they are finally taking notice of the international
institutions that have been quietly working throughout the global South for
half a century. However this new interest in UN agencies is causing
“mandate-muddle” as companies demand that policy be rewritten to better reflect
their interests, including allowing privileged access to publicly held
germplasm. Public institutions are tending to look the other way when Big Ag
harms peasant agriculture.
“Public institutions
related to food and agriculture are mandated to support the poor and hungry.
Governments need to
address the big- and small-scale conflicts of interest, beginning with a long
overdue investigation of the links between the international public and private
sectors in food and agriculture. Based on our initial conversations with UN
officials about this research, we are hopeful that this will happen,” concludes
Mooney.
Source: http://www.etcgroup.org/en/node/5305
Source:
SeedQuest.com
++++++++++++
1.17 UF
strives to put aroma, taste back in tomatoes
Palm
Beach Post Staff Writer
January 20, 2012
Over the years as roses have been
bred for their beautiful blooms, most varieties have lost their fragrance.
Field-grown, mass-produced Florida
tomatoes have a similar problem. Bred to produce lots of tomatoes that ship
well, grow fast and resist pests and diseases, the plants may produce tomatoes
that look pretty, but lack flavor.
A University of Florida
interdisciplinary group has gone back to square one to try to change that.
Their work puts the consumers first and considers what people want. The goal is
to improve tomatoes, blueberries, strawberries and roses through breeding programs.
Environmental Horticulture Professor
David Clark and other researchers are looking at ways to put the aroma back
into flowers either through genetic engineering or by making the scent in a lab
and developing a spray.
Horticulture Professor Harry Klee is
leading work on coming up with a better-tasting tomato that could be grown on a
large scale. "I think that with some work, we can make a tomato that most
people feel is pretty good - certainly much better than what's out there today.
The bigger problem with the Florida 'mature green' field-grown tomato is that
it has no taste whatsoever," Klee said.
Rather than trying to improve the
standard round tomato, Klee is working with heirloom varieties, some of which
go back 100 years. But the problem with getting large-scale farmers to use them
is they are not resistant to diseases. "We are trying to understand what
good flavor is so we can put it back into varieties that commercial growers
will grow," he said.
UF's Plant Innovation Group, which
includes members from fields such as plant genetics, food science, marketing,
sales and psychology, is partnering with Moskowitz Jacobs, a White Plains,
N.Y., strategic brands development, research and consulting firm.
Howard Moskowitz, who founded the
firm in 1981, became famous in the food world after coming up with a new line
of tomato-based pasta sauces for Campbell's, makers of Prego. Campbell's sought
his help in competing with Ragú.
Although the supermarket shelves
today are laden with every type of spaghetti sauce imaginable, from roasted red
pepper to ricotta parmesan and garden combo, that wasn't the case in the early
1980s. The sauces sold at retail were smooth and had a uniform texture.
Moskowitz came up with 45
possibilities that varied in spiciness, thickness and other attributes. Then
food experts developed about 10 sauces that were evaluated by consumers.
He found that there was no perfect
sauce because people have different preferences.
But he learned that most people
preferred either plain, spicy or extra-chunky sauces that were more like
homemade versions. Prego's Extra Chunky was the result.
And Prego's extra chunky resulted in
more than $600 million in revenue over 10 years. Today, Ragú and Prego each
have more than 20 varieties of tomato-based sauces.
"Howard Moskowitz's whole thing
is, let's find out what the consumer wants," Klee said. At UF, more than
75 varieties of heirlooms have been evaluated by panels of 100 consumers.
"We now know what the recipe is
for the ideal tomato. Now the trick is to reproduce it," Klee said. After
a decade of work, he estimates the new tomato or tomato varieties could be just
three to five years away.
He said they are working with one of
the big seed companies now - he wouldn't say which - and said he has the
ability to make a tomato that produces well and tastes great.
The problem is the tomato has to be
suitable for commercial growers or they won't agree to work with it. With a few
exceptions, growers have not demanded tastier tomatoes because they don't get
more money for taste, Klee said.
Premium tomatoes that sell for a
higher price are available, but Klee said the majority of people still will buy
the 99 cents-a-pound tomato instead of the $4-a-pound tomato.
Klee is confident that ultimately a
bulk tomato that sells for 99 cents-a-pound and tastes good can be produced.
"If you want to fight obesity and make people healthier, give them food
that tastes good at a reasonable price," Klee said.
Source: SeedQuest.com
+++++++++++
1.18 Gene breakthrough to help Japanese
farmers hit by tsunami
Agence
france presse
PARIS
23 January
2012
Scientists in Britain and Japan on
Sunday unveiled a fast-track way towards breeding crops with higher yields or
resistance to climate change. Early beneficiaries should be Japanese farmers
who need salt-loving rice plants after their fields were submerged in last
year´s tsunami.
The technique, which does not use
genetic modification, pinpoints DNA variants which confer specific qualities in
a plant. Armed with this knowledge,
breeders can then use classic methods to splice these genes into an existing
strain.
Right now, it can take up to five or
even 10 years to develop a strain, which is known as a cultivar. But the
"MutMat" approach should speed this marathon to a sprint of little
more than a year, say its inventors."Essentially, it helps to get to the
needle in the haystack faster," Sophien Kamoun, a professor at The
Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich, eastern England, told AFP.
The method, reported in the journal
Nature Biotechnology, focussed on a Japanese wild rice cultivar called
Hitomebore.
Researchers led by Ryohei Terauchi
from the Iwate Biotechnology Research Centre created 1,500 variants of
Hitomebore, each of which had different characteristics, using a chemical
treatment to speed up the natural rate of mutation. They honed in on a variant
that had a trait for higher yields and crossed it with the original strain of
Hitomebore. The resultant plant was then self-pollinated and grown.
The scientists compared the genome of
this progeny with that of the original Hitomebore. Like laying one map on top
of another, they were swiftly able to spot the genetic telltale for the bigger
yield. The process offers a huge gain in time for plant breeders, say the
scientists.
Traditionally, breeders have to cross
many generations of plants to ensure that desired genes are anchored in the
cultivar and unwanted ones are stripped out. But the new method quickly
highlights the right genes, meaning that it should not take more than a few
generations of fine-tuning to come up with the desired outcome. In their
experiment, Terauchi´s team identified the traits for semi-dwarfism, which
leads to short, stubby plants with a full head of grain. It was this
characteristic that famously unleashed the Green Revolution in the 1960s,
boosting rice harvests in China, India and other countries that teetered
perpetually on the brink of famine.
The team has since grown a collection
of plants from Hitomebore which cope with high salinity. "Once genes
contributing to salt tolerance are identified, they will be used for developing
rice cultivars suitable for cultivation in the roughly 20,000 hectares (50,000
acres) of paddy fields of the northern Japan coast that were flooded by the tsunami,"
the study says. Kamoun said MutMat was
simpler than other gene-spotting methods and was especially promising as it
could improve a crop that had already adapted to local conditions. The right genes are introduced "by
classical breeding," he added. "There´s no GM [genetic modification]
involved in this approach at all."
Other crops with a relatively small
and uncomplicated genome are excellent candidates for MutMat but complex
species such as wheat and corn would be difficult, he said. Kamoun said MutMat
only became feasible through cheap computing power and low-cost gene
sequencing. "This is what´s so exciting for the future," said Kamoun.
"These technologies were not available just a few years ago. The full
impact on improving crops and on agriculture is going to be tremendous, and
it´s very timely, given the challenge we have with food security."
Last October, the UN Population Fund
(UNFPA) said the global population of seven billion could rise to at least 10
billion by 2100, but could top 15 billion if birth rates are just slightly
higher than expected. That amounts to a major challenge to boost yields, use
land and water more sparingly and develop crops that can cope with
climate-induced drought and flood.
http://www.myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=41112
Source: SeedQuest.com
+++++++++++
1.19 Global research consortium presents
findings on safety of genetically modified food
Ireland
24 January, 2012
A three year feeding study has shown
no adverse health effects in pigs fed genetically modified (GM) maize. The
maize, which is a Bt-maize bred for its insect resistant properties, was
sourced from Spain.
The results were one of the key
findings of trials conducted as part of the GMSAFOOD consortium undertaking
post market monitoring: long term, generational and food chain studies to test
food safety.
The research team conducted
short-term (31 days), medium-term (110 days) and generational pig feeding
studies where the health of piglets of sows fed Bt-maize is measured. No
adverse effects were observed, suggesting that feeding Bt-maize to pigs of
different ages is safe.“These findings can offer some assurance to consumers as
to the safety of consuming Bt-maize,” Peadar Lawlor, senior researcher at
Teagasc, Animal and Grassland Research and Innovation Centre, Moorepark,
Ireland, said;“The pig is considered to be an excellent model for humans due to
similarities in gastrointestinal anatomy and physiology. Similar responses to
Bt-maize consumption could be expected in humans,” he said.
In addition to testing for any
unforeseen adverse effects, the researchers were also looking for biomarkers
(fragments of DNA) associated with immune responses which could be used for
predicting immune response to future genetically modified organisms (GMOs).¶The
GMSAFOOD consortium, funded by the European Commission, brings together
researchers from Austria, Ireland, Norway, Hungry, Turkey and Australia.
These results and findings from other
GMSAFOOD research teams will be presented at the GMSAFOOD conference at the
Medical University of Vienna, Austria 6-8 March 2012. These include:
http://www.seedquest.com/news.php?type=news&id_article=23936&id_region=&id_category=&id_crop=
Source: SeedQuest.com
++++++++++++
1.20 Improving crops from the roots up
Nottingham, United Kingdom
24 January, 2012
Research involving scientists at The
University of Nottingham has taken us a step closer to breeding hardier crops
that can better adapt to different environmental conditions and fight off
attack from parasites.
In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the
United States of America (PNAS),
the researchers have shown that they can alter root growth in the plant
Arabidopsis thaliana, or thale cress, by controlling an important regulatory
protein.
Dr Ive De Smet, a Biotechnology and
Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) David Phillips Fellow in the
University’s Division of Plant and Crop Science, said: “The world’s population
is increasing, and a new green revolution is even more pressing to deliver
global food security. To achieve this, optimising the root system of plants is
essential and these recent results will contribute significantly to our goal of
improving crop growth and yield under varying environmental conditions.”
The work was carried out by an
international team of researchers. Led by scientists from the Plant Systems
Biology Department in the life sciences research institute VIB in Flanders,
Belgium, and Ghent University, the study also involved experts from Wake Forest
University in the US and the Albrecht-von-Haller Institute for Plant Sciences
in Germany.
Plant root biology is essential for
healthy plant growth and, while the so-called hidden half of the plant has
often been overlooked, its importance is becoming increasingly recognised by
scientists.
Despite this, particularly in view of
the critical role plants play in global food security, improving plant growth
by modulating the biological architecture of root systems is an area which is
largely unexplored.
In this latest research, the
scientists modulated levels of the protein, transcription factor WRKY23, in
plants, analysed the effects on root development and used chemical profiling to
demonstrate that this key factor controls the biosynthesis of important
metabolites called flavonols. Altered levels of flavonols affected the
distribution of auxin, a plant hormone controlling many aspects of development,
which resulted in impaired root growth.
Healthier and hardier crops
The results of the research can now
be used to produce new plant lines, such as crops which are economically
valuable, which have an improved root system, making them better able to resist
environmental changes which could lead to plant damage or poor yield.
In addition, WRKY23 was previously
found to play a role in the way plants interact with types of nematode
parasites, which could lead to further research into how to prevent attacks
from the creatures during the early stages of plant growth.
The paper Transcription Factor WRKY23
Assists Auxin Distribution Patterns During Arabidopsis Root Development Through
Local Control on Flavonol Biosynthesis featured in the online Early Edition of
the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of
America. A pdf of the paper can be downloaded here.
http://www.seedquest.com/news.php?type=news&id_article=23948&id_region=&id_category=&id_crop=
Source: SeedQuest.com
++++++++++
1.21 Global Rice Science Partnership
(GRiSP) launches stronger MET and breeding data management procedures
Los Banos, The Philippines
24 January, 2012
Scientists from Africa Rice Center
(AfricaRice); International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT); national
agricultural research and extension systems (NARES); and IRRI convened at IRRI
headquarters this week to discuss multienvironment testing (MET) and breeding
data management requirements.
The meeting is expected to result in
a comprehensive action plan to establish a structured MET program in the Global
Rice Science Partnership (GRiSP)
as well as a harmonized data management system for product-based GRiSP breeding
programs.
The 3-day workshop was opened today
by Achim Dobermann, IRRI's deputy director general for research, who challenged
the breeders to build on the experiences of the past but make continuous
genetic progress with a much more sophisticated way of breeding.
Currently, variety release processes
can be tedious and slow and there is no guarantee that varieties released will
be adopted by farmers. The workshop is expected to result in very clear systems
to evaluate varieties and hybrids following similar procedures and protocols
across regions but adapted to the specific needs of the region.
The first day featured presentations
from representatives from Asia, Africa, and South America on the current MET
practices and trial systems in their respective regions. Partners in Asian
NARES—Indonesia, Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam—also shared information
about the MET activities being initiated in their countries.
An entire day is scheduled for group
discussions to draft specific guidelines for designing and conducting MET
trials and data management systems, and to develop protocols for advancing
breeding lines, variety naming, and branding.
The outcome of the discussions will
be presented on the third day of the workshop, 26 January, and will be
implemented as standard MET and breeding data management protocols by the GRiSP
partners in the different regions.
http://www.seedquest.com/news.php?type=news&id_article=23962&id_region=&id_category=&id_crop=
Source: IRRI viaSeedQuest.com
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1.22 L’AIDR outille
les producteurs de semences améliorées de la zone agricole de Lergho
Le Ministre délégué chargé de l’Agriculture, Monsieur Abdoulaye
COMBARY, a présidé une session de formation en « techniques de :
production, conditionnement, conservation et contrôle de qualité des
semences » au profit des producteurs et productrices de semences et agents
responsables de leur encadrement, le lundi 16 janvier 2012. Le Ministre COMBARY
avait à ses côtés, le Gouverneur de la Région du Centre-Est, le Conseiller
technique du Ministre délégué chargé de la Coopération régionale et les
autorités locales de la commune de Garango.
Lergho, localité située à une dizaine de kilomètres de
Garango, a abrité du 16 au 21 janvier 2012 une session de formation au profit
d’une centaine de producteurs semenciers et leurs agents responsables
d’encadrement. Les participants à cette formation sont des membres de plusieurs
groupements mixtes tels que le groupement FONDA de Kombinatenga, le groupement
NOGNA de Lergho, le groupement NOGNA de Ounzéogo, les groupements de Zigla
Koulpélé, Sanogho, Siguinvoussé, Wouréma et Lèda.
Selon le Ministre COMBARY, la présence massive des
producteurs venus de plusieurs villages des communes de Garango et de Tenkodogo
« témoigne du dynamisme fonctionnel du réseau de production de semences
améliorées certifiées dans la région du Centre-Est. Dans cette perspective, il
s’agit de renforcer les capacités des producteurs semenciers et des agents
chargés de leur encadrement afin qu’ils soient aptes à produire et à mettre à
la disposition des agriculteurs de semences de qualités adaptées aux conditions
locales. »
L’objectif de cette session de formation est de fournir aux
producteurs semenciers et aux agents chargés de leur encadrement les moyens
techniques prioritaires permettant d’accroître la productivité agricole et de
garantir la sécurité alimentaire des populations. C’est pourquoi, la formation
était axée sur le besoin prioritaire d’accroître la productivité, les
productions agricoles et alimentaires à travers la production et la mise à
disposition de semences de qualité.
Dans cette perspective, il s’est agi de : renforcer les
capacités des producteurs semenciers afin de leur donner les moyens techniques
de mettre à la disposition des utilisateurs des semences certifiées de qualité,
adaptées aux conditions locales, en quantités suffisantes ; renforcer les
capacités des agents chargés de leur encadrement. La session de formation a
insisté sur le besoin vital de renforcer les capacités des producteurs
semenciers et des agents chargés de leur encadrement afin de procurer les
moyens techniques pour la production et la mise à disposition de semences
certifiées de qualité, adaptées aux conditions locales, dans l’optique
d’accroître la productivité (coefficient de multiplication des
rendements : 4 à 10) et d’assurer la sécurité alimentaire.
Un stand d’exposition des semences améliorées, des tests de
germination et des appareils de laboratoire d’analyse des semences ont permis
aux producteurs d’apprendre davantage sur la nécessité de disposer des semences
certifiées pour un meilleur rendement. Au terme de la formation, les
producteurs et productrices de semences améliorées dans la zone de Lergho ont
exprimé leur satisfaction totale. Ils ont reçu des attestations de
participation et ils se sont engagés à transmettre aux producteurs qui n’ont
pas bénéficié de cette formation, les nouvelles connaissances et techniques
acquises.
En sa qualité de président de l’Union régionale des
producteurs semenciers du Centre-Est, El Hadj Adama SARE, a saisi cette
opportunité pour prodiguer des conseils aux participants à la session de
formation. Il leur a assuré de son soutien sans faille pour faire de la zone
agricole du Centre-Est, « le grenier » des semences de qualité du
Burkina Faso.
La formation était animée par une experte (Mme Mini
DAH/PALE) du Service national des semences en tant que formateur principal et garant
du contrôle de qualité des semences et un inspecteur semencier régional
(Souleymane NACRO), représentant local de l’activité de développement de la
filière semencière.
La session de formation a été rendue possible grâce aux
initiatives de l’AIDR, association dénommée « Appui aux Initiatives
Locales de Développement Rural », association animée par Gustave T.
GUINKO, ingénieur agroéconomiste et Issouf ZABSONRE, conseiller en
communication.
Ousmane KABORE (correspondance
particulière)
http://www.lefaso.net/spip.php?article46006&rubrique14
Source: SeedQuest.com
+++++++++++++
1.23 12th Society for the Advancement of
Breeding Research in Asia and Oceania (SABRAO) Congress held in Chiang Mai,
Thailand
Chiang Mai, Thailand
24 January, 2012
More than 30 IRRI scientists attended
the 12th Society for the Advancement of Breeding Research in Asia and Oceania (SABRAO)
Congress held in Chiang Mai, Thailand, on 12-16 January 2012.
The gathering is held every 4 years;
with the 12th Congress' theme being “Plant Breeding towards 2025: Challenges in
a Rapidly Changing World (an international conference to celebrate His Majesty
King Bhumibol’s 84th (7 Cycle) Birthday Anniversary).”
IRRI DDG-R Achim Dobermann and senior
scientists Jauhar Ali, Glenn Gregorio, and Guoyou Ye were among 24 speakers
invited to deliver plenary or keynote presentations during the conference.
The event is strongly supported by
IRRI, and the second day of the Congress consisted of a session exclusively
devoted to rice, which had rice scientists from China, India, Japan, Korea,
Malaysia, Philippines, and the USA presenting their research results.
The congress ended with a tour of the
East-West Seed Co., Ltd.; Chia Tai Co., Ltd.; and the Royal Flora Ratchaphruek
Expo.
The conference was a good opportunity
for plant breeders, including young graduate students, to learn of recent
advances in plant breeding and related research in Asia across diverse crop
species and interact with leading agricultural scientists from 14 countries
working in diverse crop species.
SABRAO, established in 1968, is one the
world’s oldest international organizations for crop and animal improvement
scientists. Two IRRI staff members presently serve as officers of SABRAO: Ed
Redoña as secretary general and Bert Collard, editor-in-chief of the SABRAO Journal of Breeding and
Genetics.
http://www.seedquest.com/news.php?type=news&id_article=23960&id_region=&id_category=&id_crop=
Source: IRRI via SeedQuest.com
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1.24 No limits to the value of an
agriculture degree
Ames, Iowa, USA
January 25, 2012
By Jay T.
Akridge Glenn W. Sample Dean, College of Agriculture, Purdue University Robert
J. Hauser Dean, College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences,
University of Illinois Bobby D. Moser Vice President for Agricultural
Administration & Dean, College of Food, Agricultural and Environmental
Sciences, The Ohio State University Wendy K. Wintersteen Endowed Dean, College
of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Iowa State University.
Given the outstanding enrollment and
job placement experience in our respective colleges, it was a surprise when
three of the five majors "highlighted" in a recent Yahoo Education
article by Terrence Loose entitled “College
Majors that are Useless” were
programs in the agricultural sciences: agriculture, animal sciences, and
horticulture.Before drawing his conclusions, we wish that Mr. Loose had done
more homework beyond what appears to be a cursory review of Bureau of Labor
Statistics numbers and the repurposing of a similar headline from The Daily
Beast a year ago. Other sources suggest that not only is the need for graduates
in these programs growing, but there is a shortage of graduates in the
agricultural, food, and natural resource sciences:
Broad definition of agriculture
The Yahoo Education article equated
"agriculture" with "farm management." Farm management is an
important field of study, but defining agriculture only as farm management is
much too narrow. Completely ignored are other important areas under the
umbrella of "agriculture" including food science, plant science, and
soil science, where the Bureau of Labor Statistics report predicts job growth
should be faster than the average for all occupations, and where job
opportunities are expected to be good over the next decade, particularly infood
science and technology and in agronomy. And, of course, the "agriculture"
umbrella also covers agricultural economics, agricultural engineering, animal
sciences, natural resource and environmental sciences, and agricultural
education, to name a few.
Very low unemployment rates
Recent (Jan. 5, 2012) online posts
(New York Times), and NPR’s StateImpact Ohio) cited a just released report by the GeorgetownUniversity Center on
Education and the workforce which found agriculture and natural resources to be
among the fields with the lowest unemployment rates lower than business,
engineering, law, and and several others.
Shortage of college graduates to fill need
The U.S. Department of Agriculture in
the Employment Opportunities for College Graduates in Food, Renewable Energy,
and the Environment, 2010-2015report, projects that 53,500 qualified graduates
will be available for about 54,400jobs annually the agricultural and food
systems, renewable energy and the environment. About 55 percent of those
graduates (29,300) are expected to earn degrees from colleges of agriculture and
life sciences, forestry and natural resources, and veterinary medicine. The
other 45 percent, an estimated 24,200 graduates, will come from allied
disciplines including biological sciences,engineering, health sciences,
business, and communication.
No stronger sector for recruiting
Dr. Phil Gardner, Director of the
Collegiate Employment Research Institute at Michigan State University, recently
wrote, “No sector appears stronger than agriculture/food processing with an
increase in hires of approximately 14 percent” in the annual Recruiting Trends
report.
Vital economic growth engine
A recent study conducted by
theBattelle Institute, an independent research organization, found that
agriculture and agbiosciences are generating vital economic growth and job creation,
particularly in the North Central United States, which includes all four or our
respective states. This Midwest area, once dubbed the “Rust Belt,” is becoming
the breeding ground for new “green” agriculture-related jobs as the
agriculture-driven industry is poised to expand into new markets such as
health, specialty crops, biofuels and bio-based products.
New areas of opportunity
The article completely misses an
important trend of interest in small scale, local foodproduction and those who
want to become part of agriculture by launching these types of businesses. The
Bureau of Labor Statistics report from which Mr. Loose took some of his numbers
even points out that “…an increasing number of small-scale farmers have
developed successful market niches that involve personalized, direct contact
with their customers. Many are finding opportunities in horticulture and
organic food production, which are among the fastest growing segments of
agriculture.”
The success of our graduates is also
a testament to the usefulness of agricultural majors. Students majoring in
"agriculture" study farm management, horticulture, and animal
sciences—as well as agricultural and food business, food science, biological
engineering, plant breeding and genetics, wildlife biology and forestry,
biochemistry, microbiology, entomology, and other exciting, science-based
areas. Our graduates take jobs in a wide variety of industries, pursue research
careers, and work in public service in the US and internationally.
Across all four of our agricultural
colleges, total enrollment the highest in 30+ years, applications are going up
and, most importantly, at the end of their undergraduate careers, our students
are facing excellent job or graduate program opportunities. Placement rates are
higher than 90%, with 16-26% of that total choosing to pursue advanced degrees
and professional education. Beyond the statistics about jobs, let’s think about
some basic human needs and consider what "degrees" will prepare a
young man or woman to help provide for those needs. Adequate nutrition is a
basic need of all humans. Our planet recently reached the 7 billion population
mark and the United Nations estimates we will have 2.3 billion more people to
feed by the year 2050. We must address how to feed all these people with little
expansion of land; in a way that conserves our water resources; and in a
fashion that society judges acceptable and even more respectful of our
environment.
For answers, take a closer look at
our agricultural majors. In addition, those in agriculture will make important
contributions to our country’s energy requirements and help provide feedstocks
for other industrial materials. To meet these challenges, a growing number of
passionate, smart, and well-prepared people have a lot ofwork to do. And we see
and talk to these people every day in our campus classrooms, labs and fields.
That’s why we’re very excited by the prospects for our graduates. Agriculture
has been one of the bright spots in the U.S. economy during the current
recession and incredible opportunities exist for new economic development in
our states and our country. Our graduates are currently writing their own
story, and the headline reads: “College Majors that are Invaluable.”
Website: http://www.iastate.edu
Source: SeedQuest.com
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1.25 Plantas más
grandes y resistentes a la sequía
Argentina
20 January, 2012
Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas
Producir plantas más grandes y con mayor tolerancia a la
sequía es el objetivo del equipo de investigación que dirige el doctor Javier
Palatnik en el IBR-Conicet. Para ello los científicos estudian el
funcionamiento de los ARN pequeños, porciones de información genética que se
encuentran en la célula y que determinan cuáles son los genes que se expresarán
en ella y cuáles no.
Según explica el doctor Palatnik, cada una de las células de
un organismo pluricelular cuenta con todos los genes que definen las
características de la especie. ¿Qué es lo que hace que las células del pie sean
distintas de las del ojo en un animal o las del tallo diferentes de las de las
hojas en una planta? La respuesta la tienen los ARN pequeños que establecen qué
genes están activos, haciendo que cada tipo de célula tenga una función
específica para formar los distintos órganos y tejidos.
“Todas las células de los seres humanos cuentan con los 25
mil genes que definen nuestra especie, pero sólo una porción de esa información
se encuentra activa en cada caso: en la piel están activas algunas de esas
unidades, en el hígado otras y así sucesivamente. Los ARN pequeños son los que
regulan qué unidades están encendidas y cuáles apagadas”, ejemplifica el
investigador y agrega “los seres vivos no solamente necesitan que haya una
información que los constituya, los genes, sino que además esa información
tiene que poder estar regulada y expresada de una manera correcta.”
El doctor Palatnik y su equipo estudian el funcionamiento de
los ARN pequeños en una planta modelo denominada Arabidopsis thaliana.
Específicamente, investigan los ARN involucrados en la proliferación celular
que pueden hacer que las plantas tengan más o menos células y con esto que sean
de mayor o menor tamaño. Estos mismos ARN son los que otorgan más resistencia a
la sequía y al modificarlos se pueden obtener plantas más grandes y más
tolerantes a la escasez de agua. Los vegetales mejorados con estas
características podrían traer beneficios concretos a la industria, por ejemplo,
una planta más grande provee de más biomasa para la elaboración de
biocombustibles.
Si bien los estudios se desarrollan en la planta modelo, los
adelantos -que se encuentran en proceso de ser patentados- podrían aplicarse en
cultivos comerciales como la soja, el maíz y el arroz. Para esto, el
laboratorio del doctor Palatnik firmó un convenio a través del Conicet y de la
Universidad Nacional de Rosario con una compañía de Inglaterra que evaluará las
posibilidades de utilizar en cultivos de interés agronómico los avances hechos
en Arabidopsis thaliana. “Son los resultados de los experimentos hechos en
Rosario lo que se está transfiriendo y patentado”, subraya el investigador.
Reconocimiento
Estos adelantos, sumados a la trayectoria del doctor Palatnik
le valieron, recientemente, la distinción por parte JCI Rosario como uno de los
Jóvenes Sobresalientes de la Provincia de Santa Fe 2011 en el categoría
desarrollo científico y tecnológico. “Cuando hay un reconocimiento hay que
tener en cuenta dos cosas, por un lado, que existe un equipo de trabajo que
está detrás de todo y, por otro, que sin la labor previa que otros han
realizado antes que nosotros no podríamos estar obteniendo los resultados que
tenemos en este momento”, concluye Palatnik al referirse al premio recibido.
http://www.seedquest.com/news.php?type=news&id_article=24038&id_region=&id_category=&id_crop=
Source: SeedQuest.com
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1.26 Ensayan con
éxito papas transgénicas resistentes a virus
Argentina
25 January, 2012
La papa es el cuarto cultivo alimenticio más importante en el
mundo, con una producción anual de 300 millones de toneladas. En Argentina se
producen 2 a 2,5 millones, las que se comercializan principalmente en el
mercado interno.
Las infecciones virales afectan considerablemente a la papa,
causando importantes pérdidas económicas y en el rendimiento. Entre estos virus
se encuentra el PVY (virus de la papa Y), que se transmite por insectos
(áfidos) y puede causar infecciones severas y persistir en las subsiguientes
generaciones de tubérculos. En algunos casos, las infecciones pueden ser
devastadoras y causar pérdidas de hasta el 80%.
Un equipo de investigadores argentinos, liderados por el Dr.
Fernando Bravo, generó plantas transgénicas resistentes al PVY, y las ensayó a
campo en diferentes regiones de Argentina.
En total ensayaron 2.000 plantas de dos líneas transgénicas a
los largo de 6 años. Los resultados fueron los esperados: no observaron
infección por PVY en las plantas genéticamente modificadas, mientras que entre
las plantas no transgénicas la tasa de infección fue alta, alcanzando en
algunos casos el 70-80%.
Para ensayar el comportamiento agronómico de las plantas
transgénicas, los investigadores eligieron ambientes libres de virus. De estas
pruebas concluyeron que las papas transgénicas y no transgénicas son idénticas
desde el punto de vista agronómico así como en su composición bioquímica.
El artículo sobre estos ensayos a campo fue recientemente
publicado en la revista científica Transgenic Research, y se puede acceder a su
resumen en:
http://www.seedquest.com/news.php?type=news&id_article=24039&id_region=&id_category=&id_crop=
Source: SeedQuest.com
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1.27 New varieties of cassava designed
to combat deadly viral diseases are officially released in Tanzania
Newstime Africa
January 24, 2012
Four new high-yielding cassava varieties that are
tolerant to the deadly Cassava Brown Streak Disease (CBSD) and resistant to the
equally devastating Cassava Mosaic Disease (CMD), were last week officially
released in Tanzania, providing a ray of hope to the millions of small-scale
farmers who depend on the crop for their food and income in sub-Saharan Africa.
The two diseases have been spreading rapidly through the Great Lakes countries
of eastern Africa from war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo to Rwanda,
Burundi, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Mozambique and Malawi, nearly reaching
epidemic proportions as all the varieties grown by the farmers are susceptible.
These diseases represent the greatest threat to food security
in the region as cassava is Africa’s second most important food crop after
maize and provides more than half of the dietary calories for over half of the
total rural and urban population in sub-Saharan Africa. Spread through
sharing of infected planting materials and by a vector, the whitefly, the
diseases have caused an estimated 1 billion USD worth of damage to Africa’s
cassava. The already poor small-scale farmers bear the brunt of this
loss.
The new varieties dubbed Pwani, Mkumba,
Makutupora and Dodoma are a result of eight years of
collaborative work between researchers from Tanzanian Agricultural Research
Institutes (ARIs), the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA)
and the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT). They were
developed through Molecular Marker Assisted Selection (MMAS) techniques that
rely on advances in biotechnology to speed up the conventional breeding
process. Aside from being disease resistant, the new varieties can easily
double the crop’s production with their potentially high yields (23 –
51t/ha against the current average yield of 10t/ha). They also meet other local
preferences such as taste, ease of cooking and texture.
According to Dr. Geoffrey Mkamilo, the Team Leader of Cassava
Research in Tanzania, the farmers will be very relieved and happy as they have
been eagerly awaiting these varieties as the two diseases have devastated the
crop’s production for many years. He points out CBSD as being especially
devastating and causing a lot of heartbreak to farmers. “This disease
has has been very devastating because its symptoms are not always clear. Farmers
looking forward to a good harvest get a rude shock when they harvest and
discover the useless rotten roots,” he explained. “As a result, many of
them had abandoned this hardy crop that performs relatively well even under
harsh conditions such as poor soils and little rainfall.”
To read the full article, visit Newstime Africa
Source: SeedQuest.com
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1.28 A one day conference to celebrate the
founding of the Plant Breeding Institute to be held at the Conference Centre,
John Innes Centre, Norwich
20 June
2012
http://www.jic.ac.uk/events/pbi/
The Plant Breeding Institute,
Cambridge would have been celebrating its 100th Anniversary in 2012. The
ground-breaking science, plant breeding technology and a host of new arable
crop varieties that came out of PBI formed the back-bone of UK crop research
for decades. Many of the former staff are still very much taking an
active and vital role in underpinning the plant breeding and plant science in
the UK and international scientific community today. To mark the event,
we are holding a one day conference with talks, demonstration plots and a
historical exhibition at the John Innes Centre, Norwich.
Contributed by Dee Rawsthorne
Source: SeedQuest.com
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1.29 "Research data management
with spreadsheets and R"
The International Centre for Plant Breeding Education and
Research (ICPBER) in the School of Plant Biology at The University of Western
Australia (UWA) held 2 courses during 2011 for staff and students, entitled
"Research data management with spreadsheets and R". The presenter for both courses was Dr Thomas
Metz, a specialist in helping researchers manage their data sets. It is intended that a web-based course be
developed by Dr Metz during 2012 based on the experiences of the 2011 courses.
The participants who gained the most out of the courses
had at least a superficial familiarity with the R environment, either through a
previous introductory R course or through watching some online R tutorial
videos.
The course proved to be especially useful for PhD
students and postdoctoral research associates who needed to improve their data
management skills - an increasingly important skill for efficient future
performance in research, and for future employment. Participants brought their
own data sets in spreadsheets for use during the course to apply the principles
and procedures taught during the course.
The course did not cover statistical analysis, but focused on the efficient
organization of research data, the transparent and reproducible manipulation
and transformation of research data prior to statistical analysis, and the
efficient manipulation and presentation of results after analysis.
The following topics were covered:
1) Organizing files and directories for a research
project
2) Organizing and documenting research data in
spreadsheets
3) Moving data between spreadsheets and the R environment
4) Manipulating and transforming data in R
5) Creating graphical output for data quality assessment
ICPBER is working with Dr Metz on developing an
internet-based course to develop these skills in plant breeding research
degrees at UWA.
For further information, contact ICPBER Project Manager
at The University of Western Australia Margaret Campbell: margaret.campbell@uwa.edu.au
Source: SeedQuest.com
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1.30 Science to help
rice growers affected by Japan’s tsunami
Under a year since a huge tsunami inundated
paddy fields in Japan with salty sludge, scientists are near to developing
locally-adapted, salt-tolerant rice.
Following a Japan-UK research collaboration, a
new method for marker assisted breeding is being used to slash the time it
takes to isolate new traits such as salt tolerance. Details of the new method,
called MutMap, will be published in Nature Biotechnology on Sunday so they can
be used by scientists and breeders worldwide to dramatically accelerate crop
breeding.
“The beauty of the new method is its
simplicity,” said Professor Sophien Kamoun, co-author on the paper and Head of
The Sainsbury Laboratory on Norwich Research Park.
“By working with cultivars favoured by farmers
and already adapted to local conditions, the MutMap method will enable plant
scientists and breeders to develop new crop varieties in nearer a year rather
than five to ten years.”
The new
technique also takes advantage of the speed at which sequencing can now be done
to screen plant mutants for valuable traits.
“Until now, plant breeding has not been able
to take advantage of the genomics revolution,” said lead author Professor Ryohei
Terauchi from Japan’s Iwate Biotechnology Research Centre.
“MutMap overcomes one of the greatest
limitations, which has been the time it takes to identify genetic markers for
desirable traits.”
Important traits such as drought and salt
tolerance, semidwarfism, plant height and yield are often controlled by many
genes each having a subtle effect. It is therefore difficult to identify the
complete genetic basis for them.
Such traits are often bred in from wild
relatives and without genetic engineering many years of back-crossing are
required to breed out all the characteristics of the wild plant except the
quality desired.
In the new method, scientists work with an
elite rice cultivar and create mutants that harbour different traits. One
mutant is identified with the desired trait and this is crossed with the
original cultivar and grown in the field. The difference between the progeny of
this cross and the elite cultivar can then be identified.
“The differences can be unequivocally observed
even if they are small,” said Professor Kamoun.
The changes detected are called
single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPS) and insertion-deletions (indels) – tiny
genetic improvements that can be observed using genome sequencing.
In the study to be published on Sunday, the
scientists focused on plant height because of its crucial role in yield. The
introduction of this trait fuelled the Green Revolution in wheat, rice and
other cereals from the 1960s, but has not been thoroughly exploited. The gene
for semidwarfism was first identified in the model plant Arabidopsis at the
John Innes Centre, and only discovered in rice in 2002.
For the current study, they also measured six
other traits of agricultural importance. Terauchi and his team have since
established a mutant collection for salt tolerance which they are screening for
markers. Once these have been identified, they will be used to develop rice
cultivars that can be grown in paddy fields flooded by the tsunami last March.
The method will not work for all important
traits, and further research is needed to establish how it can be applied to
crops with larger genomes such as wheat, barley and maize.
The research collaboration grew out of the TSL
approach to train biologists in bioinformatics, enabling them to take full
advantage of it as an experimental science. Dr Kentaro Yoshida from Terauchi’s
group was funded by a Daiwa Adrian prize to receive training at The Sainsbury
Laboratory in 2010.
Further funding was provided by research
agencies in Japan and TSL’s core funding from the Gatsby Charitable Foundation.
Contacts
TSL Press Office
Zoe Dunford, Tel: 01603 255111, email: zoe.dunford@nbi.ac.uk
Andrew Chapple, Tel: 01603 251490, email: andrew.chapple@nbi.ac.uk
References
Genome sequencing reveals agronomically
important loci in rice using MutMap, Nature Biotechnology (doi:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nbt.2079)
Article in Nature Biotechnology on
bioinformatics by Kamoun and Dan MacLean at TSL: http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v30/n1/full/nbt.2079.html
Contributed by Andrew Chapple
Press Officer¶Norwich BioScience Institutes
Source: SeedQuest.com
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1.31 “What’s for lunch? Nutrients and minerals in
every day food. How the knowledge on mineral nutrition of plants can improve
human nutrition”
Food safety starts from the environment
An
International conference held on 24-25 November 2011 in Venice (Italy) has
assessed the state-of-the-art on monitoring of contaminants in food products.
The conference has been organised by the University of Parma, Department of
Environmental Sciences, together with the National Research Council, Institute
for Agricultural Biology and Biotechnology. As explained by Prof Nelson
Marmiroli, organiser, and Director of the Interuniversity National Consortium
for Environmental Sciences (CINSA) “the objective was to consider the
scientific research currently active on traceability and monitoring of
contaminants in the environments where food is produced.
On one side
plants provide essential minerals to ensure human health and well-being, such
as iron, calcium, iodine, zinc, selenium; on the other hand, substances in soil
and water can compromise food safety when present at excess levels. Continuous
monitoring is a viable and effective solution. The conference title has ben
chosen with the purpose of communicating to citizens and politicians the huge
investments that the European Union has done and is still doing to improve food
quality and safety through research and innovation. In a period of crisis and
recession, when EU governments are decreasing funding for research, it is
important to underline that good research, finalised to concrete objectives,
leads to results which benefit all citizens.”
The
conference was organised in the framework of the COST Action FA0905, entitled
“Mineral Improved Crop Production for Healthy Food and Feed”, which started in
June 2010, involving over 170 researchers from 29 countries. The COST Action is
chaired by Prof Bal Ram Singh, Norwegian University of Life Sciences.
Among the
topics addressed in the Conference, food safety and the relationship with
environment, agricultural practices, processing of food products, and digestion
processes in humans. “One of the main topics was the presence of arsenic in
vegetables, in particular tomato for industry processing” says Prof Marmiroli:
“in future there will be a concrete risk from arsenic contamination, if
specific countermeasures are not adopted. Two causes concur to the risk:
increase of arsenic content in water and soils, and the presence of silicon in
soil and feritlisers, which favour the uptake of arsenic in tomat plants and
translocation to fruits.
Another
current topic is the release in the environment of nanoparticles and
nanomaterials, from many sectors of human activity. These can enter into plants
from soil and water, move into food products and reach humans, with effects on
health which have not yet been studied in depth.”
However,
plants are not just a vehicle for contaminants. The conference has addressed
the perspectives of biofortification, the possibility of producing plants to
defeat the so-called “hidden hunger”, malnutrition, which affects over 2
billion people due to the scarcity of essential vitamins and minerals: vitamin
A, iron, zinc. Prof Howarth Bouis (International Food Policy Research
Institute, USA) illustrated important results from HarvestPlus, a project
focused on biofortification of crops for essential minerals such as Zn and Fe
(www.harvestplus.org). The relevance of this approach to improve nutrition and
decrease mineral deficiency in developing areas was also discussed.
The
conference involved 88 researchers, including many young scientists, from most
European countries, from Portugal to Lithuania, but also from New Zealand,
Brazil, Israel, United States. In total, 31 oral presentations and over 50 posters
were presented. Material from the conference can be accessed on the website of
COST Action FA0905 (www.umb.no/costaction/).
Contributed by Elena MAESTRI ¶Universita' di Parma
¶Dip. Scienze Ambientali¶Parma, ITALY elena.maestri@unipr.it
Source: SeedQuest.com
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1.32 DuPont
to collaborate with Drought-Tolerant Plants (DROPS) Research Consortium to
solve the drought challenges
Des Moines, Iowa, USA
12 January, 2012
DuPont announced today that it has joined the
DROught-Tolerant Plants (DROPS) Research Consortium, contributing expertise and
a state-of-the-art modeling platform for maize research for use by the
consortium.
DROPS, a European Commission-sponsored consortium, is
developing novel tools and breeding strategies that advance drought-tolerance
research in maize and other crop plants. As a member, DuPont business Pioneer
Hi-Bred will share expertise in drought research to help bring solutions for
drought tolerance faster through science.
“Drought is a universal challenge that must be addressed to
feed a hungry planet. It will take many of us working together in
collaborations, like DROPS, to bring farmers solutions for combating drought
globally,” said John Soper, vice president, Pioneer Crop Genetics Research and
Development. “Innovations developed through this collaboration will complement
our own research program, which has been providing solutions for farmers for
more than 80 years.”
Drought tolerance is a complex issue, involving many genes
with overlapping/interacting effects. Water is the single largest input to
agriculture, with irrigation estimated to account for 70 percent of the total
use of fresh water. Because of the complexity, field testing can be costly and
time consuming. Modeling tools such as this platform are helping to improve the
efficiency and to shorten the timelines for analysis and crop development.
The Pioneer maize crop modeling platform, developed through a
long-term collaboration between Pioneer and researchers at the University of
Queensland, facilitates the efficient advancement and development of
drought-tolerant hybrids, ultimately helping growers meet the increasing
demands on agricultural productivity. This unique platform allows researchers
to input a number of specific characteristics about how experimental plants
behave under test conditions, and facilitates prediction of those few that will
respond best under drought conditions in the field.
“The modeling capability is state-of-the-art and incorporates
the most recent understanding of crop responses to drought,” said Prof. Graeme
Hammer, leader of the University of Queensland team, and DROPS consortium
member. “Pioneer scientists will work together with consortium scientists to
improve the modeling platform so that it can accept even more traits, thereby
increasing the precision and accuracy of the platform. Members of the
consortium will then have access to the resulting advanced modeling platform to
facilitate their further drought research in a number of crops.
The DROPS Consortium was initiated by the Institut National
de la Recherché Agronomique (INRA) of France through the project leader
Francois Tardieu. It brings together 15 leading researchers and their
respective organizations to develop solutions for drought in important crops
including maize. Representatives from the group met recently to set out work
plans. Pioneer is the only U.S.-based member of the European-led consortium.
Tardieu noted, “The DROPS consortium brings together an unprecedented mix of
leading global expertise to tackle the grand challenge of improving crop
adaptation to drought.”
Pioneer established the first research center dedicated to
the development of drought-tolerant maize in 1957. Pioneer researchers have
doubled maize yield per inch of rainfall since 1970 and today offer Optimum®
AQUAmax™ hybrids which deliver a yield advantage in water-limited environments,
and offer top-end yield potential under optimal growing conditions, allowing
growers to help minimize risk and maximize productivity on every acre.
http://www.seedquest.com/news.php?type=news&id_article=23640&id_region=&id_category=&id_crop=
Source: SeedQuest.com
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1.33 Grain
crops with lower carotene levels are less affected by parasitic plants
Wageningen,
The Netherlands
12
January, 2012
Wageningen
scientist expects positive effect on food production in Africa
Grain crops that produce less carotene can produce more food,
especially in Africa, as they are less affected by parasitic plants. This is
the result of research with which Muhammad Jamil hopes to obtain his doctorate
at Wageningen University on 11 January 2012. Jamil studied processes and
technologies that could improve the control of the parasitic weed Striga both
in the lab and in the field. He discovered that rice plants that produce less
carotene than usual are less infected by the Striga parasite. Jamil believes
that his findings could lead the way to cheaper and effective technologies for
improving food production and farmer incomes, especially in Africa.
Parasitic
plants in cereals such as maize, sorghum, highland rice and millet are
increasing the pressure on food production in Africa. One of the main problems
is Striga, a deceptively beautiful plant that takes all the water and nutrients
it needs from its host. The parasitic plant mainly attacks cereals when the
growing conditions are unfavourable, which is why particularly cereals in
Africa are affected. The effects are disastrous as Striga can cause complete
harvest failure.
Originally
from Pakistan, Muhammad Jamil studied at Wageningen University the processes
involved in the germination of Striga seeds and their initial ‘attachment’ to
the host. Prior research had already shown that Striga seeds only germinate
when specific plant hormones – called strigolactones – are present in the soil.
Strigolactones are secreted into the soil from the roots of the host. This
signals the Striga seeds that there is a host root nearby that can be infected,
causing the seeds to germinate and the seedlings to attack the crop.
Jamil
studied various approaches for reducing the damage caused by Striga, including
the effect of substances that reduce the production of strigolactones, the
genetic variation for the production of strigolactones, and the effect of fertilisers
on strigolactone production. He studied the consequences on the germination of
Striga seeds and the attachment of the seedlings to rice, sorghum and maize.
Plants
produce strigolactones from carotene, the well-known colouring agent also
present in carrots. Jamil treated rice with very low amounts of compounds that
inhibit the production of carotene. By doing so he succeeded in reducing the
strigolactone production of the plants. And the effect was considerable: The
germination of Striga seeds was reduced by up to 75 percent.
The use
of fertiliser also resulted in a substantial reduction in strigolactone
production and, therefore, Striga infestation. In addition, Jamil’s research
showed that the strigolactone production of different rice varieties varies
tremendously. Some varieties have a low strigolactone production and are
therefore less affected by parasitic plants.
All in
all Jamil sees good opportunities for developing cheaper, effective
technologies to reduce the effect of the Striga parasite. This would allow
African farmers to produce more food and achieve a better income.
http://www.seedquest.com/news.php?type=news&id_article=23643&id_region=&id_category=&id_crop=
Source: SeedQuest.com
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1.34 The GM crop risk-benefit debate:
science and socio-economics a plea for a new regulatory system for a modern
agriculture
5 January, 2012
Dr.
Klaus Ammann publishes a brochure ( final text to be issued in Encyclopedia of
Sustainability Science and Technology, Springer) “The GM crop risk-benefit debate: science and
socio-economics - a plea for a new regulatory system for a modern agriculture”
In the
view of extensive treaty on the GM debate: It is difficult to continue with a
reform of the regulatory system within the Cartagena Protocol, although
theoretically possible and certain articles would allow for substantial change
towards a more science based system. But the obstacles should not be
underestimated: there is a growing community of regulators, NGOs and also a
militant fraction of biosafety researchers with a vested interest to keep the
pot cooking.
Alternatively,
it is maybe easier to create new international institutions with the task to
develop a science based regulatory system for all new crop breeds.
Full text (4.29MB)
Open
source version
http://www.seedquest.com/news.php?type=news&id_article=23484&id_region=&id_category=&id_crop=
Source: Black Sea Biotechnology Association news via SeedQuest.com
++++++++++
1.35 Unraveling
the Chinese cabbage genome
Clues into
the evolutionary diversification of brassicas have emerged from the draft
Chinese cabbage genome sequence. Brassica crops include many agriculturally
important vegetables, such as Chinese cabbage, pak choi, turnip, broccoli,
cabbage and cauliflower, as well as various oilseed crops.
The
sequencing focused on Chinese cabbage, Brassica rapa subspecies
pekinensis, and was undertaken by the international Brassica rapa Genome
Sequencing Project Consortium. The work was underpinned by the previously
published genome
sequence of the premier model of flowering plants,
Arabidopsis thaliana. This species is related to B. rapa, with which it shared
a common
ancestor.
“Brassicas
come in many shapes and sizes, and even individual species show considerable
morphological variation. Genome information helps us understand the genetic
basis of this diversity,” explains consortium member Hiroshi Abe of Japan’s
RIKEN BioResource Center, one of the three biggest Arabidopsis stock centers in
the world. “We developed genomic resources for Brassica rapa and contributed to
the gene annotation in this project.”
New
plant species generally arise through hybridization, involving whole genome
duplications, followed by rapid DNA sequence divergence under natural
selection, chromosomal rearrangements and extensive gene loss. Indeed, plant
biologists have observed whole-genome duplication in all plant genomes
sequenced to date, including that of A. thaliana. In addition, previous
physical mapping studies revealed a whole genome triplication event in the
Brassica lineage, after its divergence from the Arabidopsis lineage at least
13–17 million years ago.
The
genome sequence assembled by the Consortium covers more than 98% of the DNA
encoding genes. By analyzing the sequence in detail, the researchers were able
to investigate the evolutionary and functional consequences of the whole genome
triplication event.
The
researchers identified 41,174 protein-encoding genes belonging to 16,917
separate gene families. By comparing the sequences of Brassica genes to those
of A. thaliana, they were able to relate gene structures in these two plants.
They found that the extent of gene loss among triplicated genome segments
varies, with one of the three copies consistently retaining a
disproportionately large fraction of ancestral genes. Based on their finding,
the researchers believe that variation in the number of members of gene
families present in the genome probably contributes to the remarkable
morphological plasticity of Brassica species.
“We hope
that our findings will contribute to the breeding of improved Brassica oil and
vegetable crops,” says Abe. “The genomic resources for Brassica rapa
developed at the RIKEN BioResource Center will soon be made available to the
wider research community.”
More information: Brassica rapa Genome Sequencing
Project Consortium. The genome of the mesopolyploid crop species Brassica rapa.
Nature
Genetics 43, 1035–1039 (2011).
Provided
by RIKEN (news : web)
http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-unraveling-chinese-cabbage-genome.html
Source:
SeedQuest.com
+++++++++++
1.36 GM trait patent expiration, saved seed and breeding programs
With the patent set to expire on a
Roundup Ready trait (RR1), attorney Joel Cape is set to make a return to the
Arkansas Seed Growers Association meeting on Jan. 25.
Advertisement
For more, see here
In 2006, Cape spoke to the
association on seed law history and where biotechnology fits in the legal
picture. (For more, see U.S. seed law history: a primer). At the coming
meeting he will update those comments and expand on what the trait’s expiration
means for farmers looking to save seed and how it will impact breeding
programs.
Cape recently spoke with Delta
Farm Press. Among his comments:
On RR
“The original Roundup Ready gene
consists of different pieces of DNA and each was put together to make a
functional gene. There was more than one patent on that gene because several of
those individual parts were also patented by themselves.
“The last of those patents on the
original Roundup Ready gene is set to expire. That does mean that seed
containing the RR1 will, essentially, be unrestricted. This means that growers
can generally plant and use seed with the RR1 gene without an obligation to pay
royalties or a prohibition on saving seed.”
On breeding programs and developing varieties with the RR1
gen
“Using the RR1 gene to develop
generic versions of seed with the trait is more complicated process. Breeding
the trait into your own lines is only part of the path to getting a product
that can be commercialized. “There are
also various regulatory hurdles that need to be analyzed before just taking
that gene and putting it into your own lines. You have to jump those before
commercializing such a product – there is more than one regulatory agency to go
through to keep RR in the marketplace. EPA is one along with the FDA and USDA.
There is a fairly complex regulatory regime.”
On farmers being able to save RR1 seed
“They will be able to save the
seed, but with a caveat. The gene may be in seed that is subject to other
protection. “The Plant Variety
Protection (PVP) Act has been (in force) at least since the 1970s. That gene
may be in germplasm that has a PVP on it.
“The gene may also be in germplasm that has a utility patent.
“The short answer is: Yes, you can
save seed. The longer answer is: You might want to pay close attention to the
seed you’re buying before deciding to save it. There may be other protections
that cover the rest of the genetics in the seed. Don’t just throw caution to
the wind – you still need to pay attention to what you’re planting. “People have traditionally believed that PVP-protected
material can be saved. I don’t think it’s quite that simple. There is a
‘farmer-saved seed’ exception but I also think you can agree not to save it.
“This will be the thrust of the
talk I’m giving at the Seed Growers meeting since I’ll be talkingwith farmers
that need to make planting decisions.”
Since you first addressed seed
patent laws at the Arkansas Seed Growers meeting, have you noticed the
questions you’ve been getting regarding the patent laws and seed have shifted?
“Truthfully, no. There is a basic
level of awareness of patents which has been established in the farm community
over the last 15 years.
“That being said, the level of
awareness depends on the crop to some degree. In soybean production, the
message has been pretty thoroughly communicated that saving seed is something
that is not available for many varieties. That’s simply because the RR trait in
soybeans has been very popular and it’s been widely licensed. The bottom line
is people like Roundup Ready and the educational message has gotten out. “The same is largely true for other major
crops such as cotton and wheat.
“Nowadays, there are patents on
other beneficial traits in a variety of crops. The different ways in which
other patented crop traits are licensed and marketed makes a difference in the
knowledge that growers may not have a specific awareness of how the law impacts
the use of property laws in agriculture. But the extent of that knowledge will
vary.”
Where do you range?
“For the most part, anywhere I’m
asked. I’ve been fortunate in that my law practice has been national in scope
and my cases have taken me all across the country. In my agricultural practice,
I’ve had the benefit of working with several different crops and producers in
all types of production settings.”
Do you still focus on these issues in your practice?
“I do. My law practice has
broadened since moving back to northwest Arkansas from New Orleans last summer.
I try to help folks solve problems, either by heading off a potential issue
before it comes up, or by jumping in after a difficulty arises. I also went to
law school at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.”
On Cape’s Jan. 25 Arkansas Seed Growers presentation
“In my experience, farmers want to
know ‘what can I do now? What is allowed?’
“The message is: seed with the RR1
trait will no longer be under patent and you may be able to save it. But pay
close attention what else may cover the seed.”
Looking forward
“There’s a whole lot of interest
in the RR1 trait coming off patent.
“Another aspect of this is seed
companies have been curious as to what they can do and when.
“But there is probably even more
interest in the next generation of traits that are being developed to address
various environmental stresses, such as drought tolerance, cold tolerance, salt
water tolerance, and others. There is a great deal of effort being directed
towards developing plant material that can perform in challenging growing
conditions. The potential benefits of these kinds of traits are a big deal
because they may make the difference between having a decent crop to harvest,
or no crop at all.”
http://southwestfarmpress.com/management/gm-trait-patent-expiration-saved-seed-and-breeding-programs
Source: David Bennett, Delta Farm Press via SeedQuest.com
+++++++++++
1.37 Findings
prove Miscanthus x giganteus has potential as alternative energy source
Urbana,
Illinois, USA
19
January, 2012
Concerns
about the worldwide energy supply and national, environmental and economic
security have resulted in a search for alternative energy sources. A new
University of Illinois study shows Miscanthus x giganteus (M. x giganteus) is a
strong contender in the race to find the next source of ethanol if appropriate
growing conditions are identified.
M. x
giganteus is a bioenergy crop that can be grown to produce ethanol. The study
investigated the establishment success, plant growth and dry biomass yield of
the grass. Tom Voigt, lead scientist and associate professor in the U of I
Department of Crop Sciences, said the overall goal is to promote biomass yield
per acre for ethanol production using the fewest inputs with no environmental
damage.
Researchers
compared establishment and growth rates, and biomass yield at four locations
over the past three years to identify regions best suited for the grass. Data
was collected at sites in Urbana, Ill.; Lexington, Ky.; Mead, Neb.; and
Adelphia, N.J. The study is part of the Department of Energy-funded North
Central Sun Grant Feedstock Partnership Project.
The
growing conditions were adequate at each location in different years. However,
late planting and extreme winter temperatures during 2008 affected
establishment rates at the Illinois site. Lower yields occurred at the New
Jersey site in 2010, which could be attributed to the site's sandy soils and
warm, dry weather conditions in that year.
"For
the most part, we found that Miscanthus responds to sites in which water is
adequately available," Voigt said. "The combination of warm
temperatures and adequate precipitation spread throughout the growing season
creates ideal growing conditions."
Voigt
said the study increased researcher's understanding of how different
environments impact M. x giganteus growth, development and biomass yield. In
addition, they discovered positive environmental impacts.
Nitrogen
fertilizer had no significant effects on the grass's biomass yield in season
two or three at any site. M. x giganteus also promotes erosion control as the
perennial forms a large mass of roots underground.
"We
are trying to develop a recipe for management practices that can be used by
farmers interested in growing the grass," Voigt said. "We want
bioenergy crops to find their way into more marginal settings where ground is
less easy to work with. Miscanthus can work where food crops can't."
Voigt
said the results of the study are positive and prove that energy crops have
great potential as alternative energy sources.
This
study, "Miscanthus x giganteus Productivity: The Effects of Management in
Different Environments" was published in GCB BIOENERGY Volume 3, Issue 6,
December 2011. Researchers included Matt Maughan, Germán Bollero, D.K. Lee,
Robert Darmody and Thomas Voight of the University of Illinois; Stacy Bonos,
Laura Cortese and James Murphy of The State University of New Jersey; Roch
Gaussoin and Matthew Sousek of the University of Nebraska — Lincoln; David
Williams and Linda Williams of the University of Kentucky; and Fernando Miguez
of Iowa State University. Funding was provided by the Department of Energy.
Voigt is
also principal investigator for the Feedstock Production Agronomy Program at
the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI) located in the Institute for Genomic
Biology. The EBI is a biofuels research consortium that includes the University
of Illinois, the University of California at Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory, and funding agency BP.
http://www.seedquest.com/news.php?type=news&id_article=23820&id_region=&id_category=&id_crop=
Source:
SeedQuest.com
++++++++++++
1.38 Sementes da China podem dobrar produção de arroz em Goiás
Brazil
18 January, 2012
Variedades de sementes híbridas
de arroz devem ser plantadas em Goiás dentro de 90 a 120 dias. A informação é
do superintendente de Irrigação da Seagro, Alécio Maróstica. Segundo ele, as
sementes híbridas têm produtividade que chega a ser o dobro da que é obtida nos
cultivos de arroz do Estado.
Alécio explica que na China há
variedades de arroz cuja produtividade chega a 12 mil quilos por hectare,
enquanto no Brasil, as mais produtivas chegam a seis mil quilos. A parceria
terá início nos próximos dias 25, 26 e 27, em Luís Alves, e envolverá trabalho
em conjunto da Seagro, Emater e Embrapa.
http://www.seedquest.com/news.php?type=news&id_article=23821&id_region=&id_category=&id_crop=
Source: Agro Notícias,
Assessoria via SeedQuest.com
+++++++++
1.39 Abundant
world wheat supplies pressure prices
Washington,
DC, USA
19
January, 2012
There is
a lot of wheat in the world. More, it seems, each month. For the seventh month
in a row, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) increased its 2011/12
global wheat supply estimate as part of its monthly World Agricultural Supply
and Demand Estimates (WASDE) report. In the report released Jan. 12, USDA
estimates global supplies at a record 891 million metric tons (MMT), up 2.7 MMT
from last month. Markets reacted negatively to the bearish report last week,
even though it only reconfirmed previous estimates.
World
production is a major contributing factor to such large global stocks, setting
a record for three of the last four years. This year, USDA expects a new record
of 692 MMT global production. Total production estimates increased 2.5 MMT from
last month, including a 1.5 MMT increase in Kazakhstan to 22.5 MMT due to
nearly perfect growing season weather.
Modest
production increases in Russia and Brazil accounted for the rest of the
increase. USDA now estimates total Black Sea production at 114 MMT, up 175
percent from last year when major drought greatly cut production. Ample
supplies remain despite four consecutive years of record demand. Total world
consumption estimates are up 4 percent from last year to 681 MMT, including a
record 131 MMT in feed wheat demand. The only change in consumption estimates
this month was an additional 1.0 MMT of feed wheat usage in Kazakhstan and a
500,000 metric tons (MT) reduction in U.S. domestic consumption.
With so
much wheat available and such high demand, it follows that world exports are
also strong. USDA expects total world trade to reach 139 MMT, which would be
the second largest on record if realized. A 500,000 MT drop in Australian
exports offset a Russian increase of the same amount, putting estimates for
those countries at 21.0 MMT and 19.5 MMT, respectively. Estimated U.S. exports
increased 700,000 MT raising the current projection to 25.9 MMT. Higher sales
expectations for hard red winter (HRW), hard red spring (HRS) and soft red
wheat (SRW) more than made up for reduced sales expectations for white wheat.
Such
abundant supplies of wheat pressured prices and weighed on the futures markets
last week. In the two days following the report’s release, March futures
contracts dropped between 2 and 6 percent. The drop is consistent with a
historical trend in which wheat markets have difficulty sustaining prices when
the global stocks-to-use ratio (ending stocks divided by total use) is greater
than 30 percent. The current global stocks-to-use ratio stands at 31 percent.
The
January WASDE did not contain any new or surprising information with regard to
wheat. The supply and demand situation has been bearish for wheat all year, but
outside factors have created market rallies. Tight corn stocks, the fluctuating
strength of the U.S. dollar and uncertainty in global financial markets all
have been major influences on wheat markets so far this marketing year. While
price movements will remain unpredictable in the coming months, the large
amount of wheat in the world and increasing wheat usage is certain.
http://www.seedquest.com/news.php?type=news&id_article=23836&id_region=&id_category=&id_crop=
Source:U.S.
Wheat Associates By Casey Chumrau, USW Market Analyst via SeedQuest.com
+++++++++++
1.40 Clif Bar
Family Foundation awards first fellowships in organic plant breeding ever
granted in the United States, through its Seed Matters initiative
Emeryville,
California, USA
17
January, 2012
Clif Bar
Family Foundation announced today it has awarded the first fellowships in
organic plant breeding ever granted in the United States. Funded through its
organic seed initiative known as Seed Matters, the foundation issued $375,000
in grants to fund three Ph.D. fellowship students for five years in organic
plant breeding at two public land grant universities.
Seed
Matters selected land grant universities in recognition of their historical
commitment to serving rural communities and the public good, and to support a
Seed Matter’s goal of reinvigorating public seed research and education. In
addition to providing organic farmers with new varieties of seed adapted to
organic systems, these fellowships will cultivate the next generation of
thought leadership in organic research, education and entrepreneurship.
“Organic
seed systems are the underlying foundation for healthy resilient farming and
food systems,” said Matthew Dillon, cultivator of Seed Matters. “Seed is a
farmer’s first line of defense against pests and global climate disruption, and
has a huge impact on the nutrition and overall quality of the food we eat.”
The
first recipient of a Seed Matters Fellowship, Brook Brouwer, began his studies
last month at the Washington State University Mount Vernon Campus. The other
two recipients will begin in the fall semester at University of
Wisconsin-Madison and Washington State University Pullman. Fellowship students
will work under the guidance of some of the most well respected and early
innovators of organic plant breeding.
Professors
managing the fellowships include Dr. Stephen Jones at Washington State
University, whose work with wheat engages farmers, millers and bakers in
restoring their local grain economies; Dr. Kevin Murphy, also at Washington
State University, who is breeding cover crops and heritage grain such as quinoa
and spelt; and, Dr. William Tracy at University of Wisconsin-Madison, whose
sweet corn breeding is improving the quality of genetics available to organic
farmers in cooler northern climates.
“The
true advances in agriculture continue to come from classical plant breeding.
Peel back all the hype and it’s the breeders in the field working with farmers
and plants that is moving us forward,” said Jones, director of the WSU Mount
Vernon Research and Extension Center. “Doing this kind of work requires very
bright graduate students trained in the classical and modern approaches to
plant breeding. Funding this training requires forward looking organizations
such as Clif Bar Family Foundation.”
In
addition, Clif Bar Family Foundation announced Earthbound Farm Organic,
Organically Grown Company, Organic Valley, Vitalis Seed and Whole Foods Market
have joined Seed Matters as financial collaborators to help increase awareness
about organic seed and fund future fellowships and research around the country.
Together Seed Matters collaborators and nonprofit partners support organic
farmers and public researchers developing seed that meets the need of the
organic community – from farm to table.
“Seed
Matters is the catalyst for a groundbreaking form of collaboration between
companies, foundations, universities and nonprofits that has never before
occurred in the organic community,” said Kit Crawford, president of the
Foundation. “By working together we can more effectively improve organic seed
systems that benefit people and the planet.”
About Seed Matters
Clif Bar Family Foundation created the Seed Matters
initiative in 2009 with a $1 million commitment to the development of organic
seed systems. Today, Seed Matters is a coalition of organizations and companies
that advocate for the improvement and protection of organic seed to ensure
productive crops for the health of people and the planet. To date, Seed Matters
has funded more than a dozen organic seed research and education projects. Seed
Matters directs its support toward projects that conserve crop diversity,
protect farmers’ roles and rights as seed innovators and stewards, and
reinvigorate public seed research and education. For more information, visit http://www.seedmatters.org
About Clif Bar Family Foundation:
Founded in 2006 by Clif Bar & Company co-CEOs Gary
Erickson and Kit Crawford, Clif Bar Family Foundation supports innovative small
and mid-sized organizations working to strengthen the food system and
communities, enhance public health and safeguard the environment and natural
resources. For more information or to find out how to apply for a grant, visit
http://www.clifbarfamilyfoundation.org
http://www.seedquest.com/news.php?type=news&id_article=23778&id_region=&id_category=&id_crop=
Source:
SeedQuest.com
+++++++++++
1.41 Breeding
better grasses for food and fuel
United
Kingdom
17
January, 2012
Researchers
from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC)
Sustainable Bioenergy Centre (BSBEC) have discovered a family of genes that
could help us breed grasses with improved properties for diet and bioenergy.
The
research was carried out by a team from the University of Cambridge and
Rothamsted Research, which receives strategic funding from BBSRC. Their
findings are published today (Tuesday 17 January) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
The
genes are important in the development of the fibrous, woody parts of grasses,
like rice and wheat. The team hopes that by understanding how these genes work,
they might for example be able to breed varieties of cereals where the fibrous
parts of the plants confer dietary benefits or crops whose straw requires less
energy-intensive processing in order to produce biofuels.
The
majority of the energy stored in plants is contained within the woody parts,
and billions of tons of this material are produced by global agriculture each
year in growing cereals and other grass crops, but this energy is tightly
locked away and hard to get at. This research could offer the possibility of
multi-use crops where the grain could be used for food and feed and the straw
used to produce energy efficiently. This is crucial if we are to ensure that
energy can be generated sustainably from plants, without competing with food
production.
Professor Paul Dupree, of the
University of Cambridge, explains
"Unlike
starchy grains, the energy stored in the woody parts of plants is locked away
and difficult to get at. Just as cows have to chew the cud and need a stomach
with four compartments to extract enough energy from grass, we need to use
energy-intensive mechanical and chemical processing to produce biofuels from
straw.
"What
we hope to do with this research is to produce varieties of plants where the
woody parts yield their energy much more readily - but without compromising the
structure of the plant. We think that one way to do this might be to modify the
genes that are involved in the formation of a molecule called xylan - a crucial
structural component of plants."
Xylan is
an important, highly-abundant component of the tough walls that surround plant
cells. It holds the other molecules in place and so helps to make a plant
robust and rigid. This rigidity is important for the plant, but locks in the
energy that we need to get at in order to produce bioenergy efficiently.
Grasses
contain a substantially different form of xylan to other plants. The team
wanted to find out what was responsible for this difference and so looked for
genes that were turned on much more regularly in grasses than in the model
plant Arabidopsis. Once they had identified the gene family in wheat and rice,
called GT61, they were able transfer it into Arabidopsis, which in turn
developed the grass form of xylan.
Dr Rowan Mitchell of Rothamsted
Research continues
"As
well as adding the GT61 genes to Arabidopsis, we also turned off the genes in
wheat grain. Both the Arabidopsis plants and the wheat grain appeared normal,
despite the changes to xylan. This suggests that we can make modifications to
xylan without compromising its ability to hold cell walls together. This is
important as it would mean that there is scope to produce plant varieties that
strike the right balance of being sturdy enough to grow and thrive, whilst also
having other useful properties such as for biofuel production."
The
tough, fibrous parts of plants are also an important component of our diet as
fibre. Fibre has a well established role in a healthy diet, for example, by
lowering blood cholesterol. The team have already demonstrated that changing
GT61 genes in wheat grain affects the dietary fibre properties so this research
also offers the possibility of breeding varieties of cereals for producing
foods with enhanced health benefits.
Duncan Eggar, BBSRC Bioenergy
Champion said:
"Recent
reports have underlined the important role that bioenergy can play in meeting
our future energy needs - but they all emphasise that sustainability must be
paramount.
"Central
to this will be ensuring that we can get energy efficiently from woody sources
that need not compete with food supply. This research demonstrates how, by
understanding the fundamental biology of plants, we can think about how to
produce varieties of crops with useful traits, specifically for use as a source
of energy."
The
paper: Glycosyl transferases in family 61 mediate
arabinofuranosyl transfer onto xylan in grasses
http://www.seedquest.com/news.php?type=news&id_article=23763&id_region=&id_category=&id_crop=
Source:
SeedQuest.com
+++++++++++
1.42 Today in
Nature Genetics: Good parents are predictable – at least when it comes to corn
Hohenheim,
Germany
15
January, 2012
For a
bigger harvest and faster results: The University of Hohenheim, the MPI for
Molecular Plant Physiology and the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop
Plant Research (IPK) in Gatersleben start a new chapter in plant breeding.
According
to a relatively new insight in plant research, there is no single gene strongly
controlling growth. Nevertheless, in order to breed new varieties of corn with
a higher yield faster than ever before, researchers at the University of
Hohenheim are relying on a trick: early selection of the most promising parent
plants based on their chemical and genetic makeup, as well as on new
statistical analysis procedures. The work done in collaboration by the
University of Hohenheim, the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Plant
Physiology in Golm and the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant
Research (IPK) in Gatersleben has been published in the authoritative journal
Nature Genetics on Sunday evening, January 15th at http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ng.1033
The problem
is the sheer number: In the family tree of modern-day corn, there are two main
groups with 10,000 pure-breed lines each. Each of these lines could potentially
be used for producing a new variety by means of cross-breeding. In mathematical
terms, that equates to 100 billion possibilities. In terms of corn, however, a
parent’s performance is no indicator of what potential lies hidden in their
offspring. Even the feeblest of parents can produce mighty offspring when
cross-bred.
But time
is of the essence: Currently it takes approximately 10 years for breeders to
develop a new variety. Issues such as climate change, food shortages and the
increasing demand for more energy, however, are making it essential to find
solutions even faster.
Prof.
Dr. Albrecht Melchinger, PhD student Christian Riedelsheimer and their research
partners are experimenting with a new technique to solve both problems. The
best parent plants are selected in two steps, beginning when they are not even
planted yet or when they are just small plantlets. This saves time and
guarantees the highest rate of success right from the very start.
Trick Nr. 1: Use mathematics and
experience when selecting
Riedelsheimer
takes a tiny sample from a kernel of corn. Not enough to harm the kernel, but
enough to get a full picture of its DNA structure. This analysis is conducted
jointly by the University of Hohenheim and the IPK Gatersleben.
The rest
is mathematics and experience. “We know today that there is no single gene
which determines whether a stalk of corn will grow up strong or produce lots of
kernels on the cob. Instead there are numerous sequences in its DNA which all
contribute to the plant’s development. We can now examine up to 56,000 of these
sequences using the latest techniques in genome analysis”, Riedelsheimer
explains.
The
analysis does not involve modifying the DNA, but rather creating a unique
profile of each parent, a so-called “genome profile” or “genetic fingerprint”.
To
analyse the fingerprint, scientists have spent the past three years and more
planting, cross-breeding, analysing chromosomes and recording yields. The
observations in the field have been used to develop a mathematical-statistical
model which can be used to predict a parent’s genetic potency.
Trick Nr. 2: Early selection
The
composition of the leaves is a second indicator of which plants make for
especially good parents. More specifically, it is about the amounts of starch,
sugar, amino acids, chlorophyll and other substances. As with the genetic
information, this data allows for a statistical prognosis of a plant’s breeding
capabilities.
Tests
can be conducted to find out the levels shortly after the seeds have been sown,
when the plantlets are roughly three weeks old and 20 cm tall. Compared with
analysing the plant’s genetic structure, taking samples in the field is rather
an athletic activity. “The plant’s metabolism varies constantly throughout the
course of a day and that makes it necessary to collect the leaves quickly and
shock freeze the samples immediately”, says Riedelsheimer. “All in all we
collected 6,000 samples- in just 69 minutes!”
For the
technically-challenging task of analysing the substances, plant breeders work
in collaboration with experts from the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Plant
Physiology in Golm. The rest involves cutting-edge statistics. “Similar to the
DNA profile, it is not the individual substances which are important for making
predictions, but rather how these substances stand in relation to one another”,
Riedelsheimer explains.
New technology saves time, money and
expensive acreage
“This
new technique allows us to select the most promising parents with high accuracy
and to focus all of our resources on these”, says Prof. Dr. Melchinger.
This
method also saves cultivatable land, which, in turn, saves money. “In order to
test all possible crosses, we would have to plant corn on half of the earth’s
surface”, a utopian, if not an expensive undertaking. “A single field plot
costs us 50 euros. We test on two plots per genotype at ten different
locations, making a total of 1,000 euros”, Prof. Dr. Melchinger explains. An
analysis of the genome using a chip and a robot costs approximately 150 euros.
Impressive
as well is the amount of time saved. DNA analysis of the kernels can be
conducted during the winter months. Meanwhile, the plantlets to be analysed for
their substance composition grow in the greenhouse. As a result, the best
parent plants can be chosen and cultivated that same year.
Paradigm shift opens door to new
research approaches
Nonetheless,
it will take another few years until the new breed is ready. Breeders worldwide
also know another trick, especially when it comes to corn. One that has been
around for decades.
Prof.
Dr. Melchinger describes a paradoxical phenomenon: “With corn, the offspring
tend to be especially large when the parents stem from generations of
in-breeding.” Experts speak of “heterosis“, hobby gardeners of “hybrids“.
The most
promising parent plants are sorted out and self-pollinated over many
generations. Only then does cross-pollination take place in preparation for the
sowing of the new hybrid variety.
Heterosis
as a biological phenomenon has yet to be fully researched in detail, according
to Prof. Dr. Melchinger. “We were able to determine in earlier research
projects that the reasons for the phenomenon lie in the extremely complex
interaction of many different genes.”
For
researchers, this has led to a paradigm shift. “We’ve moved away from the
search for individual super genes.” Instead we focus on the interplay among the
diverse elements in the genetic code. “This new perspective on plants will help
the hybrid breeding programme immensely”, Prof. Dr. Melchinger believes. “There
is so much genetic diversity in corn. One must simply know how to combine it in
the right way.”
Bibliography
Christian
Riedelsheimer, Angelika Czedik-Eysenberg, Christoph Grieder, Jan Lisec, Frank
Technow, Ronan Sulpice, Thomas Altmann, Mark Stitt, Lothar Willmitzer &
Albrecht E Melchinger, Genomic and metabolic prediction of complex heterotic
traits in hybrid maize, Nature Genetics's, Advance Online Publication (AOP) on
15 January at 1800 London time / 1300 US Eastern time, dx.doi.org/10.1038/ng.1033
Background: GABI research project
The
current research activities are based on the results of earlier studies
conducted on Arabidopsis. The newly-publicised procedure was discovered as part
of the research project GABI-ENERGY. The acronym GABI stands for “Genomanalyse
im biologischen System Pflanze“, a funding program of the Federal Ministry of
Education and Research for projects towards innovation in the field of genetic
research with plants (www.gabi.de). The
Ministry has allocated €2.7 mil. towards the project.
Source: SeedQuest.com
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1.43 The hunt for tomatoes with disease resistance
Charles
Johnson
13
January, 2012
Checking tomato variety plotsat
the University of Florida’s Gulf Coast Research and Education Center, Sam
Hutton stops and fingers leaves, squeezes an occasional fruit and riffles plant
canopies. On this day he is particularly interested in plants showing
resistance to yellow leaf curl virus, which can destroy 100 percent of the
tomato plants in an infested field.
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“This one I call Ty-3,” he says.
“It holds up against lots of strains of the virus. There are many strains of
tomato yellow leaf curl virus, and you never know ahead of time which one
you’re going to have to deal with. We have the Israeli strain, but there are
others from South America, Guatemala and other places. The virus strains can
mutate — they may move and they may evolve on their own. It makes breeding for
resistance tricky.”
Ty-3’s predecessors, Ty-1 and
Ty-2, have little resistance against these other strains of the virus, he says.
He still uses them in the breeding program, but is moving forward with Ty-3
because of its multiple resistance.
Hutton has just finished his first year as a full-fledged tomato plant
breeder on the staff of the station, which has a mailing address of Wimauma,
Fla., although it is actually located in the small community of Balm.
He did six years of Ph.D student
and post-doctoral work here before landing what he calls his dream job.
Altogether, he has been involved with this breeding project focusing on tomato
yellow leaf curl virus for several years, along with another geared toward
finding genetic resistance to bacterial spot.
“All our resistance is coming out
of wild tomato species, which we have growing here, too. We cross them and grow
out the progeny, then select for the resistance gene,” Hutton says.
The wild tomatoes offer disease
resistance but have few characteristics that would attract growers, so he has
to bring those traits in from other, more standard varieties. “The wild ones originated in South America and
are very vigorous growers,” he says. “They have small fruit you wouldn’t want
to eat. It never turns red, the yield is low; there are lots of negatives with
them. But they have genes we can use for something good.”
For the yellow leaf curl virus
work, he likes resistance found in a section of chromosome 6 in a wild plant.
“Then we crossed that part of chromosome 6 with a Florida breeding line known
as 7776, which is a good parent. That let us develop a 7776 tomato with Ty-3 in
it, which has multiple yellow leaf curl virus resistance.
“There is a pretty big
differencein appearance between Ty-1, Ty-2 and Ty-3. Some of the biggest
complaints about Ty varieties are that the vines look terrible and that they
have greater susceptibility to foliar diseases. But in this case, we took
nothing except that one gene from the wild plant and put it in 7776. We really
used only a little sliver of the chromosome. I can’t tell the difference in
appearance between Ty-3 and 7776, which is a good thing.”
Hutton quickly points out that all
this work is being done with traditional breeding techniques. “This is the
climax of 20 years of work,” he says. “Back in the 1990’s, Jay Scott, our
well-known tomato breeder, did the first crosses with wild species. “Out of thousands of seed, maybe 20 would
germinate. Then he’d take those 20, grow them out, and see what he got. These
plants here represent literally years and years of breeding work, of Dr. Scott
finding the best resistance and running disease screens.” Work like this gets intense and requires a
lot of man-hours to accomplish, to say nothing of patience.
“In genetics, we’re looking to use
a small percentage of a chromosome,” Hutton explains. “We grow out a whole
bunch of progeny and look for those with a portion of this chromosome, or even
less. We wind up with different lines, with all sorts of different sizes of
plants and fruit. We grow them out, then inoculate them with the disease and
figure out which one — if we’re lucky — is resistant.”
In the spring of 2009, Hutton grew
out 11,000 seedlings in this fashion. He picked a leaf from each and screened
every leaf for disease resistance. Of those, he found 300 that had the short
piece of chromosomal resistance he wanted.
“We inoculated them all and found exactly where the gene was. We crossed
the plants that had resistance and then screened 2,000 of the plants from the
crosses to find three plants that had resistance.”
“We’re trying to get this part
from the mother and another part from the father, both with resistance, to get
a recombinant event. We’re hopeful this will usher in a new generation of
Ty-resistant varieties that are every bit as good horticulturally as
non-resistant varieties. This is something we haven’t had the choice of doing
before now.”
Disease-resistant varieties, in
general, are reputed to yield less than non-resistant ones, but Hutton hopes
varieties coming out of this latest program will avoid the so-called linkage
drag.
“Anywhere you have a
diseaseresistance gene with a linkage drag, it’s in everybody’s best interests
to get rid of them,” he says. “With respect to the major resistance gene Ty-3,
we have addressed this problem by determining the precise location of the gene,
then developing material that has Ty-3 within a minimal segment of introgressed
chromosome — one which has very little ‘foreign’ DNA flanking the gene.”
He thinks the resistant lines are
not too far from being commercialized.
“They’re really close. We hope to soon release hybrids and breeding
lines with high levels of resistance to tomato yellow leaf curl virus and no
associated linkage drag. We’ll be looking at test crosses this coming spring.
As far as getting it out, we could potentially have varieties produced in two
years. The seed companies are going to be right behind us on it.
“We’re three crosses into it right
now. Four crosses should be enough. Next fall, we’ll have hybrids. Then we’ll
get the data, and growers should have them in two years. We are really excited
about it.” Hutton and his colleagues
won’t stopthere, however. They’ll continue refining the new varieties in order
to improve them. “Within three years, we
should be able to spin out a hybrid with good yield, good quality and multiple
disease resistance. When we do that, all of a sudden the variety becomes much
more attractive to growers.”
In addition to the tomato yellow
leaf curl virus and bacterial leaf spot programs, Hutton is working on building
disease resistance into the newly released Tasti-Lee variety, which came from
Jay Scott’s work at the station.
Tasti-Lee has become somewhat of a taste-sensation with consumers, but
some growers are reluctant to grow it because it requires extra management.
Hutton thinks putting disease resistance into Tasti-Lee will reduce much of
that.
“We already have a Tasti-Lee with
multiple disease resistance in tests, and it still has premium quality. We
still have to test it to make sure everything is right. If everything pans out
as we hope, maybe this could help Tasti-Lee capture more of the market for
fresh tomatoes.”
Hutton grew up on a farm at
Tchula, Miss., where his father, Sam D. G. Hutton, Jr., grew cotton, corn and
soybeans. After earning an undergraduate degree at Mississippi State
University, he received his master’s degree at the University of Minnesota,
mostly working with soybeans, a crop he says bored him. Tomatoes proved to be
challenging — and he likes a challenge.
“Tomatoes are kind of a unique
crop,Hutton says. “There’s a tremendous list of things to breed for. A lot of
things can be flexible to a point, but certain things are givens. Yield is the
top factor in breeding. If there are no tomatoes on the vine, there’s nothing a
breeder can do with it. Unless you’re breeding for the heirloom market, the
tomato has to have good size and shape.
“It has to have a smooth blossom
scar, good outside color, good crack resistance, and it has to be firm. The
fruit has to set right on the plant. Fruit should not only be of good size, it
should have smooth shoulders and uniform color on the shoulders. It should
ripen evenly. It should be round — what I call a flat round shape, not a deep
round shape. There should be no puffy fruit. As for flavor, for most breeders
it has been somewhat of an afterthought.”
Compare all that to Mississippi’s
famous old crop, cotton. Breeders push it for quality, along with disease
resistance, fiber length and strength, and a few other characteristics. “Cotton
has a relatively short shopping list of things breeders need to look for, at
least compared to tomatoes,” Hutton says.
“It’s pretty much the same
situation with soybeans, which I worked with at Minnesota. While I was in
school at St. Paul, I got into some pretty serious gardening with tomatoes. I
was more excited about my garden plot than my research plots. (Don’t tell my
old professors that).
“I decided if I was going to earn
a Ph.D, I’d better do it on something I was excited about. So when the
opportunity came to work on tomatoes in Florida, that seemed perfect.
“After getting my Ph.D, I had
offers to work in crops such as peppers and cucurbits, but nothing excited me
like this job in tomatoes. It’s exactly what I like to do. Tomatoes are a fun
crop to work with — and you’d better try to have some fun in life, if you can,”
http://southeastfarmpress.com/vegetables/hunt-tomatoes-disease-resistance
Source:
SeedQuest.com
+++++++++++
1.44 Affymetrix
and BGI enter strategic collaboration to co-develop and commercialize genomic
microarrays for the agricultural community
Collaboration
to expand research and molecular breeding tools for enhancing plant, crop, and
livestock production outcomes
Santa Clara, California, USA
13 January, 2012
Affymetrix,
Inc. (NASDAQ:AFFX), announced today that it has signed a Memorandum of
Understanding (MOU) with BGI, the world's largest genomics organization, to
enter into a strategic co-development and co-marketing collaboration. The
non-exclusive partnership will aim to develop and commercialize a portfolio of
plant, crop, and livestock microarrays for genotyping analysis, spanning
applications such as marker-assisted trait selection, parentage, quality
control, and traceability.
The
global agricultural community will benefit from this partnership through
cost-effective and high-throughput solutions that leverage BGI's vast catalog
of high-quality sequencing data and bioinformatics analyses from plant, crop,
and livestock genomes and Affymetrix' expertise as a leader in microarray
technology. The collaboration will provide scientists with access to a broad
range of well-annotated and inter- and intra-species bio-diverse genomic
markers from the 1000 Plant and Animal Reference Genomes Project, initiated by BGI
in 2010.
"We
are pleased to be working with BGI to expand the use of molecular tools in
agriculture," said Dr. Frank Witney, President and Chief Executive Officer
of Affymetrix. "This is a fast developing field that is key to
accelerating critical discoveries that will improve the yield and nutritional
value of food and feed around the globe."
"The
combination of BGI's next-generation sequencing platforms, bioinformatics
capabilities and sequencing database, and Affymetrix' advanced genotyping
technology will help advance the application of genomic selection to scientists
seeking to improve outcomes in breeding plants, crops, and livestock."
said Dr. Jun Wang, Executive Director of BGI. "We look forward to making
plant and animal sequencing data more widely available to the global
agricultural community."
http://www.seedquest.com/news.php?type=news&id_article=23677&id_region=&id_category=&id_crop=
Source: SeedQuest.com
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1.45 Discovery
of plant ‘nourishing gene’ brings hope for increased crop seed yield and food
security
Warwick,
United Kingdom
13
January, 2012
University
of Warwick scientists have discovered a “nourishing gene” which controls the
transfer of nutrients from plant to seed - a significant step which could help
increase global food production.
The
research, led by the University of Warwick in collaboration with the University
of Oxford and agricultural biotech research company Biogemma, has identified
for the first time a gene, named Meg1, which regulates the optimum amount of
nutrients flowing from mother to offspring in maize plants. Unlike the majority of genes that are
expressed from both maternal and paternal chromosomes, Meg1 is expressed only
from the maternal chromosomes.
This
unusual form of uniparental gene expression, called imprinting, is not
restricted to plants, but also occurs in some human genes which are known to
regulate the development of the placenta to control the supply of maternal
nutrients during fetal growth.
While
scientists have known for a while of the existence of such imprinted genes in
humans and other mammals, this is the first time a parallel gene to regulate
nutrient provisioning during seed development has been identified in the plant
world.
The
findings mean that scientists can now focus on using the gene and understanding
the mechanism by which it is expressed to increase seed size and productivity
in major crop plants.
Dr Jose
Gutierrez-Marcos, Associate Professor in the University of Warwick’s School of
Life Sciences, said: “These findings have significant implications for global
agriculture and food security, as scientists now have the molecular know-how to
manipulate this gene by traditional plant breeding or through other methods to
improve seed traits, such as increased seed biomass yield.
“This
understanding of how maize seeds and other cereal grains develop – for example
in rice and wheat - is vital as the global population relies on these staple
products for sustenance”.
“To meet
the demands of the world’s growing population in years to come, scientists and
breeders must work together to safeguard and increase agricultural production.”
Professor
Hugh Dickinson of Oxford University’s Department of Plant Sciences added:
“While the identification of MEG1 is an important discovery in its own right,
it also represents a real breakthrough in unravelling the complex gene pathways
that regulate the provisioning and nutritional content of seeds.”
The
research, supported by the European Union, the Biotechnology and Biological
Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and the Royal Society , is published in
Current Biology under the title Maternal control of nutrient allocation in
plant seeds by genomic imprinting.
Maternal Control of Nutrient Allocation in Plant Seeds by
Genomic Imprinting was authored by Liliana M. Costa, Jing Yuan, Jacques
Rouster, Wyatt Paul, Hugh Dickinson, Jose F. Gutierrez-Marcos.
http://www.seedquest.com/news.php?type=news&id_article=23675&id_region=&id_category=&id_crop=
Source: SeedQuest.com
+++++++++++
1.46 ‘Gold-standard’
cotton genome sequence will advance fiber, fuel and food applications
New York, New York, USA
4 January, 2012
An international consortium, led by Professor Andrew Paterson of the
University of Georgia, has made publicly available the first ‘gold-standard’
genome sequence for cotton. Cotton was among the first plants studied at the
molecular level, and the sequence obtained by Paterson and his team is the
culmination of a 20-plus year effort in the analysis of cotton genes and
genomic DNA. This critical sequence will be invaluable to better understanding
and optimizing the production and sustainability of the cotton plant.
The research effort of Paterson and others gained momentum in 2007 when a
proposal from 22 leading cotton scientists representing the world’s seven
largest cotton-producing nations was approved by the United States Department
of Energy (DOE) Joint Genome Institute (JGI) Community Sequencing Program. The
study established the strategy that was used for ‘gold-standard’ sequencing of
the New World cotton progenitor, Gossypium raimondii; which was chosen by the
worldwide cotton community to be the first of 50 cotton species to be
sequenced. “This achievement, and the ongoing research community annotations of
our cotton genome, will speed continued improvement of cotton production and
help sustain one of the world’s largest industries,” said Professor Paterson.
The cotton sequence is among the highest-quality flowering plant
sequences yet produced. A novel strategy integrating “next-generation” and
conventional sequencing methods was used. Critical to the effort was
information about the cotton hereditary blueprint, which had been accumulated
over more than 20 years of research funded by the U.S. National Science
Foundation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Cotton Incorporated, and other
public and private agencies.
“This cotton data will help accelerate the study of gene function,
particularly cellulose biosynthesis as it is fundamental to improved biofuels
production,” said Jeremy Schmutz, head of the DOE JGI Plant Program and a
faculty investigator at the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology, who led
the effort to assemble the sequence. “In addition, the unique structure of the
cotton fiber makes it useful in bioremediation, and accelerated cotton
improvement also promises to improve water efficiency and reduce pesticide
use.”
Cotton production contributes heavily to many economies. The value of
cotton fiber grown in the U.S. is typically about $6 billion per year.
Cottonseed oil and meal byproducts add nearly $1 billion more of value. More
than 430,000 domestic jobs are related to cotton production and processing,
with an aggregate influence of about $120 billion on the annual US gross
domestic product and an estimated annual $500 billion worldwide.
Professor Paterson noted that “The cotton community is delighted at the
sequence quality resulting from integration of accumulated and new information
by the skilled team of Mr. Jeremy Schmutz and Dr. Dan Rokhsar of the DOE JGI.
We are enthusiastically pursuing next steps to improve sustainability of cotton
production and increase its role in the more bio-based economy of the future.”
Dr. Don Jones, Director of Agricultural Research responsible for
biotechnology research at Cotton Incorporated, said this Gossypium raimondii
gold standard sequence will be the foundation for sequencing upland cotton,
Gossypium hirsutum. “This sequencing effort demonstrates that wise investment
of grower supplied Cotton Incorporated funding produces cutting edge research
which benefits the greater cotton community. This sequence is a cornerstone
that will help advance our knowledge so we more thoroughly understand the
biology that leads to enhanced yield, improved fiber quality, and better stress
tolerance, all improvements that will benefit growers in the not-too-distant
future.”
Cotton Incorporated, funded by U.S. growers of
upland cotton and importers of cotton and cotton textile products, is the
research and marketing company representing upland cotton. The Program is
designed and operated to improve the demand for and profitability of cotton.
Early Access to Cotton D (Gossypium raimondii) version 1.0 assembly
For public access, in agreement with Fort Lauderdale, we are making the
Cotton D genome available from the DOE JGI and our collaborators prior to
peer-reviewed publication of the data.
We are making this data available with the expectation and desire to
publish this data in a reasonable time without preemption by other groups. By
accessing these data, you agree not to publish any articles containing analyses
of genes or genomic data on a whole genome or chromosome scale prior to
publication by the DOE JGI and/or its collaborators of a comprehensive genome
analysis ("Reserved Analyses"). "Reserved analyses" include
the identification of complete (whole genome) sets of genomic features such as
genes, gene families, regulatory elements, repeat structures, GC content, or
any other genome feature, and whole-genome- or chromosome- scale comparisons
with other species including other cotton species and cultivars. For specific
questions about data use please contact Andy Paterson (paterson AT
plantbio.uga.edu) and Jeremy Schmutz (jschmutz AT hudsonalpha.org).
Work towards annotation and publication of the Cotton D genome is
underway, and we plan to submit a manuscript within this calendar year. If you
will be employing the data for non-reserved analyses, such as cloning a gene of
interest, designing mapping panels or to analyze a gene family etc., please
reference the “DOE Joint Genome Institute: Cotton D V1.0” as your citation.
This release is a high quality version of the Cotton D genome from seed
provided by Jonathan Wendell at Iowa State. We sequenced it with a combination
of Sanger based sequence (1.52x assembled coverage with 0.95x coverage from BAC
end sequence and fosmids end sequence) Roche 454 pyrosequencing (14.95x linear
and 3.1x non-redundant pairs assembled coverage), and Illumina based short
reads (primarily to correct 454 insertion/deletion errors) and assembled the
genome using our modified version of Arachne2. We also integrated the assembly
with the previously created mapping resources (Lin et al, 2010) to produce
chromosome scale pseudomolecules. The first 13 scaffolds represent the 13
chromosomes of Cotton D. This release is of suitably high quality to match our
previous fully Sanger sequenced plant genomes.
Assembly statistics:
Scaffold total: 1,448
Contig total: 28,582
Scaffold sequence total: 763.8 MB
Contig sequence total: 749.4 MB (-> 1.9% gap)
Scaffold N/L50: 6/62.2 MB
Contig N/L50: 1,596/135.1 KB
http://www.seedquest.com/news.php?type=news&id_article=23477&id_region=&id_category=&id_crop=
Source: SeedQuest.com
+++++++++++
1.47 Burundi
releases two new rice varieties for better lives
15 December, 2011
Farmers in Burundi will soon sow the seeds of hard work and international
cooperation with the release of two new rice varieties set to boost rice
production and meet the rapidly growing demand for rice in Burundi.
Farmers and agricultural stakeholders chose the two rice varieties bred
by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), called IR77713 and IR79511,
over the country’s locally grown varieties – V14, V18, Watt, and Rukaramu –
because they produce more rice and taste and look better.
The varieties have been tested and evaluated in different regions across
Burundi for three years in participatory variety selection (PVS) trials in
which farmers choose the rice varieties they like most and that perform best.
One of the farmers who helped pick the new varieties, Ms. Scolastique
Simbandumwe, shared, “I am happy that the varieties I selected are now released.
I would like to get seeds now, to be among those who will multiply seeds, so
that my income can increase.”
The new varieties easily gained favor not only for their high yielding
capability of up to seven tons per hectare, which is one to one and a half tons
more than the locally grown varieties, but also because of their ability to
mature two to three weeks earlier. Early-maturing varieties mean that farmers
can grow a second crop, allowing them to produce more food for their families
or to sell it. This is important in Burundi because more than 90% of the
population depends on agriculture for livelihood.
The farmers also ranked IR77713 and IR79511 highest in grain quality of
unmilled, milled, and cooked rice. In addition, a sensory test revealed that
farmers find IRRI’s new varieties tasty and better looking compared with the
locally grown varieties.
“We congratulate IRRI for this achievement,” concluded Director General
of Agriculture Sebastien Ndikumagenge, Burundi Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock.
“By releasing these two varieties, IRRI contributes a lot to our efforts to
find food for Burundians. We encourage IRRI to go forward.”
Dr. Joseph Bigirimana, IRRI’s liaison scientist and coordinator in
Burundi, said, “We are very happy that IRRI has released these two new rice
varieties in Burundi. The IRRI-Burundi team worked hard, with the support of
the whole IRRI family at the regional and international level and our partners
in Burundi. We are proud of that effective collaboration.
“We do, of course, still have a long way to go,” he added. “We will
actively assist Burundi’s Ministry of Agriculture to multiply the seed of these
new varieties so that they can reach farmers as soon as possible.”
IRRI-Burundi developed the new rice varieties especially for Burundi
after recognizing the urgent need for better rice varieties adapted to local
conditions and matching farmer and consumer needs. In a first, IRRI-Burundi
released the varieties after just four growing seasons – usually it takes much
longer.
The new varieties are targeted to be planted in lowland areas of the
country (800–900 meters above sea level) and are expected to boost food
production in Burundi.
“I am sure this is only the start of a major contribution by IRRI in
Burundi in association with the University of Burundi and Burundi’s government
to develop the rice industry,” said IRRI’s coordinator for East and Southern
Africa, Mr. Joseph Rickman.
http://www.seedquest.com/news.php?type=news&id_article=23460&id_region=&id_category=&id_crop=
Source: IRRI via SeedQuest
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1.48 Evaluating
the impacts of GM crops in the EU: AMIGA project is launched
Brussels,
Belgium
6 December,
2011
AMIGA
«Assessing and Monitoring the Impacts of Genetically modified plants on
Agro-ecosystems» is a newly started EU project, funded by the FP7, aiming at
producing scientific data related to the possible environmental and economic
impacts of cultivation of GMPs, relevant to European environments. Launched on
the 1st of December 2011, AMIGA project will run for 4 years, until the end of
2015.
AMIGA’s
main objectives include providing baseline data on biodiversity in
agro-eco-systems in the EU, defining bioindicators suitable for various
European regions, a better integration of the aspects related to specific
agricultural ecosystems in the European Union, an improvement of knowledge on
potential long-term effects, and finally an assessment on the economic effects
of cultivation of GMPs in the EU through a more systematic analysis.
The AMIGA
consortium is composed by 22 partners, highly experts in the specific fields of
studies of the project research and analysis of different aspects of GM plants
and their cultivation, including Research Centres, Universities, State Agencies
and SMEs. The partners are located in 15 EU countries and Argentina and will
contribute in validating and monitoring in areas where GM crops are cultivated
on larger scales. The coordinator of the project is the National Agency for New
Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA), Italy, which
is the second largest research organisation in Italy. Their agro-biotechnology
activities include a wide range of areas and a dedicated research group will be
in charge of specifically studying environmental impacts of GM plants.
The
scientific activities of the consortium will consist of case studies of maize
and potato, which are the two GM crops currently approved for cultivation in
Europe, and surveys in non-GM agro-systems. The final outcome will include a
network of representative sites for pre-market risk assessment and long-term monitoring
studied to evaluate impacts to help decision-makers.
Website:
available soon: www.amigaproject.eu
http://www.seedquest.com/news.php?type=news&id_article=22884&id_region=&id_category=&id_crop=
Source: MINERVA
Consulting & Communication via SeedQuest.com
+++++++++
1.49 New tool offers
unprecedented access for root studies
Stanford,
California, USA
20
December, 2011
Plant roots
are fascinating plant organs – they not only anchor the plant, but are also the
world’s most efficient mining companies. Roots live in darkness and direct the
activities of the other organs, as well as interact with the surrounding
environment. Charles Darwin posited in The Power of Movement of Plants that the
root system acts as a plant’s brain.
Due to the
difficulty of accessing root tissue in intact live plants, research of these
hidden parts has always lagged behind research on the more visible parts of
plants. But now: a new technology--developed jointly by Carnegie and Stanford
University--could revolutionize root research. The findings will be published
in the large-scale biology section of the December issue of The Plant Cell.
Understanding
roots is crucial to the study of plant physiology because they serve as the
interface between a plant and the soil--being solely responsible for taking up
water and essential mineral nutrients. Roots must respond quickly to various
environmental conditions such as water availability (for example, when being
soaked by rain after a period of drought). They must find and exploit
nutrients; they must respond to salinization and acidification of the soil; and
they must integrate diverse signals such as light and gravity. All of these
aspects are very difficult to analyze because of a root’s inaccessibility in
the soil.
The
research team’s efforts could revolutionize the entire field of root studies.
The team is comprised of a group of plant scientists, including the paper’s
lead author, Guido Grossmann, along with his Carnegie colleagues (Woei-Jiun
Guo, David Ehrhardt and Wolf Frommer) and a group of chemical engineers from
Stanford University and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, (Rene Sit, Stephen
Quake and Matthias Meier).
The new
technology, called the RootChip, allowed the research team to study roots of
eight individual seedlings at the same time, and to alter their growth
environment simultaneously or independently and with extraordinary precision.
Optical sensors, developed and inserted into the root tissue by Frommer’s team,
allowed the researchers to examine how the roots responded to changes in
nutrient supply levels in real time.
“This new
tool provides a major advance for studying root biology at the cellular and
subcellular level,” said Wolf Frommer, director of Carnegie’s plant biology
department. “The growth conditions can be freely varied over several days,
allowing us to monitor actual growth and development of roots and root hairs
and using our optical biosensors to study nutrient acquisition and carbon
sequestration in real time.”
The
RootChip was capable of monitoring a root’s response to changing levels of the
sugar glucose in the surrounding environment. Root growth slowed down when the
leaves were not exposed to light, as predicted, because the leaf’s
photosynthesis is required to supply the energy for root growth. The RootChip
also revealed the long-suspected fact that galactose, a sugar highly similar to
glucose, is toxic to roots and inhibits their growth and function.
The
RootChip is a generic tool and can be altered to test any aspect of root
physiology that can be analyzed visually. It can easily be modified to study
more than 30 seedlings at the same time and can be expanded for use with plants
used to make biofuels, such as Brachypodium and foxtail millet.
This research was supported by grants from NSF and DOE, as well as an
EMBO long-term fellowship and the Alexander V. Humboldt Society.
Website: http://www.ciw.edu/
http://www.seedquest.com/news.php?type=news&id_article=23143&id_region=&id_category=&id_crop=
Source:
SeedQuest.com
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1.50 From
loyalty cards to proteomics and the birth of the super experiment
United
Kingdom
22 December
2011
Like
tracking customer buying preferences with a loyalty card, BBSRC-funded
researchers at the University of Dundee are using business intelligence
software to discover patterns and trends in proteomics data which were not visible
previously.
It's a
novel solution to a common problem, and one that has allowed the team to
overcome a major bottleneck to proteomics research: how to compare and
integrate data from many independent experiments. Now with a suite of
customised software under their belt, the team is developing a super experiment
for functional proteomics analysis, which in the long term could help to
deliver on the promises of the human genome project of tailor-made medicines.
A few years
ago it was usually only possible to study one or two proteins at a time. Today
researchers can generate data for thousands of proteins and their associated
genes in a single experiment. While this is great in principle, the reality is
that colossal amounts of untapped data are generated that are usually kept in
isolation, with little or no chance of being used at a future date.
Professor
Angus Lamond, Director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Gene Regulation and
Expression at the University of Dundee, recognised early on that the collection
and analysis of proteomics data was limiting progress. "We needed a more
sophisticated approach," he said.
"Working
with colleagues in Dundee at the School of Computing, we quickly realised that
business intelligence techniques could be the key to creating what I've termed,
'super experiments'."
By creating
a multi-dimensional database to manage all the consistently annotated data from
the many hundreds of proteomics experiments in Lamond's lab, he realised that
it would also be possible to integrate data from multiple experiments and
extract information that simply isn't available when individual experiments are
considered in isolation.
But instead
of using business intelligence software to track consumer spending patterns in
order to maximise profits, for example in the use of own brand versus high
value products, by high volume, or by season or location, Lamond and his team
would track multiple variables such as cell type, whether proteins are switched
on or off, the location of proteins with a cell and post-translational
modifications.
"It's
the same concept, just the names are different," he says.
According
to Lamond, such an approach could open the door to large scale, functional
proteomics experiments to find out exactly what multiple proteins, are doing in
cells and the relationships between them. Because most medicines affect
proteins rather than DNA, there is the potential to build on the findings of
the human genome project and use the integrated information from proteomics
experiments for the development of safer, more tailor-made drugs.
Software solution
The first
step was to create a customised suite of software - called PepTracker. The
development of PepTracker was supported in part through the Radical Solutions
for Researching the Proteome (RASOR) programme, funded by BBSRC, the
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the Scottish Funding
Council, as well as by a BBSRC funded PhD studentship and additional support
from the Wellcome Trust.
BBSRC-funded
PhD student Yasmeen Ahmad, a computer science graduate who built PepTracker
explains how the system works, "Users start by designing and performing a
proteomics experiment in the laboratory. As well as the data output from the
mass spectrometer, we also collect and record a great deal of metadata about
each experiment. Among other things, this includes information about the
specific mass spectrometer that was used, the cell line, genotype, extract
analysed etc. as well as the time, date and the researcher. The measured data
and associated metadata are entered into PepTracker and then stored on a
dedicated database server - the data warehouse."
PepTracker
provides researchers with a set of very powerful, bespoke tools for analysis of
proteomics data, based in part on Microsoft® business intelligence software
(Follow link to Microsoft case study for further details).
"We
couldn't use off-the-shelf software, and that meant assembling a team of people
who understand both worlds - the experimental design, the instrumentation, and
the informatics challenge," says Lamond. "When Yasmeen started work
my lab, she didn't know what a protein was. But I think she was fascinated by
the opportunity and has learned quickly the background biology."
"It
was a steep learning curve, I was and still am constantly learning" says
Ahmad. "I was excited and intrigued to see where it could go.
"The
team comprises a diverse group of people, from lots of different countries and
scientific backgrounds, which makes things interesting, richer. We all have
different experiences, some have a life science PhD, other PhDs in protein
chemistry, mass spectrometry or computing science, so our skill set is very
diverse and I know I can call on anyone if I have questions."
Growing legs
Although
PepTracker was initially conceived as focussed software solution for
experiments in Lamond's laboratory, the team reached a turning point when they
realised that they could do so much more outside of one project.
"These
tools will provide insightful analysis through interactions with individual
datasets, as well as allow for comparisons of data produced by different
researchers, using both similar and different experimental methods,"
explains Lamond. "They will thereby help to promote new collaborations and
to cross-fertilise projects."
The
software is already used by other researchers in Dundee. And, having proved the
principle behind his super experiment approach, Lamond is now seeking to lead a
major expansion of the proteomics facility to provide the scale of resources
needed to move the project forward.
In
addition, the team is continuing to develop novel software, working with both
academic and commercial collaborators to enhance the use of very fast, parallel
computing solutions and business intelligence. Their aim is to continue to
innovate, making software tailored to the specific needs of the new types of
experiments and building better, faster tools to analyse proteomics data.
"This
project has grown lots of arms and legs," says Ahmad. "There are so
many exciting branches for this work over the next few years, and I'm so
pleased to be a part of it."
Reference
Systematic
analysis of protein pools, isoforms and modifications affecting turnover and
subcellular localisation.
Molecular and
cellular proteomics DOI: 10.1074/mcp.M111.013680 mcp.M111.013680.
Website: http://www.bbsrc.ac.uk
http://www.seedquest.com/news.php?type=news&id_article=23192&id_region=&id_category=&id_crop=
Source:
SeedQuest.com
+++++++++++
1.51 FAO-EU
project to promote climate-smart farming
Rome
16 January 2012
Malawi, Vietnam
and Zambia will benefit from collaborative effort
FAO and the
European Commission announced today a new €5.3 million project aimed at helping
Malawi, Vietnam and Zambia transition to a "climate-smart" approach
to agriculture.
Agriculture
— and the communities who depend on it for their livelihoods and food
security — are highly vulnerable to climate change impacts. At the same
time agriculture, as a significant producer of greenhouse gases, contributes to
global warming. "Climate-smart
agriculture" is an approach that seeks to position the agricultural sector
as a solution to these major challenges.
It involves
making changes in farming systems that achieve multiple goals: improving their
contribution to the fight against hunger and poverty; rendering them more
resilient to climate change; reducing emissions; and increasing agriculture's
potential to capture and sequester atmospheric carbon. "We need to start putting climate-smart
agriculture into practice, working closely with farmers and their
communities," said FAO Assistant Director-General for the Economic and
Social Development Department, Hafez Ghanem. "But there are no
one-size-fits-all solutions — better climate-smart farming practices need to
respond to different local conditions, to geography, weather and the natural
resource base," he added.
"This
project will look closely at three countries and identify challenges and
opportunities for climate-smart agriculture and produce strategic plans
tailored to each country's own reality," Ghanem said. "While not all
solutions identified will be universally applicable, we can learn a lot about
how countries could take similar steps and begin shifting to this approach to
agriculture."
Tailor-made solutions
The EU is
providing €3.3 million to support the effort; FAO's contribution is
€2 million.
Working
closely with agriculture and other ministries in each of the partner countries,
and collaborating with local and international organizations, the three-year
project will:
Identify
country-specific opportunities for expansion of existing climate-smart
practices or implementation of new ones.
Study the
constraints that need to be overcome to promote wider adoption of climate-smart
agriculture, including investment costs.
Promote
integration of national climate change and agricultural strategies to support
the implementation of climate-smart agriculture.
Identify
innovative mechanisms for linking climate finance with climate-smart agriculture
investments.
Build
capacity for planning and implementing climate-smart projects capable of
attracting international investments.
FAO will
take the overall lead on the project, working in partnership with national
policy and research institutions, as well as global organizations such as the
Global Crop Diversity Trust.
By tackling
the urgent need to incorporate climate change concerns into agricultural
development planning, this new project represents a concrete step forward, said
Ghanem. "The problems of climate change are increasingly being felt on the
ground, and thus early actions to address the problem are needed, even as
international negotiations continue in the search for a global climate
agreement," he said.
Source: SeedQuest.com
+++++++++++
1.52 Genomic and metabolic prediction of complex heterotic traits
in hybrid maize
15 January, 2012
Christian Riedelsheimer, Angelika Czedik-Eysenberg, Christoph
Grieder, Jan Lisec, Frank Technow, Ronan Sulpice, Thomas Altmann, Mark Stitt,
Lothar Willmitzer & Albrecht E Melchinger Nature Genetics (2012)
| DOI: doi:10.1038/ng.1033 Received 14 September 2011 Accepted 10
November 2011 Published online 15 January 2012.
Maize is both an exciting model organism in plant genetics
and also the most important crop worldwide for food, animal feed and bioenergy
production. Recent genome-wide association and metabolic profiling studies
aimed to resolve quantitative traits to their causal genetic loci and key
metabolic regulators. Here we present a complementary approach that exploits
large-scale genomic and metabolic information to predict complex, highly
polygenic traits in hybrid testcrosses. We crossed 285 diverse Dent inbred lines
from worldwide sources with two testers and predicted their combining abilities
for seven biomass- and bioenergy-related traits using 56,110 SNPs and 130
metabolites. Whole-genome and metabolic prediction models were built by fitting
effects for all SNPs or metabolites. Prediction accuracies ranged from 0.72 to
0.81 for SNPs and from 0.60 to 0.80 for metabolites, allowing a reliable
screening of large collections of diverse inbred lines for their potential to
create superior hybrids.
http://www.seedquest.com/news.php?type=news&id_article=23718&id_region=&id_category=&id_crop=
Source: SeedQuest.com
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
1.53 GM wheat
development in China: current status and challenges to commercialization
15 December, 2011
Lanqin Xia, Youzhi Ma, Yi He and Huw D. Jones Journal of Experimental Botany, Page 1 of 6
2011doi:10.1093/jxb/err342
Abstract
Genetic modification facilitates research into fundamental questions of
plant functional genomics and provides a route for developing novel commercial
varieties.
In 2008,significant financial resources were supplied by the Chinese
government for research and development (R&D) into genetic modification of
the major crop species. This project was aimed at providing an opportunity for
crop improvement while accentuating the development of a safe, precise, and
effective wheat genetic transformation system suitable for commercialization.
The focus here is on one of the key crops included in this project, wheat, to
provide an insight into the main transformation methods currently in use, the
target traits of major importance, and the successful applications of wheat
genetic improvement in China.
Furthermore, the biosafety and regulatory issues of major concern and the
strategies to produce ‘clean’ transgenic wheat plants will also be discussed.
This commentary is intended to be a helpful insight into the production and
commercialization of transgenic wheat in China and to put these activities into
a global context.
Paper:http://www.seedquest.com/news.php?type=news&id_article=23431&id_region=&id_category=&id_crop
Source: SeedQuest.com
++++++++++++
1.54 Monsanto
scholars share their experiences
Recently four scholars were featured on
Monsanto’s Blog and Facebook page sharing the significance of this program
towards achieving their career goals:
http://monsantoblog.com/2011/12/01/talking-with-a-beachell-borlaug-scholar/
http://monsantoblog.com/2012/01/12/scholars-speak-on-the-beachell-borlaug-program/
Their
stories provide a different and ‘real’ perspective of the program, as scholars
talk about the opportunities and the future impact they want to make.
Please share these stories with others that may be interested in this
fellowship.
As the 2012
application season is coming to a close on February 1, 2012, if you know any
interested students, please have them visit www.Monsanto.com/mbbischolars to find
out more information.
Contributed by Aurelia Skipwith
Sustainable
Agriculture Partnership Manager
Monsanto
Note: The
2013 application session for Monsanto’s Beachell-Borlaug International Scholars
Program will begin November 1, 2012 to February 1, 2013.
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=========================
2.01 International
Seed Testing Association Publications and Products 2012 – 2013