News tagged with plant breeding

Pod corn develops leaves in the inflorescences

In a variant of maize known as pod corn, or tunicate maize, the maize kernels on the cob are not 'naked' but covered by long membranous husks known as glumes. According to scientists from the Max Planck Institute ...

Biology / Biotechnology

created Apr 24, 2012 | popularity 3.3 / 5 (3) | comments 1 | with audio podcast

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 ...

Biology / Biotechnology

created Jan 22, 2012 | popularity 4 / 5 (4) | comments 2 | with audio podcast

Discovery of plant 'nourishing gene' brings hope for increased crop seed yield and food security

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.

Biology / Biotechnology

created Jan 13, 2012 | popularity 4 / 5 (1) | comments 1 | with audio podcast

Largest rice genetics study finds vast differences in rice

The largest publicly available genomewide association mapping study in rice to date has found that although the five subpopulations of Asian rice -- indica, aus, temperate japonica, aromatic and tropical ...

Biology / Biotechnology

created Sep 15, 2011 | popularity 4 / 5 (1) | comments 2 | with audio podcast

Study shows genetic rice breeding goes back 10,000 years

(PhysOrg.com) -- In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Masanori Yamasaki and colleagues from Kobe University in Japan, describe how they analyzed the genomes of severa ...

Biology / Biotechnology

created Jun 07, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (2) | comments 0 | with audio podcast report

PhD student grows bell pepper with a hint of chilli

Martijn Eggink is cultivating a new bell pepper variety with an exotic flavour. This is the basis for his PhD research at Wageningen UR, in which he will correlate the flavour of the bell pepper to sugars, acids and aroma ...

Biology / Biotechnology

created May 03, 2012 | popularity 3 / 5 (1) | comments 0

Research makes plant breeding easier

University of Illinois research has resulted in the development of a novel and widely applicable molecular tool that can serve as a road map for making plant breeding easier to understand. Researchers developed ...

Biology / Biotechnology

created Jan 04, 2011 | popularity not rated yet | comments 0 | with audio podcast

The production of plant pollen is regulated by several signalling pathways

(PhysOrg.com) -- Plants producing flower pollen must not leave anything to chance. The model plant thale cress (Arabidopsis), for instance, uses three signalling pathways in concert with partially overlapping ...

Biology / Biotechnology

created Jan 25, 2011 | popularity not rated yet | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Discovery offers hope of saving sub-Saharan crops from devastating parasites

Each year, thousands of acres of crops are planted throughout Africa, Asia and Australia only to be laid to waste by a parasitic plant called Striga, also known as witchweed. It is one of the largest challenges ...

Biology / Biotechnology

created Sep 10, 2010 | popularity 5 / 5 (3) | comments 2 | with audio podcast

Success with 'cisgenics' in forestry offers new tools for biotechnology

Forestry scientists at Oregon State University have demonstrated for the first time that the growth rate and other characteristics of trees can be changed through "cisgenics" - a type of genetic engineering ...

Biology / Biotechnology

created Jun 08, 2010 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (9) | comments 10 | with audio podcast

Feeling Stressed? So is the Poplar -- But Hormone Suppression Could Help the Tree

(PhysOrg.com) -- People aren't the only living things that suffer from stress. Trees must deal with stress too. It can come from a lack of water or too much water, from scarcity of a needed nutrient, from ...

Biology / Plants & Animals

created May 06, 2010 | popularity 3 / 5 (1) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Powdery mildew at an evolutionary dead end

The size of a genome tells us nothing about the comprehensiveness of the genetic information it contains. The genome of powdery mildew, which can destroy entire harvests with its fine fungal threads, is a ...

Biology / Biotechnology

created Dec 09, 2010 | popularity 4 / 5 (5) | comments 3 | with audio podcast

New and inexpensive genomics method takes off

(PhysOrg.com) -- Genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS), a powerful new technique developed at Cornell, is leveling the playing field in genomics research. Less than a year after publication, it is being applied to answer questions ...

Biology / Biotechnology

created Mar 20, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (2) | comments 0

Scientists discover 'switch' in plants to create flowers

Flowering is the most crucial act that plants undergo, as the fruits of such labor include crops on which the world depends, and seeds from which the next generation grows.

Biology / Plants & Animals

created Apr 17, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (1) | comments 2

'Plant inventor' makes black-and-white cucumbers

By age 4, Michael Mazourek was already fascinated by bell peppers, squash and sugar peas, the vegetables that featured prominently in his first garden.

Biology / Biotechnology

created Sep 20, 2011 | popularity not rated yet | comments 0