The mechanism that controls Chinese cabbage flowering

Chinese cabbage is part of a crop family that must be exposed to cold temperatures for a particular period of time in order to flower. Scientists have succeeded in comprehensively identifying the long noncoding ribonucleic ...

DNA methylation affects superiority of hybrid plants

Hybrid vigor refers to when a crossbreed plant or animal shows superior traits compared to its parents. A research group has discovered that a gene involved in maintaining DNA methylation is closely connected to hybrid vigor ...

How Chinese cabbage and white cabbage became alike

White cabbage and Chinese cabbage have a lot in common: both have leaves that wrap tightly around each other to form a leafy head. Remarkably, however, these two crops originate from two different Brassica species used and ...

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, ...