Arkansas Sate turns up the heat on rice crops JONESBORO, Ark. (AP) — A group of Arkansas State University educators and students are studying effects of heat on rice crops in a three-university project aimed at discovering plants that can withstand global warming. Scientists at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln and Kansas State University are also looking at creating …

Why Pivot Bio’s new field data is a boon for sustainable agriculture Pivot Bio is disrupting the N fertilizer industry with the release of PROVEN™, their sustainable nitrogen-producing microbe for corn. In trials last year, farmers using this flagship product had a 7.7 bushel per acre advantage over chemical fertilizers in all sorts of weather in 13 different states and …

How a Philippines regulator stymied DowDuPont’s global seed launch WINNIPEG, Manitoba/CHICAGO (Reuters) – A Philippines regulator poses an unexpected obstacle to DowDuPont’s launch of a new line of genetically engineered soybeans in the United States as the company challenges Bayer AG’s decades-long dominance of the U.S. seed market. China’s January approval for imports of DowDuPont’s Enlist E3 soybeans – amid …

Honeybees Enter Virtual Reality So Scientists Can Study Their Brains esearchers at the Free University of Berlin have developed a method for directly recording the brains of honeybees as they navigate a virtual-reality environment. The team implanted electrodes into a region of the bee brain called the mushroom body, located in the front antennal lobe, to track neurological changes as …

WASDE reduces 2018/19 forecast for corn use in ethanol The USDA has reduced its 2018/2019 projection for corn use in ethanol production by 25 million bushels when compared to its December forecast in the latest edition of its World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates Report, released Feb. 8. Within the February WASDE report, the USDA said the current 2018/19 U.S. …

Desert bacteria protect food crops from salt toxicity Bacteria isolated from the Saudi desert have demonstrated plant-growth-promoting properties that could make them useful as biofertilizers. “The vast majority of deserts, especially in Saudi Arabia, have never been explored for agricultural potential,” says doctoral student, Abdul Aziz Eida, of KAUST’s Desert Agriculture Initiative. “Many people think deserts are sterile and inhospitable …

Pearse Lyons Accelerator selects startups on the cutting edge of ag-tech After a record-breaking 251 startups from 53 countries applied to be part of The Pearse Lyons Accelerator, the class of 2019 has been selected to work with Alltech and Dogpatch Labs to accelerate their business development. This year’s applicants have already raised over $143 million, with 135 startups disclosing …

Biotech firms develop RNAi-based products for pest control hree biotech start-ups have plans to produce and manufacture products based on RNA interference that they say can control crop-munching insects better than chemical sprays. RNAi can interrupt a target organism’s ability to produce key proteins. The Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, a not-for-profit research institute based in St. Louis, has spun …

Indian court’s decision to uphold GM cotton patent could boost industry research Some scientists in India have welcomed a supreme court ruling that reinstates a patent on genetically modified cotton that had been quashed by a lower court. They say the decision to uphold the intellectual-property rights of seed maker Monsanto could help reverse a decline in biotechnology research in …

Achieving sustainable agriculture requires an integrated approach “We have reached the limit of the paradigm of the green revolution,” FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva said today. “We cannot continue to produce food in the same way we have”, relying on intensive farm techniques, chemical inputs and mechanization, and “need to shift to a more holistic approach on sustainability,” he …

Research characterizes evolution of pathway for reproductive fitness in flowering plants ST. LOUIS, MO, February 11, 2019 – Small RNAs (sRNAs) are key regulators involved in plant growth and development. Two groups of sRNAs are abundant during development of pollen in the anthers – a critical process for reproductive success. One of these pathways for sRNA production, previously believed present …

Anther Rubbing, A New Movement Discovered In Plants, Promotes Prior Selfing Most plants have developed mechanisms to prevent self-fertilization and its detrimental effects of inbreeding depression. Traits promoting selfing in plants have been approached mainly from the perspective of a loss of function, or even only considered as a by-product of non-adaptive evolutionary processes. However, the shift from cross-fertilization to …

Scientists successfully use gene-editing technology to develop first-ever plantain resistant to banana virus streak A team of scientists have announced a major breakthrough in their efforts to develop improved banana and plantain varieties that are resistant to banana streak virus (BSV), one of the diseases hampering the crop’s production in Africa and threatening the food and income of millions of …

Snapdragon enters the genomic age Researchers have successfully assembled a near-complete genome sequence of the popular plant model system Antirrhinum majus. The assembly, comprising 510 megabases of genomic sequence and containing nearly 38,000 annotated protein-encoding genes, is the result of a successful collaboration between scientists in China and at the John Innes Centre. The genome sequencing, assembly and annotation of …

A small number of crops are dominating globally. And that’s bad news for sustainable agriculture A new U of T study suggests that globally we’re growing more of the same kinds of crops, and this presents major challenges for agricultural sustainability on a global scale. The study, done by an international team of researchers led by U of T assistant …

USDA Grant To Blend Data With Agriculture For Improved Production A University of Texas at Arlington math professor will use a U.S. Department of Agriculture grant to prepare graduate and undergraduate students for data-based careers in agriculture-related fields. Jianzhong Su, UTA math professor and chairman of the Department of Mathematics, received a four-year, $295,000 USDA grant for an Alliance for …

Samara Polytech Scientists Have Developed Medications And Vitamins For Residual Soil The highly efficient biotechnological complex “LSF” (“Living Source of Fertility”) starts the processes of humification – humus formation and soil microflora activation without the use of chemicals. Two weeks ago, scientists from Samara Polytech began preparing three patent applications for unique vitamins and medicines. – Special biological farming, the …

How plants expand their capacity to use solar energy Green plants capture light that spans the visible solar spectrum, and while a broad spectral range is required for sufficient absorption, the process requires energy to be funneled rapidly and efficiently downhill to drive charge separation and water splitting. Carotenoids, the accessory pigments in photosynthesis, play light harvesting, photoprotective, and structural …

More nutritious, natural flavor, non-GMO ‘orange corn’ launches in US markets “Orange corn,” a more nutritious, naturally selected variety of corn is now available in the U.S. markets through Purdue-affiliated startup NutraMaize LLC. Torbert Rocheford, the Patterson Endowed Chair in Translational Genomics for Crop Improvement in the Purdue College of Agriculture’s Department of Agronomy, used a process known as biofortification …

Growing The Tallest Is Not Always The Best Option Plants need sunlight to feed and grow. Without light, the photosynthesis, the reaction by which the plant chloroplasts convert atmospheric CO2 and water into sugars and oxygen, cannot take place. In some situations, such as in forest areas or in high-density cultivated fields, plants compete with each other for sunlight. When …

Rapid gene cloning technique will transform crop disease protection Researchers have pioneered a new method which allows them to rapidly recruit disease resistance genes from wild plants and transfer them into domestic crops. The technique called AgRenSeq or speed cloning has been developed by John Innes Centre researchers alongside colleagues in the United States and Australia to speed up the …

Harvesting wild genes gives crops renewed resistance to disease A global alliance of researchers has pioneered a new method to rapidly recruit disease-resistance genes from wild plants for transfer into domestic crops. The technique promises to revolutionise the development of disease-resistant varieties for the global food supply. The technique called AgRenSeq was developed by scientists at the John Innes Centre …

‘Green’ electronics made from nanocellulose (Nanowerk News) Imagine folding up a paper-thin computer tablet like a newspaper. Such flexible electronics are moving closer to reality, according to a review in the journal Science and Technology of Advanced Materials (“Development and applications of transparent conductive nanocellulose paper”). Paper that is transparent and conducts electricity could have diverse applications, including foldable computers, …

Microbes help make the coffee When it comes to processing coffee beans, longer fermentation times can result in better taste, contrary to conventional wisdom. Lactic acid bacteria play an important, positive role in this process. Other species of microbes may play a role in this process as well, but more research is needed to better understand their role. The research …

Scientists Discover New ‘Architecture’ In Corn New research on the U.S.’s most economically important agricultural plant – corn – has revealed a different internal structure of the plant than previously thought, which can help optimize how corn is converted into ethanol. “Our economy relies on ethanol, so it’s fascinating that we haven’t had a full and more precise understanding of …

Yield10 Bioscience Initiates Early Development Program in Corn to Evaluate Novel Traits WOBURN, Mass., Jan. 22, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Yield10 Bioscience, Inc. (Nasdaq:YTEN), a Company developing new technologies to create step-change improvements in crop yield that enhance global food security, announced today that it has initiated an early development program in corn to evaluate novel seed yield and drought …

Rising temperatures may safeguard crop nutrition as climate changes Recent research has shown that rising carbon dioxide levels will likely boost yields, but at the cost of nutrition. A new study in Plant Journal from the University of Illinois, U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS), and Donald Danforth Plant Science Center suggests that this is an incomplete picture …

Optimising corn to get more biofuel out New US research revealed a different internal structure of corn than previously thought. These findings can help optimise how corn is converted into ethanol. The US relies on ethanol, so it is important to see if the conversion from corn to ethanol can be even more efficient. Louisiana State University (LSU) researcher Tuo …

Lettuce show you how to restore oil-soaked soil Rice University engineers have figured out how soil contaminated by heavy oil can not only be cleaned but made fertile again. How do they know it works? They grew lettuce. Rice engineers Kyriacos Zygourakis and Pedro Alvarez and their colleagues have fine-tuned their method to remove petroleum contaminants from soil through the …

Once an ambitious producer, Turkey again looks to join industrial hemp cultivators club This week has witnessed the revival of talks on the now-limited but once widespread industrial agricultural crop in Turkey, when President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan raised the issue of mainstreaming hemp production during a meeting on municipal governance on Wednesday. Hailed by producers and aspiring farmers who are …