CropsScientists from India, Africa and Japan screened pearl millet lines for drought and heat tolerance, disease resistance, grain quality and fodder value at ICRISAT's biennial field day.
AgrotechThe startup grows isolated plant cells in culture, picks the promising lines with automated screening and regenerates only those into plants, which it expects to save at least five times the cost.
AgrotechExecutives of Hudson River Biotechnology and Biographica, which have joined computational gene-target discovery with CRISPR editing and plant regeneration, say breeders now ask what to edit, and disease resistance tops the list.
FruitsThe Cavendish, the world's main export banana, is threatened by the fungal disease TR4; Yelloway, a joint venture of Chiquita and KeyGene, says it has developed a fertile Cavendish that could open the way to disease-resistant hybrids.
CropsA three-year DPIRD project with GRDC, LongReach and InterGrain will look for the genes that decide why many wheat and barley lines respond poorly to doubled haploid breeding.
CropsDaily camera imaging of 47 corn varieties at the Danforth Center showed that combined heat and drought shrank most plants more than either stress alone, with effects that lasted weeks after the stress ended.
CropsThe oilseed centre will breed canola, winter canola and camelina for western Canada and the US Northern Plains, aiming to raise the yield floor in bad years by improving many traits at once.
VegetablesA new phase of the Crop Trust's BOLD project, led by the International Potato Center in Kenya, will take 54 breeding lines carrying traits from wild potatoes towards a new variety and build the seed chain to get it to farmers.
VegetablesAfter five years of work at its Lebukhali station in Patuakhali, BARI has bred a hybrid sweet pumpkin with thick flesh, a small seed cavity and an average weight of about 4.5 kg; it has been proposed to the agriculture ministry as BARI Hybrid Sweet Pumpkin 4.
VegetablesAgriculture and Agri-Food Canada scientists screened 721 diploid potato clones and found that up to 29% of table and chip types yielded as well as or better than commercial four-chromosome-set potatoes, with good storage dormancy.
AgrotechSpanish seed company Semillas Fitó and Dutch genome-editing firm Hudson River Biotechnology have agreed a long-term partnership to create new genetic variation in tomatoes, starting with disease and pest resistance.
CropsGrower groups, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and North Dakota State University are testing 30 edible bean lines at five sites, irrigated and dry, to find genetics that can survive waterlogging, drought and heat across very different growing regions.
AgrotechClimateCrop, built on a Weizmann Institute discovery, uses gene editing to disable a protein that brakes starch production in leaves, which it says lifts daily starch storage by 10 to 15 percent and helps crops grow and recover from stress.
