Blumeria graminis a fungus that causes powdery mildew on wheat and other cereals; and the Citrus tristeza virus (given its name meaning'sadness'in Portuguese and Spanish by farmers in the 1930s)
Pebble-size particles may jumpstart planet formationrocky planets like Earth start out as microscopic bits of dust tinier than a grain of sand
which would encourage grain growth. The second scenario is that the rocky particles originally grew inside a previous generation of cores or perhaps even protoplanetary disks.
For example in Illinois a hybrid grass Miscanthus x giganteus without fertilizer or irrigation produced 10 to 16 tons of aboveground biomass per acre more than double the productivity of native prairie vegetation or corn.
And genetically modified no-till corn is more than five times as productive--in terms of total biomass generated per acre--as restored prairie in Wisconsin.
and often corn and soybean farmers are required to supplement their soil with boron; however little is known about the ways in which corn plants utilize the essential nutrient.
Now researchers at the University of Missouri have found that boron plays an integral role in development and reproduction in corn plants.
Scientists anticipate that understanding how corn uses the nutrient can help farmers make informed decisions in boron deficient areas
and improve crop yields. Boron deficiency was known already to cause plants to stop growing but our study showed that a lack of boron actually causes a problem in the meristems
Insufficient boron causes these growing points to disintegrate affecting corn tassels and kernels adversely. When tassels are stunted crop yields are reduced Mcsteen said.
Kim Phillips a graduate student in Mcsteen's lab mapped the corn plant's genome and found that a genetic mutation stunted tassel growth
She treated two groups of tassel-less corn one with a boron fertilizer and the other with only water.
and evaluations at the MU Research Reactor Analytical Chemistry facility and at MU Plant and Soil Analysis Facility the study team drew conclusions that will help corn producers make informed decisions about raising
Lupin a legume belonging to the same plant family as peanuts is showing up as a wheat replacement in an increasing number of gluten-free products.
fish consumption plasma beta carotene as a biomarker for vegetable intake and plasma alkylresorcinols reflecting whole grain consumption.
#Turning waste from rice, parsley and other foods into biodegradable plasticyour chairs synthetic rugs and plastic bags could one day be made out of cocoa rice
and vegetable waste rather than petroleum scientists are now reporting. The novel process they developed and their results
and husks from rice and cocoa pods. Then they poured the resulting solutions into lab dishes.
whom they traditionally traded forest products for grain and sometimes intermarry. The researchers also looked at the Baka rainforest hunter-gatherers
A major challenge has been that unlike the simple sugars in corn grain the complex polysaccharides in biomass are embedded deeply within a tough woody material called lignin.
Easlon and his team developed Easy Leaf Area using Arabidopsis plants and also tested Easy Leaf Area on photographs of field-grown tomatoes and wheat and photographs and scans of detached leaves
and wheat malt he adds. The preparation requires 15 days is carried out in stainless steel tanks and the process avoids filtering the beverage
and Huazhong Agricultural University China has used the method to predict the performance of hybrid rice (for example the yield growth-rate and disease resistance).
The study published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is a pilot research project on rice.
Rice and maize are two main crops that depend on hybrid breeding said Shizhong Xu a professor of genetics in the UC Riverside Department of Botany
and Zhang will design a field experiment to perform hybrid prediction in rice. Story Source:
The environment surrounding the atom-thick carbon material can influence its electronic performance according to researchers at Rice
Because it's so easy to accidently introduce impurities into graphene labs led by physicists Junichiro Kono of Rice
It was made possible by the Rice-based Nanojapan program through which American undergraduates conduct summer research internships in Japanese labs. Even a single molecule of a foreign substance can contaminate graphene enough to affect its electrical and optical properties
The Rice and Osaka labs are continuing to collaborate on a project to measure the terahertz conductivity of graphene on various substrates he said.
The paper's authors include Rice alumna Mika Tabata who conducted research as a 2012 Nanojapan participant in the Tonouchi lab and graduate student Minjie Wang;
of the Department of Materials Science and Nanoengineering both at Rice. The National Science Foundation (NSF;
She and her team analyzed grains of barley up to 12000 years old from 33 locations across the Fertile Crescent to ascertain
Corn Growing Degree days or GDDS will show producers how their crops are developing in lieu of this year's planting delays
when the corn was planted and the number of days it takes to reach maturity. The program then assesses current development compared to a 30-year average
U2u capitalizes on the work scientists have been doing on longer-term practices that are better for sustainable corn production Todey said.
Teams of agronomists sociologists climatologists and environmental and soil scientists are examining all aspects of the corn production system.
either with corn barley wheat soybeans rice beans acai seed brown sugar or starch syrup she says.
The added unwanted grain fillers generate different levels of sugars than the natural ingredients so they are easy to identify she explains.
Participants in a study were asked to taste popcorn and as expected fresh popcorn was preferable to stale.
But when participants were given popcorn in a movie theater people who have a habit of eating popcorn at the movies ate just as much stale popcorn as participants in the fresh popcorn group.
The thoughtful intentional mind is derailed easily and people tend to fall back on habitual behaviors. Forty percent of the time we're not thinking about what we're doing Wood interjects.
Interestingly farm managers who are aware of the factors that contribute to postharvest grain loss actually lose less grain.
Goldsmith explained that in tropical systems where the farming season lasts much longer than in the United states the more intensive production results in two crops a year on the same plot of ground--soybeans followed by corn.
in order to get that second crop of corn. A lack of understanding and awareness is also part of the problem.
but this area of the world has the greatest potential to materially augment global grain supplies.
The potential for new grain producers on new land is coming from farmers in the Southern hemisphere.
#Tricking plants to see the light may control most important twitch on Earthcopious corn growing in tiny backyard plots?
but none have explained experimental observations as well as the new work led by biophysicist Josã Onuchic at Rice
The Rice-Baylor team applied protein-folding algorithms developed by Onuchic and his colleagues to analyze how hemagglutinin reconfigures itself as it infects a cell.
and they are the prime focus of study for Onuchic and his colleagues at Rice's Center for Theoretical Biological Physics (CTBP).
The fusion peptides are the most important part of the molecule said Rice postdoctoral researcher and co-author Jeffrey Noel.
which moved to Rice from the University of California San diego three years ago to take advantage of collaborations with Texas Medical center researchers--one of Rice's Priorities for the New Century.
and Rice Ma said. We're very happy with that. The paper's co-authors are Rice graduate students Xingcheng Lin and Nathanial Eddy and Paul Whitford an assistant professor at Northeastern University in Boston.
Onuchic is Rice's Harry C . and Olga K. Wiess Professor of Physics and Astronomy and co-director of the CTBP based at Rice's Bioscience Research Collaborative.
Ma is a professor of bioengineering at Rice and the Lodwick T. Bolin Professor of Biochemistry at Baylor.
Wang is an assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Baylor. The National Science Foundation (NSF) the Welch Foundation the National institutes of health the Gillson-Longenbaugh Foundation and the Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas supported the research.
The researchers utilized the Data analysis and Visualization Cyberinfrastructure (DAVINCI) supercomputer supported by the NSF and the Bluebiou supercomputer both administered by Rice's Ken Kennedy Institute for Information technology.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Rice university. The original article was written by Mike Williams. Note:
In a new study appearing online this week in the journal Science Express scientists at Rice the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing
Most high-temperature superconductors and many closely related compounds exhibit a number of exotic electronic phases particularly as they approach the critical temperature where superconductivity arises said Pengcheng Dai professor of physics and astronomy at Rice and the study
Rice theoretical physicist and study co-author Andriy Nevidomskyy assistant professor of physics and astronomy used the analogy of a crowd gathered at a stadium to watch a sporting event.
Rice theoretical physicist Qimiao Si another study co-author said the magnetic behavior observed by the inelastic neutron-scattering measurements reflects the way the spins of the electrons are organized dynamically in the material.
This spin excitation anisotropy sheds new light on the microscopic origins of electronic phases in the iron pnictide superconductors said Si Rice's Harry C. and Olga K. Wiess
Gluten a protein is found in grains such as wheat barley rye and triticale a cross between wheat and rye.
African rice sequencedan international team of researchers led by the University of Arizona has sequenced the complete genome of African rice.
'and agriculturalists'understanding of the growing patterns of African rice as well as enable the development of new rice varieties that are better able to cope with increasing environmental stressors to help solve global hunger challenges.
The paper The genome sequence of African rice (Oryza glaberrima) and evidence for independent domestication was published online in Nature Genetics on Sunday.
The effort to sequence the African rice genome was led by Rod A. Wing director of the Arizona Genomics Institute at the UA and the Bud Antle Endowed Chair in the School of Plant sciences in the UA College of Agriculture
Rice feeds half the world making it the most important food crop Wing said. Rice will play a key role in helping to solve what we call the 9 billion-people question.
The 9 billion-people question refers to predictions that the world's population will increase to more than 9 billion people--many of
Now with the completely sequenced African rice genome scientists and agriculturalists can search for ways to cross Asian
and African species to develop new varieties of rice with the high-yield traits of Asian rice and the hardiness of African rice.
African rice is once more at the forefront of cultivation strategies that aim to confront climate change
and food availability challenges said Judith Carney a professor of geography at the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at the University of California Los angeles and author of Black Rice.
The book describes the historical importance of African rice which was brought to the United states during the period of transatlantic slavery.
and her book served as one of the inspirations behind sequencing the African rice genome.
Although it is cultivated currently in only a handful of locations around the world African rice is hardier
African rice already has been crossed with Asian rice to produce new varieties under a group known as NERICA which stands for New Rice for Africa.
The African rice genome is especially important because many of the genes code for traits that make African rice resistant to environmental stress such as long periods of drought high salinity in the soils and flooding.
Now that we have a precise knowledge of the genome we can identify these traits more easily
or through genetic modification techniques noted Wing who is also a member of the UA's BIO5 Institute and holds the Axa Endowed Chair of Genome Biology and Evolutionary Genomics at the International Rice Research
The idea is to create a super-rice that will be higher yielding but will have less of an environmental impact--such as varieties that require less water fertilizer and pesticides.
His group developed the physical maps for Asian rice and donated it to the Rice Genome Project making sequencing of that complete genome possible.
Much of the evolutionary analysis of the genome was performed by Muhua Wang a UA plant sciences doctoral candidate and by Carlos Machado of the University of Maryland.
In analyzing the 33000 genes that make up the African rice genome the researchers discovered that during the process of domestication Africans
whether African rice originally was domesticated in one region or in several locations across Africa. By comparing the genome with
and his team found that it's most similar to a population of wild rice species found in one location along the Niger river in Mali.
Our data supports the hypothesis that the domestication of African rice was centric in this region of Africa Wing said.
From 1998 to 2005 Wing led the U s. effort to help sequence the genome of Asian rice which is the only other domesticated rice species. Those results were published in the journal Nature in 2005
and analyzing the genomes of the wild relatives of African and Asian rice. By understanding the entire genus at a genome level we have a whole new pool of genetic variation that can be used to combat pests
One example he said would be adding disease resistance genes from all of the wild rice varieties to a species of cultivated rice creating a new super-crop that is resistant to diseases and pests.
In November Wing and his collaborators will celebrate the 10th anniversary of the completion of the Asian rice genome
and the new completion of the African rice genome at the 12th International Symposium on Rice Functional genomics a conference that will be held in Tucson Arizona.
Sequencing of the African rice genome was made possible by National Science Foundation grants#0321678#0638541#0822284 and#1026200 to the Oryza Map Alignment and Oryza Genome Evolution Projects.
The study looked in detail at global production of four leading food crops--rice wheat corn
For example wheat is very sensitive to ozone exposure while corn is much more adversely affected by heat.
The research was carried out by Colette Heald an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering (CEE) at MIT former CEE postdoc Amos Tai and Maria van Martin at Colorado State university.
During that period the number of acres used for corn and soybean production greatly increased roughly doubling over the course of the 20th century.
and corn harvested acreage in the Raccoon River watershed. In times of flood and in times of drought water flow rates were exacerbated by more or less agriculture respectively.
Our results suggest that changes in agricultural practices over this watershed--with increasing acreage planted in corn
The authors from Stanford university and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) say the odds of a major production slowdown of wheat
and corn even with a warming climate are not very high. But the risk is about 20 times more significant than it would be without global warming
Lobell and Tebaldi used computer models of global climate as well as data about weather and crops to calculate the chances that climatic trends would have a negative effect of 10 percent on yields of corn and wheat in the next
But when the authors accounted for human-induced global warming they found that the odds jumped to 1 in 10 for corn and 1 in 20 for wheat.
and by the U s. Department of energy (DOE). More crops needed worldwideglobal yields of crops such as corn and wheat have increased typically by about 1-2 percent per year in recent decades
and precipitation on wheat and corn yields in various regions of the globe and during specific times of the year that coincide with the most important times of the growing seasons for those two crops.
For example an increase of 1 Degree celsius (1. 8 degrees Fahrenheit) would slow corn yields by 7 percent
and wheat yields by 6 percent. Depending on the crop-growing region the odds of such a temperature increase in the next 20 years were about 30 to 40 percent in simulations that included increases in carbon dioxide.
Although society could offset the climate impacts by planting wheat and corn in cooler regions such planting shifts to date have not occurred quickly enough to offset warmer temperatures the study warned.
The authors also found little evidence that other adaptation strategies such as changes in crop varieties
#New hope for powdery mildew resistant barleynew research at the University of Adelaide has opened the way for the development of new lines of barley with resistance to powdery mildew.
In Australia annual barley production is second only to wheat with 7-8 million tonnes a year.
Powdery mildew is one of the most important diseases of barley. Senior Research Scientist Dr Alan Little and team have discovered the composition of special growths on the cell walls of barley plants that block the penetration of the fungus into the leaf.
The research by the ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Cell walls in the University's School of Agriculture Food and Wine in collaboration with the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research in Germany will be presented at the upcoming
Powdery mildew is a significant problem wherever barley is grown around the world says Dr Little. Growers with infected crops can expect up to 25%reductions in yield
and the barley may also be downgraded from high quality malting barley to that of feed quality with an associated loss in market value.
Developing barley with improved resistance to the disease is therefore even more important. The discovery means researchers have new targets for breeding powdery mildew resistant barley lines.
Powdery mildew feeds on the living plant says Dr Little. The fungus spore lands on the leaf and sends out a tubelike structure
We can now use this knowledge find ways of increasing these polysaccharides in barley plants to produce more resistant lines available for growers says Dr Little.
#Corn and soy insecticides similar to nicotine found widespread in midwest U s. riversinsecticides similar to nicotine known as neonicotinoids were found commonly in streams throughout the Midwest according to a new USGS study.
The use of clothianidin one of the chemicals studied on corn in Iowa alone has doubled almost between 2011 and 2013.
The use of treated seeds in the United states has increased to the point where most corn and soybeans planted in the United states have seed a treatment (i e. coating) many
#Rising temperatures hinder Indian wheat productiongeographers at the University of Southampton have found a link between increasing average temperatures in India and a reduction in wheat production.
Researchers Dr John Duncan Dr Jadu Dash and Professor Pete Atkinson have shown that recent warmer temperatures in the country's major wheat belt are having a negative effect on crop yield.
Our findings highlight the vulnerability of India's wheat production system to temperature rise which is predicted to continue in the coming decades as a consequence of climate change.
The researchers used satellite images taken at weekly intervals from 2002 to 2007 of the wheat growing seasons to measure'vegetation greenness'of the crop--acting as an indicator of crop yield.
In some areas of the Indian wheat belt growers have been bringing forward their growing season in order to align the most sensitive point of the crop growth cycle with a cooler period.
Our study shows that over the longer period farmers are going to have to think seriously about changing their wheat to more heat tolerant varieties
which uses huge quantities of wheat. This underlines how crucial it is to consider what types of wheat need to be grown in the coming decades to secure production.
We hope that soon we will be able to examine agricultural practices in even greater detail--with the launch of the European space agency's Sentinel satellites which will provide regular data at even higher spatial resolution.
Cattle in feedlots on the other hand eat mostly corn which requires less land but much more irrigation and nitrogen fertilizer.
and concentrates such as corn) the team developed equations that yielded values for the environmental cost-per calorie and then per unit of protein for each food.
University of Kansas Distinguished Professor Mabel Rice lead author said that all of the language traits analyzed in the study--vocabulary combining words
but was greater for identical twins said Rice strengthening the case for the heritability of language development.
This finding disputes hypotheses that attribute delays in early language acquisition of twins to mothers whose attention is reduced due to the demands of caring for two toddlers said Rice.
However said Rice prematurity and birth complications more common in identical twins could also affect their higher rates of language delay.
Twin studies provide unique opportunities to study inherited and environmental contributions to language acquisition said Rice.
The measure was inspired by the Rice/Wexler Test of Early Grammar Impairment developed by Rice and Massachusetts institute of technology Professor Kenneth Wexler in 2001.
Rice's collaborators in the international longitudinal project that began in 2002 are Professors Cate Taylor
since it is a record of all multiple births said Rice. The research group has followed the development of 1000 sets of Western Australian twins from their first words.
Agriculture is responsible for 20 to 35 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions largely in the form of carbon dioxide from tropical deforestation methane from livestock and rice growing and nitrous oxide from crop fertilization.
China and India for rice production; and China India and the United states for crop fertilization.
China India and the U s.--and three crops rice wheat and corn--are the biggest sources of excess nutrient use worldwide so offer the greatest opportunity for improvement.
With respect to water rice and wheat are the crops that create the most demand for irrigation worldwide
and Western europe account for the bulk of this diet gap with corn the main crop being diverted to animal feed.
The loss of 1 kilogram of boneless beef has the same effect as wasting 24 kilograms of wheat due to inefficiencies in converting grain to meat.
#Chromosome-based draft of the wheat genome completedseveral Kansas State university researchers were essential in helping scientists assemble a draft of a genetic blueprint of bread wheat also known as common wheat.
The International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium which also includes faculty at Kansas State university recently published a chromosome-based draft sequence of wheat's genetic code
which is called a genome. A chromosome-based draft sequence of the hexaploid bread wheat genome is one of four papers about the wheat genome that appear in the journal Science.
The genetic blueprint is an invaluable resource to plant science researchers and breeders said Eduard Akhunov associate professor of plant pathology
and a collaborator with the International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium. For the first time they have at their disposal a set of tools enabling them to rapidly locate specific genes on individual wheat chromosomes throughout the genome Akhunov said.
This resource is invaluable for identifying those genes that control complex traits such as yield grain quality disease pest resistance and abiotic stress tolerance.
They will be able to produce a new generation of wheat varieties with higher yields and improved sustainability to meet the demands of a growing world population in a changing environment.
This is a very significant advancement for wheat genetics and breeding community Akhunov said. The wheat genome sequence provides a foundation for studying genetic variation
and understanding how changes in the genetic code can impact important agronomic traits. In our lab we use this sequence to create a catalog of single base changes in DNA sequence of a worldwide sample of wheat lines to get insights into the evolution and origin of wheat genetic diversity.
Akhunov Shichen Wang a programmer and bioinformatics scientist in plant pathology and Jesse Poland assistant professor of plant pathology collaborated with the International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium to order genes along the wheat chromosomes.
Other Kansas State university researchers in the department of plant pathology involved include Bikram Gill university distinguished professor
and director of the Wheat Genetics Resource Center and Bernd Friebe research professor who developed genetic material that was essential for obtaining the chromosome-based sequence of the wheat genome.
A second paper in Science details the first reference sequence of chromosome 3b the largest chromosome in common wheat.
The wheat genome only has 21 chromosomes but each chromosome is very big and therefore quite complicated Akhunov said.
This is nearly three times more information than is in the entire rice genome. So trying to sequence this chromosome
This divided the wheat genome into chromosomes and then split each chromosome into smaller segments.
The chromosome-based daft sequence the critical step before the full wheat genome is sequenced Akhunov said.
The sequencing approach developed for the 3b chromosome can now be applied for sequencing the remaining chromosomes in wheat.
Wheat is a staple source of food for the majority of the world. As the global population continues to rapidly increase we will need all the tools available to continue producing enough food for all people in light of a changing climate diminishing land
This work will give a boost to researchers looking to identify ways to increase wheat yields.
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