Synopsis: 2.0.. agro: Cereals:


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#Increased drought portends lower future Midwestern U s. crop yieldsincreasingly harsh drought conditions in the U s. Midwest's Corn belt may take a serious toll on corn

Corn yields could drop by 15 to 30 percent according to the paper's estimates; soybean yield losses would be less severe.

North carolina State university's Roderick Rejesus associate professor of agricultural and resource economics and a co-author of the Science paper says that corn

U s. corn and soybeans account for approximately 40 and 35 percent of global production respectively making the results important to the world's food supply.

Using field data over an 18-year period the researchers point to the effects of vapor pressure deficit (VPD) on corn and soybean yields.

when corn yields diminish? There are lots of tradeoffs involved in this issue. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by North carolina State university.


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which is released from natural sources such as wetlands as well as from human activities including waste management the oil and gas industries rice production and livestock farming.


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A conventional plastic container and nine types of biocontainers (bioplastic coir manure peat bioplastic sleeve slotted rice hull solid rice hull straw and wood fiber) were included in the life cycle


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Grain boundaries are tiny defects that that normally act as roadblocks to efficiency because they inhibit carrier collection

and chemical composition after treatment the researchers found that chlorine atoms replaced tellurium atoms within the grain boundaries.

This atomic substitution creates local electric fields at the grain boundaries that boost the material's photovoltaic performance instead of damaging it.

Controlling the grain boundary structure says Li is a new direction that could help raise the cell efficiencies closer to the theoretical maximum of 32 percent light-to-energy conversion.

if all the grain boundaries in a thin film material could be aligned in same direction it could improve cell efficiency even further Li said.


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The nanoreporter is sized based on nanometer carbon material developed by a consortium of Rice labs led by chemist James Tour

The Rice team capitalized on that work by using the probes to create downhole detectors for oil fields.

Led by Rice professors Tour Michael Wong and Mason Tomson and researcher Amy Kan the university has pioneered efforts to gather information from oil fields through the use of nanoreporters.

We found the longer the PVA polymer chains the more stable the nanoparticles were in the high temperatures they're subjected to said Rice graduate student Chih-Chau Hwang co-lead author of the paper with fellow graduate student Gedeng Ruan.

Kan co-director of the Rice-based Brine Chemistry Consortium; Martã an assistant professor of chemistry and bioengineering;


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#Rice gets trendy, adds nutrients, so much morein the April issue of Food technology magazine published by the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) Senior Associate Editor Karen Nachay writes about rice becoming a trendy culinary selection of many restaurant menus

but also the go-to solution for consumers looking for gluten-and allergen-free choices rich in nutrients.

The National Restaurant Association's 2014 What's Hot Culinary Forecast predicts diners will see more rice selections on restaurant menus including black rice and red rice.

Food scientists are looking for new ways to incorporate rice into many consumer products. Rice ingredients can enrich food

and beverage products with nutrients improve textural attributes replace common food allergens function in gluten-free formulations

The article highlighted food scientists using sprouted brown rice to increase protein in bars powdered shakes soups pastas ready-to-drink beverages cereals and sweet and savory snacks.

Rice starches are being used to provide a variety of texture options in both food and beverages from smooth and creamy to crispy and crunchy.

Rice is also being used to enrich diets with more fiber. The article online can be found at:


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Dairy-free milks including soy rice and almond ranked fifth and coconut water ranked eighth among the popular nonalcoholic beverage trends in restaurants for 2014.


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The region also is different from areas of origin that have been suggested for common bean and corn


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Olsen studies rice and cassava and is interested currently in rice mimics weeds that look enough like rice that they fly under the radar even

when rice fields are handweeded. Both Marshall and Olsen contributed articles to the special PNAS issue

Recent evidence that cereal crops such as wheat or barley evolved domestication traits much more slowly than had been thought has led to renewed interest in the idea that selection during domestication may have been partly accidental.

Traditionally in Southeast asia many different varieties of rice were grown simultaneously in a given field. It was a bet-hedging strategy he said that ensured some plants would survive


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#Climate benefit of biofuels from corn residue: Researchers cast doubtusing corn crop residue to make ethanol

and other biofuels reduces soil carbon and can generate more greenhouse gases than gasoline according to a study published today in the journal Nature Climate Change.

whether corn residue can be used to meet federal mandates to ramp up ethanol production and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Corn stover--the stalks leaves and cobs in cornfields after harvest--has been considered a ready resource for cellulosic ethanol production.

The U s. Department of energy has provided more than $1 billion in federal funds to support research to develop cellulosic biofuels including ethanol made from corn stover.

While the cellulosic biofuel production process has yet to be commercialized extensively several private companies are specialized developing biorefineries capable of converting tough corn fibers into fuel.


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However there is a growing body of research with evidence that no-till systems in corn


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and soil microbiologist Chuck Rice gave a presentation at the World bank on April 16. Rice was part of a group of 18 authors from around the world who wrote the chapter pertaining to agriculture forestry and other land use.

In an interview he discussed some of the recommendations made by the authors. Most greenhouse gases come from burning fossil fuels to produce energy

Agriculture globally contributes about 10 to 12 percent to greenhouse gas emissions Rice said. If you add in forestry it moves it up to around 25 percent.

when the first President bush signed with other countries that climate change was an issue for the planet said Rice who added that this latest report is one of a series that has come out every seven years.

This is the fifth assessment report said Rice who also served on the fourth report which received the Nobel Peace Prize.

which is the group Rice's team is part of. About 240 scientists including specialists in forestry land use social science economics

and can mitigate greenhouse gas emissions Rice said. They conducted literature reviews and summarized key points of the science that's occurred since the last report in 2007.

Rice said that even the cold weather in the United states this past winter might make sense in relation to climate change

and previous reports is that carbon be sequestered through land management changes Rice said of practices that hold carbon in the soil.

and heat we have in Kansas Rice said. Although the practice of not tilling the soil (no-till) started in the United states two other countries Brazil

and Argentina are the world leaders in no-till said Rice adding that 80 percent

Promoting product use with low emissions--This recommendation pertains mostly to the forestry sector Rice said.

In addition however agriculture's use of fossil energy could be reduced as a mitigation step Rice said:

Rice described this proposal as reducing inputs while maintaining or increasing outputs which makes production more efficient.

Pursuing changing human diets away from food animal products--Rice acknowledged that this recommendation may be controversial

Methane emissions from livestock is a major contributor to agriculture's footprint Rice said. Approximately 40 percent of agriculture's emissions are due to livestock

Agriculture's in a unique position Rice said. If you look at the mitigation options in the next 20 to 30 years

whether you agree that humans are having an effect on climate change Rice said. A lot of the things we're talking about are things that you should be doing for the environment as well as things that are profitable for the farmer including increasing efficiency and reducing tillage.


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For example the gene teosinte branched1 (tb1) converts highly branched teosinte plants into single stalks of corn.

Shattering in foxtail millet and its wild ancestor green millet is controlled by two stretches of DNA containing

Shattering in plants with a wild green-millet allele at the QTLI location depends on the allele at the QTL2 location.


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or sausages while fish fast foods chocolate greasy foods pasta and rice were also high on the list.

Starches such as pasta rice bread and pastry and dairy products such as cream ice cream cheese and eggs were a no-no for almost 12 percent of respondents.


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and certain types of agriculture (e g. rice alfalfa) provide nearly all of the habitat used by millions of ducks geese shorebirds and other waterbirds every fall winter and spring.


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Wheat seeds are coated with substances that also form hydrocyanic acid when they react. However the base substances are separated from each other in different layers


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Unlike corn or other grains most of the agave plant can be converted to ethanol Ravi said.


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and the environmental benefits achievable by growing corn soybean and winter wheat under regimes that use one third of the usual amount of fertilizer--or none at all--with cover crops fertilizing the fields in winter.


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#Making ethanol without corn or other plantsstanford University scientists have found a new highly efficient way to produce liquid ethanol from carbon monoxide gas.

This promising discovery could provide an eco-friendly alternative to conventional ethanol production from corn

Most ethanol today is produced at high-temperature fermentation facilities that chemically convert corn sugarcane and other plants into liquid fuel.

In some parts of the United states it takes more than 800 gallons of water to grow a bushel of corn which in turn yields about 3 gallons of ethanol.

Oxide-derived copper on the other hand is made of copper nanocrystals that are linked all together in a continuous network with well-defined grain boundaries.


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The environmental fate of black carbon is understood not well said study co-author Caroline Masiello a Rice biogeochemist who began studying black carbon with Druffel in the 1990s.

and how much of it breaks down along the way said Masiello associate professor of Earth science at Rice.


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This new method will allow us to exploit the properties of molybdenum diselenide in a number of applications said study leader Pulickel Ajayan chair of Rice's Department of Materials Science and Nanoengineering.

In the Rice study Ajayan and colleagues tested their atomically thin layers of molybdenum diselenide by building a field effect transistor (FET) a commonly used device in the microelectronic industry.

For example the FET tests found that the electron mobility of Rice's molybdenum diselenide was higher than that of CVD-grown molybdenum disulfide.

and nanoengineering and of chemistry at Rice Characterizing both the structure and function of a material as we have done in this paper is critical to such advances.

One of the driving forces in Rice's Department of Materials Science and Nanoengineering is the close collaborations that develop between the people who are focused on synthesis

and those of us involved with characterization said Ringe who joined Rice's faculty in January.

Additional study co-authors include Xingli Wang Yongji Gong Gang Shi Kunttal Keyshar Gonglan Ye Robert Vajtai and Jun Lou all of Rice and Wai Leong Chow


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The Rice lab of chemical and biomolecular engineer Laura Segatori has designed a sophisticated circuit that signals increases in the degradation of proteins by the cell's ubiquitin proteasome system (UPS). The research appears online today in Nature Communications.

The Rice team added to the cell a set of genetic circuits called Degradation On--Deg-On for short.

or activate degradation said Segatori Rice's T N. Law Assistant professor of Chemical and Biomolecular engineering and an assistant professor of biochemistry and cell biology.

The Rice team did extensive computer modeling of Deg-On to improve its sensitivity and dynamic range before building

The team included graduate student and lead author Wenting Zhao undergraduate Claire Mcwhite and Rice alumnus Matthew Bonem in collaboration with Jonathan Silberg an associate professor of biochemistry and cell biology at Rice.

The National Science Foundation the Welch Foundation and the Sid W. Richardson Foundation through a Rice Institute of Biosciences and Bioengineering Medical Innovations Award Grant supported the research.


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Findings from this wheat field-test study led by a UC Davis plant scientist will be reported online April 6 in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Wheat in particular provides nearly one-fourth of all protein in the global human diet. Many previous laboratory studies had demonstrated that elevated levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide inhibited nitrate assimilation in the leaves of grain and non-legume plants;

however there had been no verification of this relationship in field-grown plants. Wheat field studyto observe the response of wheat to different levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide the researchers examined samples of wheat that had been grown in 1996 and 1997 in the Maricopa Agricultural Center near Phoenix Ariz.

At that time carbon dioxide-enriched air was released in the fields creating an elevated level of atmospheric carbon at the test plots similar to

Control plantings of wheat were grown also in the ambient untreated level of carbon dioxide. Leaf material harvested from the various wheat tests plots was placed immediately on ice

and then was dried oven and stored in vacuum-sealed containers to minimize changes over time in various nitrogen compounds.

A fast-forward through more than a decade found Bloom and the current research team able to conduct chemical analyses that were not available at the time the experimental wheat plants were harvested.

In the recent study the researchers documented that three different measures of nitrate assimilation affirmed that the elevated level of atmospheric carbon dioxide had inhibited nitrate assimilation into protein in the field-grown wheat.

which showed that there are several physiological mechanisms responsible for carbon dioxide's inhibition of nitrate assimilation in leaves Bloom said. 3 percent protein decline expectedbloom noted that other studies also have shown that protein concentrations in the grain

of wheat rice and barley--as well as in potato tubers--decline on average by approximately 8 percent under elevated levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

When this decline is factored into the respective portion of dietary protein that humans derive from these various crops it becomes clear that the overall amount of protein available for human consumption may drop by about 3 percent as atmospheric carbon dioxide reaches the levels anticipated to occur during the next few


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and Melinda Gates Foundation Long is leading an international effort to improve rice soybean and cassava guided by similar computational approaches with the end goal of making more productive and sustainable crops.


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How Capn Crunchs gaze is influencing your purchasingin a study of 65 cereals in 10 different grocery stores Cornell researchers found that cereals marketed to kids are placed half as high on supermarket shelves as adult cereals--the average height

whereas spokes-characters on adult cereal look almost straight ahead. To examine the influence of cereal box spokes-characters Cornell Food

Results show that characters on cereals marketed to children make incidental eye contact with children and cereals marketed to adults make incidental eye contact with adult shoppers.

Of the 86 different spokes-characters evaluated 57 were marketed to children with a downward gaze at an angle of 9. 67 degrees.

In contrast the gazes of characters on adult marketed cereals were nearly straight ahead at a. 43 degree upward angle.

In agreement with previous studies the children's cereals were placed on the bottom 2 shelves while the adult cereals were placed on the top 2 selves.

Thus the average height of the spokes-characters gaze was 53.99 inches for adult cereals and 20.21 inches for children cereals.

In a second study researchers examined the extent to which eye contact with cereal box spokes-characters influences feelings of trust and connection with a brand. 63 individuals from a private northeastern university participated.

Furthermore participants indicated liking Trix better compared to another cereal when the rabbit made eye contact.


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000 yearscharred grains of barley millet and wheat deposited nearly 5000 years ago at campsites in the high plains of Kazakhstan show that nomadic sheepherders played a surprisingly important role in the early spread of domesticated

Ancient wheat and broomcorn millet recovered in nomadic campsites in Kazakhstan show that prehistoric herders in Central Eurasia had incorporated both regional crops into their economy

Bread wheat cultivated at least 6000 years ago in Southwest asia was absent in China before 2500 B c


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disease-resistant varieties of riceas Earth's human population marches toward 9 billion the need for hardy new varieties of grain crops has never been greater.

Now researchers at Michigan Technological University have identified a set of genes that could be key to the development of the next generation of super rice.

A meta-data analysis by biologist Ramakrishna Wusirika and Phd student Rafi Shaik has uncovered more than 1000 genes in rice that appear to play key roles in managing its response to two different kinds

However Wusirika and Shaik discovered that 1377 of the approximately 3800 genes involved in rice's stress response played a role in both types stress.

The top genes are likely candidates for developing a rice variety with broad stress-range tolerance Wusirika said.

and Identify Candidate Genes for Broad Resistance in Rice published in the January edition of Plant Physiology.


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Celiac disease is a food sensitivity to dietary gluten contained in cereals. In people who are predisposed genetically gluten containing food will trigger an immune response that leads to destruction of the intestinal lining abdominal pain changes in bowel habits malnutrition

People with this disease cannot eat food containing wheat rye or barley which is a main source of protein intake in the western diet.

Development of new therapies such as this one could help in the management of common gastrointestinal disorders such as irritable bowel syndrome that could be triggered also by wheat containing food.


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An increase in evaporative drying means that even regions expected to get more rain including important wheat corn

and rice belts in the western United states and southeastern China will be at risk of drought.


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#Satellite shows high productivity from U s. corn beltdata from satellite sensors show that during the Northern hemisphere's growing season the Midwest region of the United states boasts more photosynthetic activity than any other spot On earth according to NASA

and other human influences in the agricultural areas we're not going to correctly estimate the amount of carbon taken up by vegetation particularly corn Joiner said.

Corn plants are very productive in terms of assimilating carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This needs to be accounted for going forward in trying to predict how much of the atmospheric carbon dioxide will be taken up by crops in a changing climate.


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Rice scientists mixed very low concentrations of diamond particles (about 6 nanometers in diameter) with mineral oil to test the nanofluid's thermal conductivity

The Rice results appeared this month in the American Chemical Society journal Applied materials and Interfaces.

The work that could improve applications where control of heat is paramount was led by Pulickel Ajayan chair of Rice's new Materials Science and Nanoengineering Department and Rice alumnus Jaime Taha-Tijerina now a research scientist

Co-authors are former Rice postdoctoral researcher Tharangattu Narayanan now at the CSIR-Central Electrochemical Research Institute Karaikundi India;

Chandra Sekhar Tiwary who has a research appointment at Rice and is a scientist at the Indian Institute of Science Bangalore India;

and Rice alumna Karen Lozano a professor of mechanical engineering and Mircea Chipara an assistant professor of physics and geology both of the University of Texas Pan American Edinburg Texas. Ajayan is Rice


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They rigged the field centre's microscopes with smartphones to produce images of the tiny spider's even tinier genitals (using cooking oil from the station's kitchen to make them more translucent) dusted the spider's webs with puffs of corn flour (also from the kitchen) to make them stand out


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Professor Hidetoshi Saze of the OIST Plant Epigenetics Unit is leading a new research project to develop a new strain of rice that produces digestion-resistant starch to prevent these diseases.

development of the new rice strain nutritional and physiological analyses and processing and sales. Nanshoka-Mai or rice with digestion-resistant starch is breed a new of rice rich in starch that does not as readily break down into glucose.

This rice strain was developed first by a research team at Kyushu University 30 years ago.

The starch from most grains which consist largely of an unbranched glucose polymer known as amylose is broken normally down into glucose during the digestive process

This new strain of rice is expected to serve as an alternative preventative measure. In addition to its anti-obesity effect gathering evidence suggests that the rice with digestion-resistant starch may also provide other benefits such as lower blood sugar levels reduced neutral fat and harmful cholesterol levels and prevention

of lipid accumulation in the liver. Despite its great promise when researchers planted the original strain of resistant-starch rice in Okinawa the yield per hectare was about half that achieved in mainland Japan.

Prof. Saze and his team then started hybridizing the resistant-starch rice with local strains to genetically design a new strain of rice suited to Okinawa's climate.

Using OIST's next-generation sequencing machines Prof. Saze is analyzing genomes of these rice strains.

He is also using plant incubators in his unit to shorten the vegetation period of the new rice.

It is important to obtain the support of rice producers in Okinawa by demonstrating a clear economic as well as health benefits of the resistant-starch rice.

The resistant-starch rice can be used in many food products. I hope that our project will improve people's health said Prof.

Saze. In order to assess the effects of the resistant-starch rice the project also involves medical and physiological studies by the University of the Ryukyus Osaka Prefectural University and Ishikawa Prefectural University.

Moreover some local companies are working together to develop processed foods with rice powder produced from the resistant-starch rice.

Whether they are staples or regional specialities in the near future we may be able to see many more healthy local products on store shelves.


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environment on plant traitslet's say plant scientists want to develop new lines of corn that will better tolerate long stretches of hot dry weather.


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#Secret of multiple insecticide resistance in mosquitoesresearchers at LSTM have discovered how unprecedented multiple and extreme-level resistance is generated in mosquitoes found in the rice fields of Tiassalã in southern CÃ'te d'Ivoire.


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which has estimated for the first time the global effects of extreme temperatures and elevated levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) on the production of maize wheat and soybean.

The impacts on wheat and soybean are likely to be less profound primarily because of the fertilisation effects that elevated levels of CO2 can have on these crops.

If the CO2 fertilisation effects do occur the researchers found that the yields of wheat

and the positive impacts on wheat will be offset by 52 per cent. The researchers from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research (University of East Anglia Norwich) Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment (London School of economics and Political science London

while the impacts on wheat and soybean are generally positive unless CO2 fertilisation effects have been overestimated continued Deryng.


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Even the source of the vodka--corn wheat rye barley potato berries and cactus--didn't affect peoples'preferences he noted.


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Researchers simulated a three-year soybean-wheat-corn rotation with and without cover crops in central Pennsylvania

The cover crop rotation included red clover frost-seeded into winter wheat in March and winter rye planted after corn was harvested in the fall.

The research funded by the U s. Department of agriculture used simulated management practices including tillage synthetic fertilizer use and mechanical weed control.


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#Preventing Head blight in Barley, Wheat: Biochemical Pathways Hold Key to Resistancepale shriveled heads of grain spell trouble for wheat

and barley farmers--they're the telltale signs of fusarium head blight. The fungal disease commonly known as scab not only dramatically shrinks yields

but produces toxins that make the grain dangerous for human or animal consumption. From 1991 to 1996 head blight caused $2. 6 billion in losses to the U s. wheat crop.

At its peak the fungus destroyed the entire malting barley crop in the Red river and Ohio river Valleys according to molecular biologist Yang Yen an Agricultural Experiment Station researcher and professor at South dakota State university.

Two decades later the U s. Department of agriculture still ranks head blight as the worst plant disease to hit the U s. since the rust epidemics in the 1950s.

Wheat and barley farmers have lost more than $3 billion since 1990 from blight outbreaks. Despite major research funding--including the U s. Wheat

and Barley Scab Initiative scientists admit that efforts to control this devastating disease have met with limited success. This is an extraordinary disease that requires extraordinary means to combat it says Yen who began working on head blight in 1997.

Using advanced genetic and molecular technologies Yen has begun tracing the biochemical pathways that make wheat susceptible or resistant to head blight.

Three graduate students and two postdoctoral scientists have worked on this research over the last 16 years.

Multiple hosts and pathogens Head blight can be caused by multiple pathogens and these pathogens can attack multiple hosts including grasses

and corn Yen explains. This makes the disease tougher to combat. Researchers are working to develop resistant types of grain alter tillage practices

and apply fungicides to fight the disease. This disease is not new Yen says. It was reported first in England in 1884 and in North america in 1890.

Varieties of wheat with some resistance to blight were collected in China during the 1950s and breeding for better resistance has been done since.

The most resistant variety of wheat Sumai 3 was released in China in the 1960s Yen explains

The wheat flower must be open for the fungus to enter Yen explains. In susceptible varieties the fungus kills the infected cells in the head thereby plugging the transport of water and nutrients to the upper part of the head.

While diseases such as stem rust want the host to survive Yen says fusarium attacks the wheat

or barley spikes and the kernels collapse because the fungus kills them and lives on the dead cells.

Gene expression Yen has undertaken a molecular study of the disease investigating how the fungal infection impacts wheat gene expression.

He compared the most resistant varieties of wheat with the most susceptible ones. By looking at how genes were expressed the molecular biologist narrowed the possibilities from thousands of genes to 608 then to 47 and eventually to three.

To prove this he took a susceptible wheat variety treated it with jasmonate and ethylene and then exposed it to head blight.

The wheat resisted the fungi. Two of the three genes are involved directly in the chemical pathways Yen explains.

Through funding from USDA and the South dakota Wheat Commission he has identified biomarkers that will allow breeders to screen for this resistance.

In the resistant wheat the key resistance gene may delay this chain of reactions until the host tissue is too hard for the disease to develop Yen explains.

In the susceptible wheat the disease makes the plant drop this gene expression so the fungus can get established.


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