Connect with:
Thursday / March 13. 2025

logo
mobile-logo
HomePosts Tagged "gene"
Agri Genomics, Agrotech

The Central Island Agricultural Research Institute (ICAR-CIARI), Port Blair has establish a Pandanus Gene Bank at its Garacharma Research Farm under the project funded by National Medicinal Plants Board, New Delhi, to conserve, evaluate and utilise different species of the Pandanus collected from different parts of Andaman and Nicobar. 

A total of 175 seedlings of various species are planted in 2.0 acre of terraced land at ICAR-CIARI campus, and as part of World Coconut Day 2022 celebrations, thirty seedlings of five released coconut varieties are also planted in the field gene bank. 

The Central Island Agricultural Research Institute (ICAR-CIARI),

China

The new traits include change of the leaf angle and improvement in drought tolerance of corn

Origin Agritech Limited, an agriculture technology company, announced that the company, together with its partner China Agricultural University, has submitted applications for bio-safety certificates for six newly developed gene edited traits that significantly increase the yield of corn crops.

The new traits include change of the leaf angle and improvement in drought tolerance of corn. Changing the leaf angle and plant types will improve the photosynthesis efficiency and increase the planting population, which in turn increases yields. The new traits will also improve the water use efficiency and drought tolerance for corn plants. Origin is currently integrating these traits into its commercial hybrid corns, including the company’s nutritionally enhanced corn. 

In late January, China announced that the country would allow gene edited crops and that the approval process would be very streamlined as compared to the process for getting a new GMO trait approved.

Origin began creating gene edited corn traits in 2017 and already has developed many other desirable traits. Additionally, Origin’s insect resistant and herbicide tolerant GMO corn is also in the approval process. All of these traits could be integrated into these corn crops as well, further increasing yields.

“Given the current challenges facing the world of food inflation, environmental change and uncertainty of food exports from certain countries due to geopolitical events, we are thrilled to be playing a major role in improving food security,” said Dr Gengchen Han, Origin Agritech’s Chairman.

The new traits include change of the

R&D, Seeds

Apomixis, enables plants with a desirable combination of traits to produce many offspring with the same desirable combination of genes as the mother plant

Researchers from KeyGene and Wageningen University & Research (WUR), in collaboration with colleagues from Japan and New Zealand, have discovered a gene that will make it possible to produce seeds from crops that are genetically identical to the mother plant and that do not need pollination. 

This phenomenon, called apomixis, enables plants with a desirable combination of traits to produce many offspring with the same desirable combination of genes as the mother plant. Together with researchers from the Japanese breeding company Takii and New Zealand’s Plant & Food Research and Lincoln University, the KeyGene and WUR researchers explain in Nature Genetics magazine how the gene works and the way it influenced the work of the ‘father of genetics’ Gregor Mendel. The discovery is expected to lead to major innovations in plant breeding over the coming years.

The gene found has been given the name PAR, shortened from parthenogenesis, the process whereby egg cells grow into plant embryos without fertilisation of the egg cells. The discovery marks a definitive breakthrough and crowns the research team’s work that started at KeyGene over 15 years ago.

Apomixis is seen as the holy grail of agriculture. Because apomictic plants produce ‘clonal’ seeds from the mother plant, the process allows uniquely superior combinations of a plant’s traits to be captured in one fell swoop. Apomixis can therefore accelerate the breeding of innovative crops, make seed production less costly and bring the advantages of hybrid breeding to a lot more of the world’s crop species.

Apomixis, enables plants with a desirable combination