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HomePosts Tagged "Research" (Page 2)
Finance, R&D

Syngenta will also utilise this investment to secure long-term R&D investments in strategic crops

Syngenta Vegetable Seeds will invest an additional €2,4 million ($2.7 M) to research and development centres in Spain. The investment in its El Ejido R&D Centre will allow Syngenta to further develop and deploy new technologies, aiming to enhance product performance using digital tools, analytics, and data science.

Syngenta will also utilise this investment to secure long-term R&D investments in strategic crops and fast-track the development process required to sustain the launch of commercial products that serve customers in over 100 countries.

As a part of this investment, a new farm in the Torre Pacheco area will offer greater automation and digitization, enabling quicker adoption of new technologies to pioneer and set novel benchmarks for plant breeding.

Syngenta will also utilise this investment to

R&D

The study has demonstrated that the crop water use model MOPECO can be adapted to many different scenarios

In a collaborative work between the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Soil and Water Management Research, the University of Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM) in Spain, West Texas A&M University, and Texas A&M AgriLife, researchers have adapted a crop model for use in the Texas High Plains to simulate crop water use and corn yield to help producers adjust center-pivot irrigation strategies and maximise profitability with limited water.

Crop producers in this semi-arid region of the Texas High Plains largely depend on groundwater irrigation. Each season, crop producers in the region evaluate how much land area could be irrigated under the pivot with limited water. Addressing this is not straightforward because producers must consider reducing irrigated areas, which influences grain yield, input costs, and the timing of the irrigation applications.

To help producers with these decisions, researchers completed a study that uses 25 years of climatic data to simulate corn production using a range of irrigation capacities, the maximum amount of water that can be delivered to an irrigated acre in a day, to evaluate water allocation strategies that could increase profitability and improve the efficient use of water. 

The model showed that for irrigation capacities representative of the region and a growing season with average rainfall, maximum profitability was achieved by irrigating about 75 per cent of entire pivot area with the remaining area in fallow or dryland cotton. Concentrating water generated greater net returns because of lower seed and fertiliser costs and greater corn yields that compensated for lack of production in fallow areas. In years with seasonal drought, the irrigated area would need to be further constrained to avoid crop failure and maximise profits.

“This study has demonstrated that the crop water use model MOPECO can be adapted to many different scenarios and is a useful tool for improving the environmental and economic sustainability of agricultural systems where water is limiting,” said Alfonso Domínguez researcher of the Centro Regional de Estudios del Agua (CREA) of UCLM.

The study has demonstrated that the crop

R&D

The MoU is aimed to facilitate a close cooperation in the research and academic activities between both the organisations

The ICAR-Central Citrus Research Institute, Nagpur, Maharashtra signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Dr Panjabrao Deshmukh Krishi Vidyapeeth, Akola, Maharashtra for facilitating the Students’ Training and Research on February 4, 2022.

Dr Dilip Ghosh, Director, ICAR-CCRI, Nagpur and Dr VM Bhale, Vice-Chancellor, Dr PDKV, Akola signed the MoU on the behalf of their respective organisations.

The MoU is aimed to facilitate a close cooperation in the research and academic activities between both the organisations and open a new chapter for research and development of the citriculture through the collaboration and linkages.

The MoU is aimed to facilitate a

Agro chems – Fertilizers

Organic fertilisers have helped greatly to consumers so that they can avail access to clean-label food items

As per the exclusive report by Vantage Market Research, the global Organic Fertilisers Market size is expected to reach over $22.13 Billion by 2028, exhibiting a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 12.1 per cent during the forecast period.

Organic fertilisers have helped greatly to consumers so that they can avail access to clean-label food items, to the extent that they are ready to pay a higher price for such products. Key manufacturers are therefore investing in bolstering their R&D capabilities and disperse eco-friendly fertilisers heavily, states Vantage Market Research, in a report, titled “Organic Fertilisers Market by source (Plant, Animal, Mineral), by crop type (Cereals & grains, Oilseed & pulses, Fruits & vegetables, Others), by form (Dry, Liquid), by Region (North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa) – Global Industry Assessment (2016 – 2021) and Forecast (2022 – 2028)”.

The agriculture sector depends largely upon fertilizers for improvement in soil productivity. Majorly chemical or synthetic fertilisers are used for enhancing crop yield. Moreover, there is trend towards use of these fertilisers, due to increase in awareness of adverse effects because of chemical fertilisers to both environment and human beings.

Organic fertilisers have helped greatly to consumers

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

Agro Universities, Live Stock

GADVASU organised a one-week training programme on Scientific Pig Farming for SC farmers of Punjab under the scheme RKVY-12-B.

The Department of Livestock Production Management, Guru Angad Dev Veterinary & Animal Sciences University, Ludhiana has recently organised a one-week training programme on Scientific Pig Farming for SC beneficiaries/farmers of Punjab under the scheme RKVY-12-B.

Dr Kulvinder Singh Sandhu, Dr Daljeet Kaur, and Dr Subhash Chandra coordinated the training under the leadership of Dr Yashpal Singh, course director and head of the department. Ten trainees participated in the training programme and attained knowledge on the various aspects of scientific pig farming like breeds and its selection, feeding, housing, clean meat production, vaccination protocols, disease prevention and economics of pig farming.

Practical exposure on scientific managemental practices like handling, recording of temperature, record keeping and needle teeth cutting was given to the trainees. Dr Parkash Singh Brar, Director Extension Education was the chief guest and distributed the certificates to the trainees. Dr Brar informed that a large population is still involved in unhygienic and low-profit unscientific pig farming, so there is a need to train the farmers to adopt scientific pig farming to increase their profit.

Commodities like 25 kg starter feed and university mineral mixture along with five-year Vigiyanak Pashu Palan subscription were distributed to encourage the trainees to shift to scientific pig farming practices.

GADVASU organised a one-week training programme on

Acquaculture, AgroPolicy

This is a significant achievement for India in decoding the whole genome of the native species of shrimp, one of the world’s most important seafood commodities.

The Scientists of the ICAR-Central Institute of Brackishwater Aquaculture, Chennai have recently sequenced and assembled the whole genome of Indian White Shrimp (Penaeus indicus) on their own. This is a significant achievement for India in decoding the whole genome of the native species of shrimp, one of the world’s most important seafood commodities.

The Indian shrimp industry contributes about 11 per cent share of the global production (759,906 Tonnes valued at $4 Billion in 2020) amongst the shrimp producing countries.

The whole genome sequence of P indicus is a major landmark and this very high-quality genome assembly of P indicus is of 1.93 Gb size with contig N50 of 1.4 Mb having very high number of 346 un-gapped contigs of over 1 Mb length and scaffold N50 of 34.4 Mb. Considering the large genomes of >1.5 Gb length, the assembly presented for P indicus is the only crustacean genome and one among the only nine invertebrate genomes sequenced so far to meet the reference standard of 1 Mb contig N50 and 10 Mb scaffold N50 lengths.

The future genetic improvement programmes with focus on P indicus would benefit aquaculture with increased productivity and sustainability across Asia and the other geographical locations where this shrimp species is predominantly found.

The Scientists’ team involved in shrimp genome assembly included Dr MS Shekhar, Dr Vinaya Kumar Katneni, Dr Ashok Kumar Jangam and Dr KK Vijayan.

The shrimp genome sequencing project was financially supported by the ICAR-Consortium Research Platform on Genomics and coordinated by Dr Joy Krushna Jena, Deputy Director General (Fisheries Science), ICAR.

This is a significant achievement for India