In a world first CSIRO Plant Industry has discovered a gene that is the ’Achilles heel’ of rust, a common disease of plants, which could save millions in breeding rust resistant plants and avert losses in food production.
“You can breed rust resistant plants, but this resistance only works when the rust fungus contains the gene we found – the ’avirulence’ gene,” says Dr Peter Dodds, CSIRO Plant Industry.
Without existing rust resistant wheat varieties Australia&#
Triticale is a hardy and new winter cereal crop created in a laboratory environment by crossing wheat with rye. After years of effort over a 30-year period, plant breeders, in particular those at INRA (France’s National Institute for Agronomic Research), have succeeded in making this species very attractive to farmers. Indeed, Triticale is today producing yields equivalent to, or better than, those for wheat.
Annaig Bouguennec, INRA’s researcher in charge of the triticale programme, explain
The latest trials of a Graingene-bred water-efficient wheat variety have shown it has the potential to add millions of dollars to the value of the NSW wheat crop. In 12 independent field trials held across New South Wales in 2003, Drysdale wheat yielded an average of 23 per cent more grain than the current recommended variety Diamondbird, despite very dry conditions.
“If Drysdale was sown throughout southern and central New South Wales, it could add hundreds of millions of dollars to the ave
A study published in the Vadose Zone Journal examines how different soil types affect Cryptosporidium parvum’s transport.
Groundwater is generally considered a safe source of drinking water because pathogens are presumably filtered out during their transport through unsaturated soils. Nevertheless, pathogen-contaminated groundwater has been the cause of many disease outbreaks in the last 10 years including cryptosporidiosis caused by the protozoan pathogen Cryptosporidium parvum.
One of the most damaging crop pests, the corn earworm, may be outwitting efforts to control it by making structural changes in a single metabolic protein, but new insights uncovered by molecular modeling could pave the way for more efficient insecticides, say researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
In a study that compared the ability of corn earworms (Helicoverpa zea) and black swallowtail butterflies (Papilio polyxenes) to neutralize insecticides and plant defense a
The artichoke grown in Navarre, the Blanca de Tudela, appears earlier, is the most productive and has a greater industrial and agricultural yield than the rest of the varieties of this plant. This is the conclusion of researcher Juan Ignacio Macua González in his PhD thesis defended at the Public University of Navarre.
Navarre, nucleus of cultivation and supply
In Spain there are some 20,000 hectares given over to the cultivation of the artichoke. This surface area is fundame
Researchers at Oregon State University have created purple-fruited tomatoes that include anthocyanins – the same class of health-promoting pigments in red wine that function as antioxidants and are believed to prevent heart disease.
Their research is featured as the cover story in the latest issue of the Journal of Heredity.
Domestic tomato varieties grown and consumed in the United States do not normally produce fruit containing any anthocyanin, explained Jim Myers, OSU’s Ba
Drugs based on CSIRO’s research into the influenza virus have been shown to be effective, in laboratory tests, against a sample of an H5N1 influenza virus currently infecting chickens in Asia.
CSIRO Health Sciences and Nutrition scientist, Dr Jenny McKimm-Breschkin, has tested the ability of the flu drug Relenza™ to inhibit the virus, known as H5N1 strain, which has killed millions of chickens in Asia and has been responsible for several human deaths this year.
The tests, used to m
An increase in the spread of rust diseases could have devastating results on the fast-growing ornamental crop industry, say pathologists with The American Phytopathological Society (APS).
The U.S. ornamental plant industry, which includes deciduous and evergreen trees, shrubs, cut flowers, and foliage and flowering potted plants, grew in value to $14.3 billion in 2002. Geranium, chrysanthemum, gladiolus, and daylily are just a few of the many crops produced in the U.S.
According t
Most agronomists look to their laboratories, greenhouses or research farms for innovative new cropping techniques. But Jane Mt. Pleasant, professor of horticulture and director of the American Indian Program at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., has taken a different path, mining her Iroquois heritage for planting and cultivation methods that work for today’s farmers.
Mt. Pleasant studies what traditionally are known as the “three sisters”: beans, corn and squash. These staples of Iroqu
Recent EU research discovered that tomato waste is full of untapped, nutritious goodness, and suggested how to make the most of it. Instead of using the excess tomatoes for animal feed or simply discarding them, the EU TOM(ato) project suggests using the tomato waste as a natural food additive. Every year, around 4 million tonnes of tomato by-products are disposed of in Europe alone. These dregs, especially the seeds, are an excellent source of nutrient-rich substances such as carotenoids, proteins
The growing of cereal crops without recourse to fertiliser application or weeding, but alternatively rotating with vetch and fallow, together with returning the straw to the soil after the harvest, increases the production yield two-fold with respect to the conventional mode of growing crops, with its use of chemical additives and herbicides. Moreover, the profitability of this ecological system can be multiplied by four when an ecological market exists. This is what Gabriel Pardo Sanclemente from th
A CSIRO irrigation research laboratory at Griffith in NSW will provide ground-breaking knowledge, skills and technology to the world’s biggest and most intensive irrigation regions under a new United Nations program.
UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, has appointed CSIRO Land and Water’s Sustainable Irrigation Systems group in Griffith as the HELP (Hydrology, Environment, Life and Policy) Regional Coordinating Unit for the Australasian reg
While cities provide vital habitat for human beings to thrive, it appears U.S. cities have been built on the most fertile soils, lessening contributions of these lands to Earth’s food web and human agriculture, according to a study by NASA researchers and others.
Though cities account for just 3 percent of continental U.S. land area, the food and fiber that could be grown there rivals current production on all U.S. agricultural lands, which cover 29 percent of the country. Marc Imhoff,
Possession isn’t necessarily nine-tenths of the law, especially if the purchase is a wheat variety protected by the Plant Variety Protection Act. This misunderstood and often-ignored law may soon become more stringently enforced, largely due to the stepped-up use of DNA plant testing.
Gary Bomar, Texas Cooperative Extension agricultural agent for Taylor County, said the practice of “catching” or keeping some of the current crop’s production for planting the following season has lo
CSIRO Livestock Industries and animal health company, Imugene Limited, have started research work designed to develop a vaccine for chickens at risk of contracting the deadly strain of avian influenza now causing havoc in Asia.
The research team aims to deliver a trial vaccine against the virulent H5N1 strain of the disease, within a matter of months. Once developed, the vaccine could be used to safeguard Australia’s poultry industry.
CSIRO’s Dr Chris Prideaux says that ev
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