Seed orchards are specialised plantations established to produce genetically improved seed by combining elite genotypes under managed pollination. By assembling select families or clones, these ...

As the human population increases and protein demand doubles, modern plant breeders must further optimize soybean plant architecture and per plant yield for modern farming systems. Conventional ...

In an agricultural advancement, scientists have deciphered the genetic underpinnings of watermelon chromosomal translocations, the key to cultivating fruits with fewer seeds. The global demand for ...

At first glance, Chris Smith’s modest farm plot outside Asheville, North Carolina, has nothing in common with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the powerful particle collider located on the border of ...

Rearranging veggie genes is big business, and we're not even talking about biotechnology. Private companies and university researchers spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year breeding better ...

Pioneering new technology is set to accelerate the global quest for crop improvement in a development which echoes the Green Revolution of the post war period. The speed breeding platform developed by ...

The United States is one of only a handful of countries that allows companies to hold patents on plant varieties. As a result, a small number of corporations can – and do – suppress competition in the ...

Two-thirds of the world’s food comes today from just nine plants: sugar cane, maize (corn), rice, wheat, potatoes, soybeans, oil-palm fruit, sugar beet and cassava. In the past, farmers grew tens of ...