Triticale is a hybrid of wheat (Triticum) and rye (Secale) first bred in laboratories during the late 19th century in Scotland and Germany. Commercially available triticale is almost always a second-generation hybrid, i.e., a cross between two kinds of primary (first-cross) triticales. As a rule, triticale combines the yield potential and grain quality of wheat with the disease and environmental tolerance of rye. Only recently has it been developed into a commercially viable crop. Depending on the cultivar, triticale can more or less resemble either of its parents. It is grown mostly for forage or fodder, although some triticale-based foods can be purchased at health food stores and can be found in some breakfast cereals.
Phytophthora infestans is an oomycete or water mold, a microorganism that causes the serious potato and tomato disease known as late blight or potato blight. Late blight was a major culprit in the 1840s European, the 1845 Irish, and the 1846 Highland potato famines. The organism can also infect some other members of the Solanaceae. The pathogen is favored by moist, cool environments: sporulation is optimal at 12–18 °C in water-saturated or nearly saturated environments, and zoospore production is favored at temperatures below 15 °C. Lesion growth rates are typically optimal at a slightly warmer temperature range of 20 to 24 °C.
Dwarfing is a process in which a breed of animals or cultivar of plants is changed to become significantly smaller than standard members of their species. The effect can be induced through human intervention or non-human processes, and can include genetic, nutritional or hormonal means. Used most specifically, dwarfing includes pathogenic changes in the structure of an organism, in contrast to non-pathogenic proportional reduction in stature.
Steven Dale Tanksley is the Chief Technology Officer of Nature Source Improved Plants. Prior to founding Nature Source Improved Plants, Tanksley served as the Liberty Hyde Bailey professor of plant breeding and biometry and chair of the Genomics Initiative Task Force at Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. He is currently a Professor Emeritus at Cornell University.
Marker assisted selection or marker aided selection(MAS) is an indirect selection process where a trait of interest is selected based on a marker linked to a trait of interest, rather than on the trait itself. This process has been extensively researched and proposed for plant and animal breeding, nevertheless, as of 2013 "breeding programs based on DNA markers for improving quantitative traits in plants are rare".
Drought tolerance is the ability to which a plant maintains its biomass production during arid or drought conditions. Some plants are naturally adapted to dry conditions, surviving with protection mechanisms such as desiccation tolerance, detoxification, or repair of xylem embolism. Other plants, specifically crops like corn, wheat, and rice, have become increasingly tolerant to drought with new varieties created via genetic engineering.
A doubled haploid (DH) is a genotype formed when haploid cells undergo chromosome doubling. Artificial production of doubled haploids is important in plant breeding.
The Institute of Plant Breeding (IPB) is a research institute of the University of the Philippines Los Baños. It is the national biotechnology research center and repository for all crops other than rice, which is handled by the Philippine Rice Research Institute.
A crop wild relative (CWR) is a wild plant closely related to a domesticated plant, whose geographic origins can be traced to regions known as Vavilov Centers. It may be a wild ancestor of the domesticated plant, or another closely related taxon.
Sir Ralph Riley was a British geneticist.
Cisgenesis is a product designation for a category of genetically engineered plants. A variety of classification schemes have been proposed that order genetically modified organisms based on the nature of introduced genotypical changes, rather than the process of genetic engineering.
Crop diversity is the variance in genetic and phenotypic characteristics of plants used in agriculture. Over the past 50 years, there has been a major decline in two components of crop diversity; genetic diversity within each crop and the number of species commonly grown.
Plant genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity specifically in Plants. It is generally considered a field of biology and botany, but intersects frequently with many other life sciences and is strongly linked with the study of information systems. Plant genetics is similar in many ways to animal genetics but differs in a few key areas.
Plant disease resistance protects plants from pathogens in two ways: by pre-formed structures and chemicals, and by infection-induced responses of the immune system. Relative to a susceptible plant, disease resistance is the reduction of pathogen growth on or in the plant, while the term disease tolerance describes plants that exhibit little disease damage despite substantial pathogen levels. Disease outcome is determined by the three-way interaction of the pathogen, the plant and the environmental conditions.
The Istituto per la Protezione delle Piante (IPP), or 'Institute of Plant Protection', is part of the Food Department of the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, an Italian government organization with the aim of supporting scientific and technological research. IPP has four bases in Italy: Turin, Florence, Portici, and Bari.
A genetically modified tomato, or transgenic tomato, is a tomato that has had its genes modified, using genetic engineering. The first trial genetically modified food was a tomato engineered to have a longer shelf life, but never made it to market. Currently there are no genetically modified tomatoes available commercially, but scientists are developing tomatoes with new traits like increased resistance to pests or environmental stresses. Other projects aim to enrich tomatoes with substances that may offer health benefits or be more nutritious. As well as aiming to produce novel crops, scientists produce genetically modified tomatoes to understand the function of genes naturally present in tomatoes.
Plant breeding is the science of changing the traits of plants in order to produce desired characteristics. It has been used to improve the quality of nutrition in products for humans and animals. Plant breeding can be accomplished through many different techniques ranging from simply selecting plants with desirable characteristics for propagation, to methods that make use of knowledge of genetics and chromosomes, to more complex molecular techniques. Genes in a plant are what determine what type of qualitative or quantitative traits it will have. Plant breeders strive to create a specific outcome of plants and potentially new plant varieties.
P. Ananda Kumar is an Indian plant molecular biologist and biotechnologist.
The Indian Institute of Horticultural Research (IIHR) is an autonomous organization acting as a nodal agency for basic, strategic, anticipatory and applied research on various aspects of horticulture such as fruits, vegetable, ornamental, medicinal and aromatic plants and mushrooms in India. The institute has its headquarters in Bengaluru, Karnataka, India and is a subsidiary of Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), New Delhi, under the Ministry of Agriculture, India.
The John Innes Centre Germplasm Resources Unit located in the Norwich Research Park, Norwich, England, is a Germplasm conservation unit and National Capability supported by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council. The unit houses a number of internationally recognised reference and working collections for wheat, oats, barley and peas, which serves UK and non-UK based academic, industrial and non-industrial groups.
