Biofuel is a fuel that is produced over a short time span from biomass, rather than by the very slow natural processes involved in the formation of fossil fuels, such as oil. Biofuel can be produced from plants or from agricultural, domestic or industrial biowaste. The climate change mitigation potential of biofuel varies considerably, from emission levels comparable to fossil fuels in some scenarios to negative emissions in others. Biofuels are mostly used for transportation, but can also be used for heating and electricity. Biofuels are regarded as a renewable energy source.
Phalaris arundinacea, or reed canary grass, is a tall, perennial bunchgrass that commonly forms extensive single-species stands along the margins of lakes and streams and in wet open areas, with a wide distribution in Europe, Asia, northern Africa and North America. Other common names for the plant include gardener's-garters and ribbon grass in English, alpiste roseau in French, Rohrglanzgras in German, kusa-yoshi in Japanese, caniço-malhado in Portuguese, and hierba cinta and pasto cinto in Spanish.
Panicum virgatum, commonly known as switchgrass, is a perennial warm season bunchgrass native to North America, where it occurs naturally from 55°N latitude in Canada southwards into the United States and Mexico. Switchgrass is one of the dominant species of the central North American tallgrass prairie and can be found in remnant prairies, in native grass pastures, and naturalized along roadsides. It is used primarily for soil conservation, forage production, game cover, as an ornamental grass, in phytoremediation projects, fiber, electricity, heat production, for biosequestration of atmospheric carbon dioxide, and more recently as a biomass crop for ethanol and butanol.
Plant breeders' rights (PBR), also known as plant variety rights (PVR), are rights granted to the breeder of a new variety of plant that give the breeder exclusive control over the propagating material and harvested material of a new variety for a number of years.
Sweet sorghum is any of the many varieties of the sorghum grass whose stalks have a high sugar content. Sweet sorghum thrives better under drier and warmer conditions than many other crops and is grown primarily for forage, silage, and syrup production.
Sorghum bicolor, commonly called sorghum and also known as great millet, broomcorn, guinea corn, durra, imphee, jowar, or milo, is a grass species cultivated for its grain, which is used for food for humans, animal feed, and ethanol production. Sorghum originated in Africa, and is now cultivated widely in tropical and subtropical regions. Sorghum is the world's fifth-most important cereal crop after rice, wheat, maize, and barley, with 61,000,000 metric tons of annual global production in 2021. S. bicolor is typically an annual, but some cultivars are perennial. It grows in clumps that may reach over 4 metres (13 ft) high. The grain is small, ranging from 2 to 4 millimetres in diameter. Sweet sorghums are sorghum cultivars that are primarily grown for forage, syrup production, and ethanol; they are taller than those grown for grain.
Sporisorium reilianum Langdon & Full., (1978), previously known as Sphacelotheca reiliana, and Sporisorium reilianum, is a species of biotrophic fungus in the family Ustilaginaceae. It is a plant pathogen that infects maize and sorghum.
Maize, also known as corn in North American- and Australian- English, is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. The leafy stalk of the plant gives rise to inflorescences which produce pollen and separate ovuliferous inflorescences called ears that when fertilized yield kernels or seeds, which are botanical fruits. The term maize is preferred in formal, scientific, and international usage as the common name because this refers specifically to this one grain whereas corn refers to any principal cereal crop cultivated in a country. For example, in North America and Australia corn is often used for maize, but in England and Wales it can refer to wheat or barley, and in Scotland and Ireland to oats.
In statistical genetics, inclusive composite interval mapping (ICIM) has been proposed as an approach to QTL mapping for populations derived from bi-parental crosses. QTL mapping is based on genetic linkage map and phenotypic data and attempts to locate individual genetic factors on chromosomes and to estimate their genetic effects.
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. The goals of plant breeding are to produce crop varieties that boast unique and superior traits for a variety of applications. The most frequently addressed agricultural traits are those related to biotic and abiotic stress tolerance, grain or biomass yield, end-use quality characteristics such as taste or the concentrations of specific biological molecules and ease of processing.
Genomic Selection (GS) predicts the breeding values of an offspring in a population by associating their traits with their high-density genetic marker scores. GS is a method proposed to address deficiencies of marker-assisted selection (MAS) in breeding programs. However, GS is a form of MAS that differs from it by estimating, at the same time, all genetic markers, haplotypes or marker effects along the entire genome to calculate the values of genomic estimated breeding values (GEBV). The potentiality of GS is to explain the genetic diversity of a breeding program through a high coverage of genome-wide markers and to assess the effects of those markers to predict breeding values.
High plains disease is a viral disease afflicting wheat and maize. It is caused by the negative-sense ssRNA virus High Plains wheat mosaic emaravirus. Symptoms are similar to Wheat streak mosaic virus, with leaf veins showing yellow flecks and streaks, followed by leaf margin purpling in maize. Depending on the timing of infection, stunting and death occur. Plants can be doubly infected with high plains virus and wheat streak mosaic virus.
Function Maize gene for first step in biosynthesis of benzoxazin, which aids in resistance to insect pests, pathogenic fungi and bacteria.
Pollination bags, sometimes called crossing bags, isolation bags or exclusion bags, are containers made of various different materials for the purpose of controlling pollination for plants.
Marginal land is land that is of little agricultural or developmental value because crops produced from the area would be worth less than any rent paid for access to the area. Although the term marginal is often used in a subjective sense for less-than-ideal lands, it is fundamentally an economic term that is defined by the local economic context. Thus what constitutes marginal land varies both with location and over time: for example, "a soil profile with a set of specific biophysical characteristics reported as “marginal” in the US corn belt may be one of the better soils available in another context". Changes in product values – such as the ethanol-demand induced spike in corn prices – can result in formerly marginal lands becoming profitable. Marginal lands can therefore be more difficult to delineate as compared to "abandoned crop lands" which reflect more clearly definable landowner-initiated land use changes.
Edward S. Buckler is a plant geneticist with the USDA Agricultural Research Service and holds an adjunct appointment at Cornell University. His work focuses on both quantitative and statistical genetics in maize as well as other crops such as cassava. He originated the concept of Nested association mapping and created the first population designed for this type of quantitative genetic analysis. Buckler was elected an American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellow in 2012. In 2014, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. In 2017, he received the NAS prize in Food and Agricultural Science for his work using natural genetic diversity to develop varieties of maize with fifteen times more vitamin A than existing varieties.
Stephen Kresovich is a plant geneticist and the Coker Endowed Chair of Genetics in the Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences at Clemson University and professor in the School of Integrative Plant Science in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University. Since 2019 he has served as director of the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Crop Improvement.
The Crop Science Society of America (CSSA) is a scientific and professional society of plant biologists and crop scientists based in the United States.
Ernest Robert Sears was an American geneticist, botanist, pioneer of plant genetics, and leading expert on wheat cytogenetics. Sears and Sir Ralph Riley (1924–1999) are perhaps the two most important founders of chromosome engineering in plant breeding.
Ralph Merrill Caldwell was an American plant breeder, mycologist, and plant pathologist. Through his work with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Purdue University, he developed disease-resistant cultivars for a wide variety of plants, including widely-grown wheat cultivars.
