Breeding Field Crops

Bioinformatic aspects of breeding polyploid crops

Genomics and breeding of Brassicaceae crops

crops include oil crops, vegetables, condi-ments, fodder crops, and ornamental plants. Most of these crops belong to or are closely related to the genus Brassica. The Brassicaceae also includes the most intensively studied model plant, Arabidopsis thaliana. In molecular genetic studies of Brassicaceae crops, information on A. thaliana genes is highly useful, and many genes important for plant b...

Breeding Cold-hardy Fruit Crops in Minnesota

The Univ. of Minnesota has one of the oldest, continuous fruit breeding programs in North America. It serves a region that experiences all the vagaries of a continental climate, with temperatures ranging from above 35C in the summer to below – 40C in the winter. Precipitation, as rain during the growing season and snow during the dormant season, can vary dramatically from year to year. These wo...

Breeding crops for improved mineral nutrition under climate change conditions.

Improvements in understanding how climate change may influence chemical and physical processes in soils, how this may affect nutrient availability, and how plants may respond to changed availability of nutrients will influence crop breeding programmes. The effects of increased atmospheric CO2 and warmer temperatures, both individually and combined, on soil microbial activity, including mycorrhi...

Role of classical breeding in improvement of pulse crops

Classical breeding of many crops has been instrumental for ensuring food security by developing new varieties that are higheryielding, resistant to pests and diseases, drought-resistant or regionally adapted to different environments and growing conditions. A total of 513 cultivars of different pulse crops including chickpea, pigeonpea, mungbean, urdbean, lentil, fieldpea and rajmash were devel...