Improvement of Crop Protection Support System "PaDB"

Untapping root system architecture for crop improvement

Roots are the first organ to sense water deficit, and at the same time they extract virtually all those mineral nutrients from soil that are consumed by humans. Soil resource acquisition under challenging conditions such as drought is a primary limitation on plant productivity, resulting in low yields and thus food insecurity in the poorest countries. Indeed, in overall global agriculture, drou...

Connecting Biochemical Photosynthesis Models with Crop Models to Support Crop Improvement

The next advance in field crop productivity will likely need to come from improving crop use efficiency of resources (e.g., light, water, and nitrogen), aspects of which are closely linked with overall crop photosynthetic efficiency. Progress in genetic manipulation of photosynthesis is confounded by uncertainties of consequences at crop level because of difficulties connecting across scales. C...

Polyploidy and Crop Improvement

All crop plants are polyploid and some genomes have been duplicated more recently than others. Advancements in cytogenetic and molecular tools, including high-density genetic mapping, fl orescent in situ hybridization, and genome and EST sequencing, have enabled new insights into genome composition and the history of genome duplications in crop plants. We review this evidence and discuss the re...

Gene Editing and Crop Improvement Using CRISPR-Cas9 System

Advancements in Genome editing technologies have revolutionized the fields of functional genomics and crop improvement. CRISPR/Cas9 (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat)-Cas9 is a multipurpose technology for genetic engineering that relies on the complementarity of the guideRNA (gRNA) to a specific sequence and the Cas9 endonuclease activity. It has broadened the agricultur...

Specific Areas of Crop Protection