Blackleg disease caused by the heterothallic ascomycete fungus Leptosphaeria maculans (Desm.) Ces. et de Not. (anamorph: Phoma lingam Tode ex Fr.), is the major disease of Brassica crops such as turnip rape (Brassica rapa L. syn. B. campestris; 2n = 2x = 20, genome AA), cabbage (B. oleracea L.; 2n = 2x = 18, genome CC), rapeseed (syn. canola or oilseed rape B. napus L.; 2n = 4x = 38, genome AAC...

Brassica carinata, an allotetraploid with B and C genomes, has a number of traits that would be valuable to introgress into B. napus. Interspecific hybrids were created between B. carinata (BBCC) and B. napus (AACC), using an advanced backcross approach to identify and introgress traits of agronomic interest from the B. carinata genome and to study the genetic changes that occur during the intr...

The impact of genetically modified canola (Brassica napus) on biodiversity has been examined since its initial stage of commercialization. Various research groups have extensively investigated crossability and introgression among species of Brassicaceae. B. rapa and B. juncea are ranked first and second as the recipients of cross-pollination and introgression from B. napus, respectively. Crossa...

Pathogenesis-related (PR) proteins are expressed by virtually all plants in response to pathogen infection and, in many cases, in response to abiotic stresses as well and include the PR10 family. However, the precise roles of the PR10 protein family in abiotic stress responses are not clear. In this paper we report, for the first time, that the constitutive expression of a pea PR10 gene in Bras...

Yellow-seeded Brassica juncea is a novel canola species targeted to grow in the southern Canadian prairies where thermotolerance, disease resistance, and adaptation to dry agronomic conditions are required. The support of its cultivation needs nutritional evaluation of its coproduct. The B. juncea canola meal (CM) contains less fiber than conventional, dark-seeded Brassica napus CM but also sli...

Functional genomic studies of many polyploid crops, including rapeseed (Brassica napus), are constrained by limited tool sets. Here we report development of a gain-of-function platform, termed 'iFOX (inducible Full-length cDNA OvereXpressor gene)-Hunting', for inducible expression of B. napus seed cDNAs in Arabidopsis. A Gateway-compatible plant gene expression vector containing a methoxyfenozi...

The oilseed rape plant, Brassica napus, possesses two endogenous male sterile cytoplasms, nap and pol. Previous studies have shown that nuclear restoration of pol cytoplasmic male sterility (CMS) is conditioned by a gene, Rfp, that is also involved in modifying transcripts of the pol CMS-associated orf224/atp6 mtDNA region. We now find that the nap nuclear restorer gene Rfn apparently is identi...

Flowering time genes have a strong influence on successful reproduction and life cycle adaptation. However, their regulation is highly complex and only well understood in diploid model systems. For crops with a polyploid background from the genus Brassica, data on flowering time gene variation are scarce, although indispensable for modern breeding techniques like marker-assisted breeding. We ha...