Oilseed crops are major sources of oils for human nutrition, and an increasing proportion is also being utilized for industrial purposes. Recent advances in our understanding of the basic biochemistry of seed oil biosynthesis, coupled with identification of genes for oilseed modification, have set the stage for the genetic engineering of oilseed crops that produce ‘designer’ plant seed oils tai...

One of the problems facing the introduction of novel crops is the concerns about their spread into the natural environment. A long-term study of oilseed rape (canola) growing on the verges of one of Britain’s busiest motorways provides some encouragement that at least some crops find the going tough outside the field environment in which they are sown. Michael Crawley at Imperial College London...

Oilseed rape is used as both food and a renewable energy resource. Physiological parameters, such as the amino acid aspartic acid, can indicate the growth status of oilseed rape. Traditional detection methods are laborious, time consuming, costly, and not usable in the field. Here, we investigate near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) as a fast and non-destructive detection method of aspartic acid i...

To study the effect of plant species on the abundance and diversity of bacterial antagonists, the abundance, the phenotypic diversity, and the genotypic diversity of rhizobacteria isolated from potato, oilseed rape, and strawberry and from bulk soil which showed antagonistic activity towards the soilborne pathogen Verticillium dahliae Kleb. were analyzed. Rhizosphere and soil samples were taken...

Predicting outcomes of transgene flow from arable crops requires a system perspective that considers ecological and evolutionary processes within a landscape context. In Europe, the arable weed Raphanus raphanistrum is a potential hybridization partner of oilseed rape, and the two species are ecologically linked through the common herbivores Meligethes spp. Observations in Switzerland show that...

Monitoring studies at the landscape level are complex, expensive and difficult to conduct. Many aspects have to be considered to avoid confounding effects which is probably the reason why they are not regularly performed in the context of risk assessments of plant protection products to pollinating insects. However, if conducted appropriately their contribution is most valuable. In this paper w...

In the oilseed rape Brassica napus there are two forms of acetyl-CoA carboxylase (ACCase). As in other dicotyledonous plants there is a type I ACCase, the single polypeptide 220 kDa form, and a type II multi-subunit complex analogous to that of Escherichia coli and Anabaena. This paper describes the cloning and characterization of a plant biotin carboxyl carrier protein (BCCP) from the type II ...

Effects of climate change on productivity of agricultural crops in relation to diseases that attack them are difficult to predict because they are complex and nonlinear. To investigate these crop-disease-climate interactions, UKCIP02 scenarios predicting UK temperature and rainfall under high- and low-CO(2) emission scenarios for the 2020s and 2050s were combined with a crop-simulation model pr...

One of the problems facing the introduction of novel crops is the concerns about their spread into the natural environment. A long-term study of oilseed rape (canola) growing on the verges of one of Britain’s busiest motorways provides some encouragement that at least some crops find the going tough outside the field environment in which they are sown. Michael Crawley at Imperial College London...

Oilseed rape (Brassica napus) is one of the major oilseed crops in the world but is vulnerable to attack by many pathogens and insect pests. In addition to the host plant genotype, micro-organisms present in the rhizosphere and within plant tissues affect the susceptibility to plant pathogens. While rapid progress has been achieved concerning the concept of plant resistance genes, information o...