Abiotic stress such as cold, drought, salt, and heavy metals largely influences plant development and crop productivity. Abiotic stress has been becoming a major threat to food security due to the constant changes of climate and deterioration of environment caused by human activity. To cope with abiotic stress, plants can initiate a number of molecular, cellular , and physiological changes to r...

OBJECTIVES A population based case-control study was conducted in a highly agricultural area in Italy to investigate the association between chronic lymphocytic leukaemias (CLLs) and non-Hodgkin's lymphomas (NHLs), and subtypes, and exposure to pesticides in farming-animal breeding workers. METHODS 187 cases of CLLs and NHLs and 977 population controls were interviewed on medical, residential...

Genetic resources provide basic material for selection and improvement through breeding to ensure food security needs of the world’s rapidly rising population. Conservation and utilization of plant genetic resources are important components of ex-situ collections. Management of ex-situ collections requires creative and adaptive decisions tailored to operating conditions that are specific and co...

Sustainable crop production is the major challenge in the current global climate change scenario. Drought stress is one of the most critical abiotic factors which negatively impact crop productivity. In recent years, knowledge about molecular regulation has been generated to understand drought stress responses. For example, information obtained by transcriptome analysis has enhanced our knowled...

Breeding new cultivars is a slow and expensive process, but genetic screening tools exist to improve efficiency. We employed the marker-assisted breeding (MAB) Pipeline approach to facilitate routine use of MAB in the Washington apple breeding program. This study traced the journey of one marker-locus-trait (M-L-T) association from publication through high-throughput PCR-based genetic testing t...

For many crops, the benefits of traditional breeding practices are difficult to achieve because the crops have long juvenile periods that necessitate long breeding cycles, desired genotypes for a cross do not have synchronized flowering because of photoperiod or vernalization requirements, or preferred lines are propagated asexually and have limited flowering potential. In light of these limita...

Rice is one of the most important crops in the world. Although genetic improvement is a key technology for the acceleration of rice breeding, a lack of genome information had restricted efforts in molecular-based breeding until the completion of the high-quality rice genome sequence, which opened new opportunities for research in various areas of genomics. The syntenic relationship of the rice ...

More than 60% of phosphorus (P) taken up by rice (Oryza spp.) is accumulated in the grains at harvest and hence exported from fields, leading to a continuous removal of P. If P removed from fields is not replaced by P inputs then soil P stocks decline, with consequences for subsequent crops. Breeding rice genotypes with a low concentration of P in the grains could be a strategy to reduce mainte...