Mapping and quantifying unique branching structures in lentil (Lens culinaris Medik.).

Background: Lentil (Lens culinaris Medik.) is a globally-significant agricultural crop used to feed millions of people. Lentils have been cultivated in the Australian states of Victoria and South Australia for several decades, but efforts are now being made to expand their cultivation into Western Australia and New South Wales.

Haplotype-Based Genome-Wide Association Analysis Using Exome Capture Assay and Digital Phenotyping Identifies Genetic Loci Underlying Salt Tolerance Mechanisms in Wheat.

Soil salinity can impose substantial stress on plant growth and cause significant yield losses. Crop varieties tolerant to salinity stress are needed to sustain yields in saline soils. This requires effective genotyping and phenotyping of germplasm pools to identify novel genes and QTL conferring salt tolerance that can be utilised in crop breeding schemes.

An image dataset of diverse safflower ( L.) genotypes for salt response phenotyping.

This article describes a dataset of high-resolution visible-spectrum images of safflower ( L.) plants obtained from a LemnaTec Scanalyser automated phenomics platform along with the associated image analysis output and manually acquired biomass data. This series contains 1832 images of 200 diverse safflower genotypes, acquired at the Plant Phenomics Victoria, Horsham, Victoria, Australia.

Rapid Screening of Nitrogen Use Efficiency in Perennial Ryegrass ( L.) Using Automated Image-Based Phenotyping.

Perennial ryegrass ( L.) is a dominant species in temperate Australian pastures. Currently, nitrogenous fertilizers are used to support herbage production for pasture and fodder.

Optical and physical mapping with local finishing enables megabase-scale resolution of agronomically important regions in the wheat genome.

Background: Numerous scaffold-level sequences for wheat are now being released and, in this context, we report on a strategy for improving the overall assembly to a level comparable to that of the human genome.

Results: Using chromosome 7A of wheat as a model, sequence-finished megabase-scale sections of this chromosome were established by combining a new independent assembly using a bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC)-based physical map, BAC pool paired-end sequencing, chromosome-arm-specific mate-pair sequencing and Bionano optical mapping with the International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium RefSeq v1.0 sequence and its underlying raw data.

Reduced lignin content and altered lignin composition in the warm season forage grass Paspalum dilatatum by down-regulation of a Cinnamoyl CoA reductase gene.

C4 grasses are favoured as forage crops in warm, humid climates. The use of C4 grasses in pastures is expected to increase because the tropical belt is widening due to global climate change. While the forage quality of Paspalum dilatatum (dallisgrass) is higher than that of other C4 forage grass species, digestibility of warm-season grasses is, in general, poor compared with most temperate grasses.