Division Zone Activity Determines the Potential of Drought-Stressed Maize Leaves to Resume Growth after Rehydration.

Drought is one of the most devastating causes of yield losses in crops like maize, and the anticipated increases in severity and duration of drought spells due to climate change pose an imminent threat to agricultural productivity. To understand the drought response, phenotypic and molecular studies are typically performed at a given time point after drought onset, representing a steady-state adaptation response. Because growth is a dynamic process, we monitored the drought response with high temporal resolution and examined cellular and transcriptomic changes after rehydration at 4 and 6 days after leaf four appearance.

CRISPR-Cas technology in corn: a new key to unlock genetic knowledge and create novel products.

Unlabelled: Since its inception in 2012, CRISPR-Cas technologies have taken the life science community by storm. Maize genetics research is no exception. Investigators around the world have adapted CRISPR tools to advance maize genetics research in many ways.

Where are the drought tolerant crops? An assessment of more than two decades of plant biotechnology effort in crop improvement.

Since the dawn of modern biotechnology public and private enterprise have pursued the development of a new breed of drought tolerant crop products. After more than 20 years of research and investment only a few such products have reached the market. This is due to several technical and market constraints.

Trehalose 6-Phosphate Regulates Photosynthesis and Assimilate Partitioning in Reproductive Tissue.

Transgenic maize () that expresses rice () () from the rice promoter, which is active over the flowering period, produces higher yields than wild type. This yield increase occurs with or without drought conditions during flowering. To understand the mechanistic basis of the increased yield, we characterized gene expression and metabolite profiles in leaves and developing female reproductive tissue, comprising florets, node, pith, and shank, over the flowering period with and without drought.

A Brief History of Promoter Development for Use in Transgenic Maize Applications.

Promoters regulate gene expression, and are essential biotechnology tools. Since its introduction in the mid-1990s, biotechnology has greatly enhanced maize productivity primarily through the development of insect control and herbicide tolerance traits. Additional biotechnology applications include improving seed nutrient composition, industrial protein production, therapeutic production, disease resistance, abiotic stress resistance, and yield enhancement.

Are GM Crops for Yield and Resilience Possible?

Crop yield improvements need to accelerate to avoid future food insecurity. Outside Europe, genetically modified (GM) crops for herbicide- and insect-resistance have been transformative in agriculture; other traits have also come to market. However, GM of yield potential and stress resilience has yet to impact on food security.

Strategies and tools to improve crop productivity by targeting photosynthesis.

Crop productivity needs to substantially increase to meet global food and feed demand for a rapidly growing world population. Agricultural technology developers are pursuing a variety of approaches based on both traditional technologies such as genetic improvement, pest control and mechanization as well as new technologies such as genomics, gene manipulation and environmental modelling to develop crops that are capable of meeting growing demand. Photosynthesis is a key biochemical process that, many suggest, is not yet optimized for industrial agriculture or the modern global environment.

MATRILINEAL, a sperm-specific phospholipase, triggers maize haploid induction.

Sexual reproduction in flowering plants involves double fertilization, the union of two sperm from pollen with two sex cells in the female embryo sac. Modern plant breeders increasingly seek to circumvent this process to produce doubled haploid individuals, which derive from the chromosome-doubled cells of the haploid gametophyte. Doubled haploid production fixes recombinant haploid genomes in inbred lines, shaving years off the breeding process.

Maternal Haploids Are Preferentially Induced by CENH3-tailswap Transgenic Complementation in Maize.

Doubled haploid plants are invaluable breeding tools but many crop species are recalcitrant to available haploid induction techniques. To test if haploid inducer lines can be engineered into crops, CENH3 (-∕-) and CENH3:RNAi lines were complemented by AcGREEN-tailswap-CENH3 or AcGREEN-CENH3 transgenes. Haploid induction rates were determined following testcrosses to wild-type plants after independently controlling for inducer parent sex and transgene zygosity.

Maize transformation technology development for commercial event generation.

Maize is an important food and feed crop in many countries. It is also one of the most important target crops for the application of biotechnology. Currently, there are more biotech traits available on the market in maize than in any other crop.

Trait stacking in transgenic crops: challenges and opportunities.

In recent years, there has been a rapid increase in the planting of transgenic crops with stacked traits. Most of these products have been formed by conventional breeding, i.e.