Publications by authors named "Valentina Infante"

The soil environment affected by plant roots and their exudates, termed the rhizosphere, significantly impacts crop health and is an attractive target for engineering desirable agricultural traits. Engineering microbes in the rhizosphere is one approach to improving crop yields that directly minimizes the number of genetic modifications made to plants. Soil microbes have the potential to assist with nutrient acquisition, heat tolerance, and drought response if they can persist in the rhizosphere in the correct numbers.

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  • Increasing biological nitrogen fixation (BNF) in maize can lessen the environmental harm caused by synthetic nitrogen fertilizers, but high levels of reactive nitrogen in the rhizosphere hinder this process.
  • Researchers developed gene-edited strains of bacteria (Klebsiella variicola and Kosakonia sacchari) to enhance BNF and ammonium release in nitrogen-rich conditions.
  • Experiments showed that these engineered strains significantly boosted BNF activity and ammonium output, contributing an average of 21 kg of nitrogen per hectare to maize plants, thus potentially reducing reliance on synthetic fertilizers and improving crop yield stability.
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  • Plant breeding and genetics are crucial for improving crops to meet human needs, particularly in the context of sustainable agriculture that utilizes nitrogen-fixing microorganisms.
  • A study of sorghum varieties identified genetic factors linked to the formation of beneficial aerial roots that support these nitrogen-fixing bacteria, focusing on both environmental and genetic influences.
  • The research included extensive genome analysis and breeding experiments to understand how these traits can be inherited and optimized, aiming to enhance sorghum's ability to naturally acquire nitrogen for better growth.
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Diazotrophs are bacteria and archaea that can reduce atmospheric dinitrogen (N) into ammonium. Plant-diazotroph interactions have been explored for over a century as a nitrogen (N) source for crops to improve agricultural productivity and sustainability. This scientific quest has generated much information about the molecular mechanisms underlying the function, assembly, and regulation of nitrogenase, ammonium assimilation, and plant-diazotroph interactions.

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Carnivorous pitcher plants are uniquely adapted to nitrogen limitation, using pitfall traps to acquire nutrients from insect prey. Pitcher plants in the genus may also use nitrogen fixed by bacteria inhabiting the aquatic microcosms of their pitchers. Here, we investigated whether species of a convergently evolved pitcher plant genus, , might also use bacterial nitrogen fixation as an alternative strategy for nitrogen capture.

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  • * The study involved 538 recombinant inbred lines derived from three different inbreds crossed with the common tropical parent Tx773, and the heritability of the lesion mimic was confirmed across diverse environments—Georgia, Texas, and Wisconsin.
  • * Findings suggest that this lesion mimic is linked to gene Zm00001eb308070 involved in the abscisic acid pathway, with the phenotype being primarily influenced by genetic background rather than environmental factors, as evidenced by the comparative efficiency of genomic predictions using a subset versus whole genome
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Exploring natural diversity for biological nitrogen fixation in maize and its progenitors is a promising approach to reducing our dependence on synthetic fertilizer and enhancing the sustainability of our cropping systems. We have shown previously that maize accessions from the Sierra Mixe can support a nitrogen-fixing community in the mucilage produced by their abundant aerial roots and obtain a significant fraction of their nitrogen from the air through these associations. In this study, we demonstrate that mucilage production depends on root cap and border cells sensing water, as observed in underground roots.

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Large-scale investigations of maize kernel traits important to researchers, breeders, and processors require high throughput methods, which are presently lacking. To address this bottleneck, we developed a novel flatbed platform that automatically acquires and analyzes multiwavelength near-infrared (NIR hyperspectral) images of maize kernels precisely enough to support robust predictions of protein content, density, and endosperm vitreousness. The upward facing-camera design and the automated ability to analyze the embryo or abgerminal sides of each individual kernel in a sample with the appropriate side-specific model helped to produce a superior combination of throughput and prediction accuracy compared to other single-kernel platforms.

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Agricultural productivity relies on synthetic nitrogen fertilizers, yet half of that reactive nitrogen is lost to the environment. There is an urgent need for alternative nitrogen solutions to reduce the water pollution, ozone depletion, atmospheric particulate formation, and global greenhouse gas emissions associated with synthetic nitrogen fertilizer use. One such solution is biological nitrogen fixation (BNF), a component of the complex natural nitrogen cycle.

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