Seed Today

Photo credit: Nutrien Ag Solutions. Nutrien Ag Solutions has begun the first commercial season of TERRAMAR, a plant nutrition bio-solution, across Western Canada, with foliar applications underway to evaluate product performance under Prairie growing conditions. Following strong grower interest, including approximately 250,000 acres already booked for field application, the launch will generate local agronomic data across a broad range of Prairie environments.

Scientists from the University of Dundee and the James Hutton Institute have joined researchers from across Europe to study new ways to improve barley production and expand the crop's role in food, agriculture and industrial markets. The five-year BEST-CROP project will evaluate existing barley varieties and identify traits that could increase yields while improving resilience to climate-related stresses such as drought and flooding.

Researchers at the Centre for Crop and Food Innovation in Australia have helped develop the world's first graph-based pan-genome for mung bean, creating a new genomic resource that identifies tens of thousands of previously hidden structural variations linked to important agricultural traits. The study, published in Nature Genetics, was co-led by researchers from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the Centre for Crop and Food Innovation.

Kou Liqun, general manager of Incotec China. Photo credit: Incotec. Seed enhancement company Incotec has completed the upgrade of its facility in Tianjin, China, further strengthening its ability to serve customers in China and across the Asia-Pacific region.

A new global analysis led by researchers at the University of Minnesota suggests countries can improve biodiversity conservation, climate mitigation and economic development simultaneously through more efficient land use and land management. The study, published in Science, evaluated 146 countries by combining spatial biophysical and economic data with optimization methods to develop what researchers call sustainable landscape efficiency frontiers.

Mississippi State University researchers are expanding long-term irrigation research to identify production practices that can help growers conserve water while maintaining or increasing crop yields across the Midsouth.

A biopolymer-enabled multilayer seed coating technology developed by the ICAR-Indian Institute of Oilseeds Research in Telangana improved groundnut yields, reduced production costs and increased farm profitability during field demonstrations in southern India. The technology was created to address common challenges in rainfed and semi-irrigated groundnut production, including poor seedling establishment, seed- and soil-borne diseases and inefficient use of crop inputs.

Colorado State University researchers are advancing drought tolerance in wheat, corn and sorghum through breeding and genetic research aimed at improving crop resilience as water scarcity continues to challenge agriculture across Colorado and the western United States.

More than 400 plant breeding professionals and students gathered at Texas A&M University for the National Association for Plant Breeding conference, where discussions centered on artificial intelligence, genomics and phenomics as tools to advance crop improvement. The conference, themed "AI-Driven Innovation: Transforming Genomes and Phenomes for the Future of Plant Breeding," brought together participants from the public and private sectors representing more than 40 crops.

Researchers have identified an evolutionary trait in soybeans that could help improve yields and strengthen nitrogen fixation, offering a potential pathway to reduce fertilizer use and improve profitability for growers. The findings, published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, detail a newly discovered genetic mechanism that regulates soybean nodulation, the process by which soybean roots form nodules that house rhizobia bacteria.