News from the John Innes Centre

A new technique will allow plant breeders to introduce valuable crop traits even without access to the full genome sequence of that crop. The technique, published in the journal Nature Biotechnology, links important agronomic traits in crop plants with active regions of the genome.  Instead of requiring knowledge of the crop’s complete genome, it identifies [...]

An international team of scientists, funded in the UK by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC),has sequenced the genome of a Chinese cabbage type of Brassica rapa, a close relative of oilseed rape. The research, which is published today (28 August) in the journal Nature Genetics, could help improve the efficiency of oilseed rape [...]

Scientists on the Norwich Research Park, working with colleagues in China, have developed new techniques that will aid the application of genomics to breeding the improved varieties of crop needed to ensure food security in the future. By dissecting the complicated genome of oilseed rape they have been able to produce maps of the genome [...]

The John Innes Centre will receive approximately £1million of funding for two new research projects that will help reduce yield losses in oilseed rape, and improve the efficiency of the conversion of barley grain to beer and whisky. On the morning of the first day of Cereals 2011, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council [...]

An international team of scientists has cracked the problem of pod shatter in brassica crops such as oilseed rape. Just before harvest, oilseed rape pods are prone to shatter, causing a 10-25% loss of seeds and up to 70% in some cases. “By artificially producing a hormone in a specific region of the fruit, we [...]

The operation of a vital switch for controlling crop productivity has been identified following a 70 year search. The ability to produce more food in the same acreage is crucial to feeding an increasing world population at the same time as curbing deforestation and dedicating more land to biofuels. Scientists at the John Innes Centre [...]