An Open-Source Rice

Tom Phillipot at Mother Jones alerted his Twitter followers to an article on Asian Scientist about a new rice cultivar. In a paper published in Nature Genetics, the scientists involved

• Yusaku Uga,
• Kazuhiko Sugimoto,
• Satoshi Ogawa,
• Jagadish Rane,
• Manabu Ishitani,
• Naho Hara,
• Yuka Kitomi,
• Yoshiaki Inukai,
• Kazuko Ono,
• Noriko Kanno,
• Haruhiko Inoue,
• Hinako Takehisa,
• Ritsuko Motoyama,
• Yoshiaki Nagamura,
• Jianzhong Wu,
• Takashi Matsumoto,
• Toshiyuki Takai,
• Kazutoshi Okuno
• & Masahiro Yano

 state in the abstract:

The genetic improvement of drought resistance is essential for stable and adequate crop production in drought-prone areas¹. Here we demonstrate that alteration of root system architecture improves drought avoidance through the cloning and characterization of DEEPER ROOTING 1 (DRO1), a rice quantitative trait locus controlling root growth angle. DRO1 is negatively regulated by auxin and is involved in cell elongation in the root tip that causes asymmetric root growth and downward bending of the root in response to gravity. Higher expression of DRO1 increases the root growth angle, whereby roots grow in a more downward direction. Introducing DRO1 into a shallow-rooting rice cultivar by backcrossing enabled the resulting line to avoid drought by increasing deep rooting, which maintained high yield performance under drought conditions relative to the recipient cultivar. Our experiments suggest that control of root system architecture will contribute to drought avoidance in crops.

Asian Scientist contascted team lead Yusaku Uga and got more insight into the new cultivar:

New Potatoes

Not the little ones, but a new cultivar.  Science Daily is reporting the conventional breeding of a new potato called the Peter Wilcox.

Peter Wilcox potatoes
Credit: University of Florida

Scientists with USDA's Agricultural Research Service (ARS) bred yellow potatoes with carotenoid levels that are two to three times higher than those of the popular Yukon Gold yellow-fleshed potato variety.
ARS plant geneticist Kathy Haynes and nutritionist Beverly Clevidence did the research at the agency's Henry A. Wallace Beltsville Agricultural Research Center in Beltsville, Md. Haynes works in the Genetic Improvement for Fruits and Vegetables Laboratory (GIFVL) at the Beltsville center, and Clevidence works in the center's Food Components and Health Laboratory.

Haynes found wild potatoes with intense yellow flesh that have about 23 times more carotenoids than white-flesh potatoes. By crossing these wild potatoes with cultivated types, Haynes and her colleagues developed the high-carotenoid potatoes.
In 2007, Haynes and her colleagues introduced a new potato named Peter Wilcox that they developed. The potato, which has purple skin and yellow flesh, has become popular in niche roadside markets. The overall carotenoid levels in this potato are more than 15 percent higher than those in Yukon Gold, according to Haynes.