Breeding a better chickpea
Chickpeas are an important crop and food in India. They are used almost every day in meals and snacks. India is the largest producer, consumer, and importer of chickpeas. And with good reason—they are high in protein, fiber, and vitamins and minera.....»»
Wild turkey numbers are falling in some parts of the US—the main reason may be habitat loss
Birdsong is a welcome sign of spring, but robins and cardinals aren't the only birds showing off for breeding season. In many parts of North America, you're likely to encounter male wild turkeys, puffed up like beach balls and with their tails fanned.....»»
Team finds direct evidence of "itinerant breeding" in East Coast shorebird species
Migration and reproduction are two of the most demanding events in a bird's annual cycle, so much so that the vast majority of migratory birds separate the two tasks into different times of the year......»»
Migratory birds are on the move and nature-friendly farms can help them on their way
Every spring, hundreds of thousands of birds leave their winter habitat on Poyang, the largest freshwater lake in China, and fly north over the most densely populated region on Earth to reach their breeding grounds in Siberia. As with any long-distan.....»»
Cut light pollution and treat glass to help migrating birds, say researchers
Spring bird migration has begun. Under cover of darkness, 2.5–3.5 billion birds will fly northward to their breeding grounds in the United States and Canada. According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, now is one of the most important times of yea.....»»
Older male blue tits out-compete young males when it comes to extra-marital breeding
Young male blue tits are less successful in fathering offspring outside their breeding pair, not because of a lack of experience, but because they are outcompeted by older males, Bart Kempenaers and colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Biolog.....»»
The great tits in this Oxford wood are adapting their breeding times as climate changes
As part of a team of ecologists, I've been studying aspects of great tit biology at Wytham Woods near Oxford. One aspect of our research is how climate change affects their breeding behavior. So far, our research suggests that these great tits have b.....»»
Breeding more resilient soybeans may come down to test site selection
In the quest to optimize crop productivity across environments, soybean breeders test new cultivars in multiple locations each year. The best-performing cultivars across these locations are selected for further breeding and eventual commercialization.....»»
Should "extreme breeding" of dachshunds and French bulldogs be banned?
Nothing says canine cuteness like a smush-faced French bulldog. Unless it's a dachshund toddling along on short little legs......»»
Effective data management plays vital role for smallholder sheep and goat breeding programs
Sheep and goat breeding plays a vital socioeconomic role in the agricultural sector across Central and West Asia and North Africa (CWANA) and beyond, providing valuable resources such as meat, milk, and wool. However, insufficient or ill-adapted bree.....»»
Enhancing chickpea irrigation efficiency, yield and sustainability
A new study published by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI) introduces a non-invasive technique for evaluating chickpea water status, offering farmers a powerful tool to fine-tune irrigation schedules and potentially elevate the sustainability.....»»
Machine learning model demonstrates effect of public breeding on rice yields in climate change
Climate change, extreme weather events, unprecedented records in temperatures, and higher, acidic oceans make it difficult to predict the long-term fate of modern crop varieties......»»
Analytic tool rapidly reveals genetic diversity for next-generation crop breeding
In a major advance for agricultural science, researchers have developed a new computational tool designed to swiftly and efficiently expose genetic diversity within DNA databases of various plant species......»»
Tracking and tracing members of the plant microbiome with DNA barcodes
A research team led by Paul Schulze-Lefert from the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne, Germany, developed a modular toolkit for tracking bacterial strains colonizing plant tissue in competition with other microbiome members......»»
Female mosquitoes rely on one another to choose the best breeding sites, and they"re already on the hunt
Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, one of the most common species in the U.S., love everything about humans. They love our body heat and odors, which enable them to find us. They love to feed on our blood to make their eggs mature. They even love all the stan.....»»
Cracking the pear genome: How students helped unlock a new tool for the pear industry
Pears are big business in the Pacific Northwest US. But did you know that traditional pear breeding has remained largely unchanged for centuries?.....»»
Australian Timor ponies have genetic diversity necessary for a breeding program, researchers find
Researchers at the Texas A&M School of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences (VMBS) collaborated with Australian geneticists to determine whether the country's population of Timor ponies are genetically diverse enough to support a designated bree.....»»
High-resolution imagery advances the ability to monitor decadal changes in emperor penguin populations
Emperor penguin populations have been exceedingly difficult to monitor because of their remote locations and because individuals form breeding colonies on seasonal sea ice fastened to land (known as fast ice) during the dark and cold Antarctic winter.....»»
Rope entanglement found to be a cause of low breeding rates in right whales
New findings show the severe impact of fishing gear entanglements on the survival of critically endangered North Atlantic right whales, with every injury from entanglements impacting population recovery......»»
Integrating non-additive GWAS with historical dissemination to illuminate nut traits and blooming time in almonds
Modern breeding focuses on genetic analyses and germplasm management and dominates in altering crop genomes, but often neglects non-additive genetic effects that are essential for understanding traits. Almond [Prunus dulcis Miller (D.A. Webb)] has si.....»»
Enhancing sweet cherry breeding: Insights from genotyping-by-sequencing and genome-wide association studies
Sweet cherry (Prunus avium L.) is one of the most economically important perennial fruit species growing in temperate regions. However, partly due to climate change and biological pressures from pathogens, sweet cherry production in France has been d.....»»