When subject to flooding, deepwater rice survives by shooting up in height. Knowledge of the genetic context of this and other responses to inundation will be a boon in enhancing rice productivity.
Scientists make a sexually reproducing plant go asexual asexual reproduction does have certain advantages over sexual reproduction when it comes to plants. It is faster, easier and requires less energy. Production is higher too. Seeds produced asexually are clones of the mother plant and have exactly the same traits. This takes away the need for constant cross-breeding needed to retain
Commercial development of plant-derived pharmaceuticals has moved forward today with the publication of the first European guidelines for growing these genetically modified (GM) plants.
Scientists are trying to protect a traditional rice variety that is on the verge of extinction in Himachal Pradesh. The red rice is more disease-resistant and hardier than strains cultivated commercially over most of India and can lend that through cross-breeding.
Bamboo with its multifarious utility plays an important role in food and nutritional security of the tribal population in North-East India besides industrial value. Most of the tree improvement in bamboo is based on phenotypic selection followed by clonal multiplication. Since bamboo flowers rarely sexual propagation based improvement has limited success resulting in less variation.
One of the first volumes of what was then known as the ILEIA Newsletter described how farmers in Rwanda were working with new ideas and approaches to rice production, including some used by Asian farmers. Michael Loevinsohn showed how farmers, through their experimentation, had managed to cultivate rice at altitudes well above normal levels.
Large-scale deforestation is rapidly increasing environmental degradation causing rise in several fatal diseases in Pakistan and efforts should be made to stretch the forest cover to 6percent by 2015 under the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
