Rice is a staple food crop in the world. With the increase in world population and economic development, farmers need to produce more rice in limited field. However, the rice production is frequently affected by biotic and abiotic stresses. The use of natural disease resistance and stress tolerance through genetic breeding is the most efficient and economical way to combat or acclimate to these stresses.

Sequential developmental transitions in plant life cycle are tightly controlled by dynamic regulation of key genes. Seed dormancy release is probably the first developmental transition in a plant’s life cycle, and it is regulated by the Delay of Germination 1 (DOG1) gene. Here we demonstrate that a nonprotein-coding antisense transcript originating from a conserved at DNA—but not protein level—DOG1 region is a negative regulator of DOG1 expression and seed dormancy establishment.

The objective of this experiment was to compare hormonal, uterine, and conceptus factors associated with pregnancy establishment in beef cows supplemented or not with Ca salts of soybean oil (CSSO) for 21 d beginning after timed AI. One hundred lactating multiparous Nelore cows were allocated to 20 groups of 5 cows/group and timed inseminated on d 0 of the experiment

To investigate the mitotic dynamics of an appressorium, we used live-cell confocal imaging of a fluorescence-based mitotic reporter strain of Magnaporthe oryzae. We present evidence that the M. oryzae appressorium remains viable and mitotically active well after host penetration. These results suggest the potential roles of the appressorium during post-penetration proliferation of invasive hyphae. Our studies also revealed that a mitotic appressorial nucleus undergoes extreme constriction and elongation as it migrates through the penetration peg in a manner analogous to mitosis during cell-to-cell movement of invasive hyphae.

Astaxanthin from a transgenic maize line was evaluated as feed supplement source conferring effective pigmentation of rainbow trout flesh. An extraction procedure using ethanol together with the addition of vegetal oil was established. This resulted in an oily astaxanthin preparation which was not sufficiently concentrated for direct application to the feed. Therefore, a concentration process involving multiple phase partitioning steps was implemented to remove 90 % of the oil.

In the year 1866, Gregor Mendel’s seminal publication “Versuche über Pflanzen-Hybriden” (“Experiments in Plant Hybridization”) was published in the periodical Verhandlungen des naturforschenden Vereines, Brünn, Vol 4, pp 3–47 (Mendel 1866). This marked the starting point of the science of heredity which later turned into modern genetics with a variety of sub-disciplines developing throughout the life sciences, including scientific plant and animal breeding. Dealing with discrete characters, Mendel was the first to explain phenotype ratios occurring in the progeny generations following a biparental hybridization. As genes were unknown to Mendel, he hypothesized “elements” present in pollen and egg cells as causing the heritable differences between phenotypes

Two thermophilic bacterial strains, Bacillus thermoamylovorans NB501 and NB502, were isolated from a high-temperature aerobic fermentation reactor system that processes tofu refuse (okara) in the presence of used soybean oil. We cloned a lipase gene from strain NB501, which secretes a thermophilic lipase. The biochemical characteristics of the recombinant enzyme (Lip501r) were elucidated. Lip501r is monomeric in solution with an apparent molecular mass of 38 kDa on SDS-PAGE.

The related A genome species of the Oryza genus are the effective gene pool for rice. Here we report draft genomes for two Australian wild A genome taxa: O. rufipogon-like population, referred to as Taxon A and O. meridionalis-like population, referred to as Taxon B. These two taxa were sequenced and assembled by integration of short and long read next generation sequencing (NGS) data to create a genomic platform for a wider rice gene pool.

Salt stress is a major problem in most of the rice growing areas in the world. A major QTL Saltol associated with salt tolerance at the seedling stage has been mapped on chromosome 1 in rice. This study aimed to characterize the haplotype diversity at Saltol and additional QTLs associated with salt tolerance. Salt tolerance at the seedling stage was assessed in 54 rice genotypes in the scale of 1 to 9 score at EC = 10 dSm^-1 under controlled environmental conditions.

Increasing grain yield and improving grain quality are two important goals for rice breeding. A better understanding of the factors that contribute to the overall grain quantity and nutritional quality of rice will lay the foundation for developing new breeding strategies. RAG2 is a member of 14-to-16-kDa α-amylase/trypsin inhibitors in rice, which belong to the albumin of seed storage proteins. We found that RAG2 was specifically expressed in ripening seed and its transcription peak was between 14 and 21 days after flowering. Grain size and 1000-grain weight were obviously increased in RAG2-overexpressed lines compared with wild type, and grain size was reduced in RAG2-suppressed lines.