hybrid seeds

Much of the arable land in China, the world's largest rice producer, is off-limits for growing rice because there is too much salt in the soil or in the available irrigation water. Researchers are making progress, however, on developing 200 varieties that tolerate salty water although at far lower levels than found in sea water.

Farms in Puerto Rico are used in the research and development of up to 85 percent of the corn, soybean, and other hybrid seeds grown in the United States. “So the devastation wrought by Hurricane Maria in September stretches to the croplands of the Midwest and Great Plains,” reports Harvest Public Media.

Hybrid seeds are widely used by corn and rice farmers because they boost yields. Researchers at the University of Adelaide in Australia, one of the world's leading wheat-producing nations, say they have identified a naturally occurring gene in wheat that, when turned off, allows cross-pollination, essential for hybrids, while preventing self-pollination.

U.S. district judge Stephanie Rose sentenced Mo Hailong, a Chinese national also known as Robert Mo, to three years in prison for conspiracy to steal trade secrets, the Justice Department announced. Mo took part in the theft of hybrid seed corn, developed by Monsanto and Pioneer, for shipment to a Chinese conglomerate that owns a corn seed subsidiary.

The second-largest seed company in the world, DuPont Pioneer, announced development of a new strain of waxy corn using CRISPR-Cas gene-editing technology.

Corn hybrids released in the past quarter-century have an improved ability to take up nitrogen fertilizer after silking, say Purdue agronomists, who reviewed 86 field experiments in the United States, China and other nations. The results could lead to a change in the timing of fertilizer …

Researchers may complete a sequencing of the notoriously complex genome of bread wheat in two years, rather than the four or five years that was expected, says Country Guide.

Wheat, the dominant crop of the Great Plains, is losing the race for higher yields -- and returns to the grower -- to corn and soybeans.

Wheat, often called the staff of life and one of the staple foods of the world, could be transformed in a few years with the arrival in the U.S. of hybrid strains, says Agriculture.com.

The Justice Department's use of a secretive national-security court to prevent the theft of hybrid corn seed developed by U.S. companies indicates the gravity of Sino-U.S. competition, says the The New Republic.

The government used national-security laws, commonly employed against spies and terror plots, to nip the theft of genetically engineered hybrid seed from Iowa cornfields, says the Des Moines Register.

Seed company Monsanto says it has competed a field trial of genetically engineered corn in India, and aims to submit data within a year to the government for use in deciding whether to approve the strain, according to Reuters.

The lion's share of U.S. corn, soybeans and cotton sprouts from genetically engineered seed, according to an annual USDA survey of growers.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), aided by a giant U.S. seed company, "are testing a new approach to improve the production of corn among the millions of poor, small-scale farmers who dominate African agriculture," says the...

The "slow atrophy of public funding" for plant-breeding programs "means that farmers have been left with fewer and fewer seed choices over the years and are ill-prepared to meet 21st Century needs," says the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

British seed company Tozer Seeds hopes for U.S. success with Kalette, a conventionally bred cross of Brussels spouts and kale, says FreshFruitPortal. The company says the hybrid vegetable "has a milder version of the nutty Brussels sprouts flavor and the leaves are more tender than kale."

Farm equipment maker Kinze Manufacturing, of Williamsburg, Iowa, said it would begin limited production of the multi-hybrid seed planter for the spring 2015 planting season. The planters will allow farmers to change seed hybrids and population rates on-the-go.

Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton "expressed enthusiasm for biotech seeds" and suggested the industry should stress the benefits of the crops, such as drought resistance, rather than the umbrella description...