Introduction Grass pea (Lathyrus sativus) is one of the important food legumes in countries like Bangladesh, India, and Ethiopia. It has desirable agronomic characteristics, notably the ability to resist adverse climatic conditions. Nutritionally it is tasty and protein-rich. However over consumption can cause an upper motor neuron disease known as neurolathyrism, an irreversible paraparesis of...

Sorghum bicolor is an ancient plant that has been cultivated in North-eastern Africa for over 5000 years [1]. This is a cane like grass, up to 6 meters tall with large branched clusters of grains. The individual grains are around 3-4 mm in diameter and vary in colour from white, red, brown, yellow, purple, to black. The leaves resemble those of maize and grow rapidly. Sorghum grains of differen...

The reconciliation of economy and environment is a key factor in achieving sustainability.The European Union wishes to achieve the sustainability of its agriculture in order to producehigh quality food materials and to manage energy crisis and the risks related to climate andmarket fluctuations. These risks can be mitigated by reducing negative impacts of agriculturalactivities on the environme...

Russian Wheat Aphid Barley Yellow Dwarf Wheat Streak Mosaic Planting winter wheat as early as possible, particularly under dryland conditions, can increase yields by 10 percent or more, but also increases the risk for several serious pest problems that can cause major yield losses. Early planting can create a situation called a green bridge where pests and disease move from maturing cereals or ...

Sorghum bicolor is an ancient plant that has been cultivated in North-eastern Africa for over 5000 years [1]. This is a cane like grass, up to 6 meters tall with large branched clusters of grains. The individual grains are around 3-4 mm in diameter and vary in colour from white, red, brown, yellow, purple, to black. The leaves resemble those of maize and grow rapidly. Sorghum grains of differen...

Lunasin is a peptide from soybean seeds which has been demonstrated to have anticancer properties. It has also been reported in cereal seeds: wheat, rye, barley and Triticale. However, extensive searches of transcriptome and DNA sequence databases for wheat and other cereals have failed to identify sequences encoding either the lunasin peptide or a precursor protein. This raises the question of...

To extend agricultural productivity by knowledge-based breeding and tailor varieties adapted to specific environmental conditions, it is imperative to improve our ability to assess the dynamic changes of the phenome of crops under field conditions. To this end, we have developed a precision phenotyping platform that combines various sensors for a non-invasive, high-throughput and high-dimension...

Cereals accumulate starch in the endosperm as their major energy reserve in the grain. In most cereals the embryo, scutellum, and aleurone layer are high in oil, but these tissues constitute a very small part of the total seed weight. However, in oat (Avena sativa L.) most of the oil in kernels is deposited in the same endosperm cells that accumulate starch. Thus oat endosperm is a desirable mo...