Plant breeders have played an essential role in improving agricultural crops, and their efforts will be critical to meet the increasing demand for cellulosic bioenergy feedstocks. However, a major concern is the potential development of novel invasive species that result from breeders' efforts to improve agronomic traits in a crop. We use reed canarygrass as a case study to evaluate the potenti...

A major challenge of the 21st century is to achieve food supply security under a changing climate and roughly a doubling in food demand by 2050 compared to present, the majority of which needs to be met by the cereals wheat, rice, maize, and barley. Future harvests are expected to be especially threatened through increased frequency and severity of extreme events, such as heat waves and drought...

Drought is the most significant constraint for crop production in arid and semi-arid regions. In order to assess drought tolerance in fifteen rapeseed (Brassica napus) cultivars using yield-based drought tolerance indices, two experiments were conducted at the research station of College of Agriculture, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran during 2009-2010 growing season. The cultivars were...

Plant breeding, the science of crop production, has traditionally developed new cultivars through selective breeding in the spirit of Gregor Mendel (1965) and his peas. Plant breeders hybridize plants that have been selected for some desired trait. By hybridizing desirable plants, desirable alleles—and combinations of alleles—are concentrated, thereby improving the fitness of the offspring. Pla...

Drought is the most significant constraint for crop production in arid and semi-arid regions. In order to assess drought tolerance in fifteen rapeseed (Brassica napus) cultivars using yield-based drought tolerance indices, two experiments were conducted at the research station of College of Agriculture, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran during 2009-2010 growing season. The cultivars were...

Muscadine grapes (Vitis rotundifolia Michx) are considered as excellent genetic resources for grape breeding programs as they are known for their hardiness and resistance to pests and diseases. However, contrary to popular belief, our study indicated that not all muscadine cultivars are resistant to anthracnose disease. In order to identify a source of genetic tolerance towards anthracnose amon...

The State of Rio Grande do Sul (RS) is the largest producer of oat in Brazil with the aid of consolidated breeding programs, which are constantly releasing new cultivars. The main objectives of this study were to: 1) evaluate the annual genetic progress in grain yield and hectoliter weight of the oat cultivars in RS, with and without fungicide use on aerial parts of plants; and 2) evaluate the ...