Plant germplasm collections can be invaluable resources to plant breeders, provided they are well-characterized. After 140 years of acquisition and curation efforts by a wide and largely non-coordinated array of private and institutional actors, the current US collection of cold-hardy kiwifruit (Actinidia spp.) is rife with misclassifications, misnomers, and mix-ups. To facilitate the systemati...

Kernel weight is important for plant breeders to select high productive plants. The determination of relationships between kernel weight and some fruit-kernel characteristics may provide necessary information for plant breeders in selection programs. In the present study, the relationships between kernel weight (KW) and 7 fruit-kernel characteristics: Fruit Length, (FL,), Fruit Width (FW) Fruit...

Plant breeders developing cultivars to minimize the hazards of grass tetany are concentrating largely on increasing herbage Mg concentrations in cool-season (C3) grasses. Significant genetic variation has been found for Mg, Ca and K concentrations within C3 grass species studied to date. For most C3 forage grass species, heritability estimates are highest for Mg, slightly lower for Ca and lowes...

Narrowing the genetic base available for future genetic progress is a major concern to plant breeders. In order to avoid this, strategies to characterize and protect genetic diversity in regional breeding pools are required. In this study, 89 winter wheat cultivars released in Croatia between 1936 and 2006 were genotyped using 1,229 DArT (diversity array technology) markers to assess the divers...

Humans have cultivated plants for thousands of years, during which time crop plants have been continually selected for improved yield and other desirable characteristics. The improvement of a plant species by conventional techniques involves the selection for breeding purposes of certain plants that express important characteristics. As a result of human intervention in selecting which plants t...

Production functions to explain regional wheat yields have not been studied extensively in the Canadian prairies. The objective of this study is to employ a Just-Pope production function to examine the relationship between fertilizer inputs, soil quality, biodiversity indicators, cultivars qualifying for Plant Breeders’ Rights (PBR), and climatic conditions on the mean and variance of spring wh...

Latham et al. [1] and Wilson et al. [2] reviewed the long known phenomenon that plant transformation may cause mutations. Mutations can occur at any position in the genome, due to the tissue culture phase or other factors. Furthermore , insertion mutations may be induced by Agrobac-terium-mediated transformation or particle bombardment. The authors focus in particular on mutations and chro-moso...

The purpose of this study is to identify pathological findings among pigeon breeders in the Salonica area. Fifty-four volunteer breeders with varying intensity of contact with pigeons participated in the study. All the breeders, after filling in a questionnaire that included questions about the existence of conjunctivitis, rhinitis, chronic cough and sputum, were subjected to clinical examinati...

cience never stands still and the skill-set of plant breeders through the centuries proves the point. Especially during the last decade, several new plant breeding techniques (NPBTs) have been developed which now make it possible to perform genome modifications with an even greater degree of precision than was previously thought possible following earlier breakthroughs in producing genetically ...