b'INDUSTRY NEWSTAILORED TO SEED PROFESSIONALS, INDUSTRY NEWS DELIVERS THE PEOPLE, RESEARCH, BUSINESS AND PRODUCT NEWS YOU NEED TO KNOW. SUBMISSIONS ARE WELCOME. EMAIL US AT NEWS@SEEDWORLDGROUP.COM.A genetically modified purple tomato first produced by NorfolkEurope (collected between 2022 and 2023) compared to historical scientists nearly two decades ago has been enthusiastically adoptedbaseline isolates (from 1992 to 2005). The genetic sequence linked by home gardeners after it was made available for purchase in theto this change was correlated with a 3-10 fold decrease in sensitivity United States. The high-anthocyanin purple tomato seeds experi- to the tested DMIs.enced robust demand, with over 1,200 packets sold within 48 hours of their launch and a total of 9,600 sold in the initial week. Norfolk Healthy Produce will be launching fresh purple tomatoes into U.S.The Svalbard Global Seed Vault opened its doors for the first grocery stores later this year. time this year in late February to welcome 23 depositors, half from Africa. Nine depositorsfrom Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cameroon, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Madagascar, Nigeria, The John Innes Centre, in collaboration with partners at Norwichand Zambiaare sending their seeds for safekeeping for the first Research Park and British Sugar, have secured funding to pio- time. Some more popular crops deposited this time are beans, neer novel gene editing techniques aimed at safeguarding thebarley, cowpea, maize, rice, millet, and sorghum. The deposit on British sugar beet crop from the potentially devastating effects27 February will see a diverse array of returning and new deposi-of virus yellows disease. The Farming Futures R&D Fund, man- tors contributing to safeguarding agricultural biodiversity. With the aged by Innovate UK, awarded British Sugar, Tropic, and theaddition of almost 14,000, the Seed Vault will now house over 1.27 John Innes Centre. Support comes from the British Beet Researchmillion seed samples. IPK (Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Organisation. The project aims to enhance resilience and produc- Crop Plant Research) in Germany deposited the largest number of tivity in the beet sugar industry. It has a total budget of 1m, withseeds: 2,679 samples of 267 different species of crops. Malis Institut 663,443 funded by DEFRAs Farming Innovation ProgrammedEconomie Rurale is the second largest depositor, with 1,601 sam-and the rest by project partners. ples of sorghum, beans, pearl millet, fonio, millet and other crops.On Feb. 22, Latvian Parliament accepted in two readings the banIn a paper published in the journal Device, researchers from the on imports of agricultural products from Russia and Belarus intoUniversity of Illinois Urbana-Champaign report that new, highly Latvia until at least July 2025. Latvia is the first European Unionstretchable polymer sensors can monitor and transmit plant growth country to impose restrictions on the use of agricultural productsinformation without human intervention. The study provides details originating in Russia and Belarus. The ban has been imposed untilof earlier research that investigated how wearable printed electronics July 1, 2025. can make farming possible in space. Chemical engineering pro-fessor Ying Diao and plant biology professor Andrew Leakey led a study introducing resilient polymer sensors dubbed SPEARS2. Poland is now the largest producer of pumpkins in the EU. TheThese sensors withstand humidity and temperature changes, increase in the cultivation area of pumpkins in Poland from 1.1stretching over 400% while staying attached to growing plants, thousand hectares to 8.9 thousand hectares between 2014 and 2022,and wirelessly transmit data to a remote monitoring site.as reported by Eurostat data, represents a substantial growth in pumpkin farming. The domestic harvest of pumpkins soared from 48,000 tonnes in 2014 to approximately 400,000 tonnes in 2022.Scientists from China used gene editing on bread wheat to boost This increase indicates an eightfold rise in pumpkin production overgrain length and weight. They also identified the molecular mech-the stated period. From 2029, there has been a consistent increase inanisms that affect grain development. Bread wheat is a staple food pumpkin production within the Union market. By 2022, pumpkincrop that is consumed by 40 per cent of the global population. Since harvest in the EU surpassed 1 million tonnes, marking a 3% year- there is an increase in food demand and a decrease in farmlands, it on-year growth. Polands contribution to the total EU pumpkinis crucial to breed for higher wheat yield. Researchers from various harvest stood at approximately 40% in 2022. institutions in China used CRISPR-Cas9 in bread wheat to boost its grain development. They identified that TabHLH489, a basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) transcription factor, is associated with The fungal species that cause Phoma leaf spot and stem canker inthe grain length of the crop. The results showed that the knockout oilseed rape are showing decreased sensitivity to some chemical con- of TabHLH489 enhanced the length and weight of the grain, while trols, sparking concerns for growers in Western Europe, accordingoverexpression had the opposite effect. The team also identified that to a new study by Rothamsted Research. In Europe, a range ofthe TaSnRK11-TabHLH489 regulatory module uses brassinoster-fungicides are used for control, but azoles (known as DMIs) whichoid and sugar signaling to control grain length. act as inhibitors for a fungal enzyme, are fast becoming ineffective. The study conducted in vitro sensitivity testing. It revealed reduced DMI sensitivity in contemporary P. lingamisolates from Western 42ISEED WORLD EUROPEISEEDWORLD.COM/EUROPE'