52 I EUROPEAN SEED I EUROPEAN-SEED.COM INTERNATIONAL NEWS GLOBAL SEED WATCH WESTERN AUSTRALIA INTRODUCES NEW QUARANTINE MEASURES AND JAPANESE SCIENTISTS UNVEIL NEW RICE STRAIN THAT WORKS IN FARMERS' FAVOUR STATUS AUSTRALIA The Department of Agriculture and Food has introduced new quarantine measures for horticulture businesses in Western Australia to prevent the spread of the destructive insect pest, tomato potato psyllid. Department chief plant biosecurity officer John van Schagen said the estab- lishment of three zones to direct the movement and treatment of commercially produced vegetables and seedlings is a vital part of a national response to contain and control the pest. Different movement, treatment and control measures will apply in the ‘control’, ‘suppression’ and ‘watch’ zones. The tomato potato psyllid poses a threat to the state’s horticulture indus- try, affecting the production and trade of tomatoes, potatoes, chilli, capsicum, egg- plant, tamarillo and sweet potato. The psyllid was first detected in Perth in February, and has since been confirmed on 64 properties, the major- ity in the metropolitan area with a small number in regional areas. It is the first time the pest has been found in Australia. Mr van Schagen said the revised measures would provide a more consist- ent approach for producers in the met- ropolitan area, where the psyllid was widespread, and strengthen efforts to limit its spread into regional areas. “This will be coupled with ongo- ing surveillance and monitoring by the department to locate exactly where the pest is and control it,” he said. The control zone includes the Perth metropolitan area and surrounds, and will be bordered by the ‘suppression zone’ that extends from Augusta-Margaret River in the south to Dandaragan in the north and to Brookton in the east. The red ‘control zone’ requires treatment for target plants, and also for produce moving outside of this area. The orange ‘suppression’ zone requires testing and treatment for some plants and produce moving into regional areas. STATUS JAPAN A new strain of rice that flowers within a certain period of time after being sprayed with commercial chemicals commonly used to protect rice from fungal diseases is now available, say Japanese scientists. This new strain could one day allow rice farmers to dictate the timing of their har- vest regardless of weather, temperature and other conditions that currently affect cultivation. Temperature, day length and other environmental cues determine when plants flower, making it difficult for farmers to control when to harvest their crops. While scientists have been able to artificially manipulate the flowering of small flowering plants like Arabidopsis thaliana, they had so far not been suc- cessful in such influence over cereal crops. A group of Japanese scientists led by Professor Takeshi Izawa at the University of Tokyo's Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences developed a new rice strain that flowers 40 to 45 days after being administered a common agrochemical, commercially known as Routine or Oryzemate, that prevents rice from being infected by a damaging dis- ease called rice blast. The scientists first created a non-flow- ering strain by overexpressing a gene (Grain number, plant height and heading date 7, Ghd7) that suppresses flowering genes (florigen genes) which induce flow- ering at the tip of plants under short-day conditions. Then Izawa and his colleagues modified the florigen gene Heading date 3a (Hd3a) in the non-flowering rice strain so that it would be activated in response to certain agrochemicals. When they tested the rice strain in laboratory conditions and in pots under natural field conditions in Tsukuba, a city 70 km north of Tokyo, in Ibaraki Prefecture, the researchers observed that the new strain flowered in about 45 days after administering the chemicals. STATUS KOREA A team from the Center for Genome Engineering, within the Institute for Basic Research (IBS), succeeded in edit- ing two genes that contribute to the fat contents of soybean oil using the new CRISPR-Cpf1 technology: an alternative of the more widely used gene editing tool CRISPR-Cas9. The results of this new plant gene editing method, applied to soybeans and wild tobacco genes, are published in Nature Communications. CRISPR-Cas9 is the third generation gene editing system, widely used in biol- ogy labs all over the world. It contains pro- teins called Cas9, which act like a "gene scissors", and CRISPR-RNA (crRNA), which guide the "scissors" to edit the DNA at the right position. Previously, IBS scientists employed Cpf1, an alternative to Cas9, to edit human DNA cells. This time, the same research team grappled with editing plant' genes and successfully introduced the CRISPR-Cpf1 complex into plant cells. IBS biologists designed CRISPR-Cpf1 to cut two of the FAD2 genes in soybeans. These genes are part of the pathway that converts fats: oleic acid into the poly- unsaturated linoleic acid. By mutating FAD2 genes, the percentage of oleic acid in soybean seeds increases, which result in a healthier oil. IBS biologists designed CRISPR-Cpf1 for gene editing in soybean and tobacco. CRISPR-Cpf1 is introduced into plant cells without cell walls (pro- toplasts) as a pre-assembled complex of the protein Cpf1 (red scissors) and the CRISPR-RNA (crRNA, in blue). Cpf1 functions as gene scissors that cuts the plant's DNA (shown in grey) at specific locations indicated by the crRNA. In the case of soybean, the cut in two FAD2 genes increases the percentage of oleic acid in soybean seeds, resulting in a healthier oil.