Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 82 Page 83 Page 84 Page 85 Page 86 Page 87 Page 88 Page 89 Page 90 Page 91 Page 92 Page 93 Page 94 Page 95 Page 96 Page 97 Page 98 Page 99 Page 100 Page 101 Page 102 Page 103 Page 104 Page 105 Page 106 Page 107 Page 108 Page 109 Page 110 Page 111 Page 112 Page 113 Page 114 Page 115 Page 116 Page 117 Page 118 Page 119 Page 120 Page 121 Page 122 Page 123 Page 124 Page 125 Page 126 Page 127 Page 128 Page 129 Page 130 Page 131 Page 132 Page 133 Page 134 Page 135 Page 136 Page 137 Page 138 Page 139 Page 140 Page 141 Page 142 Page 143 Page 144 Page 145 Page 146 Page 147 Page 148138 / SEEDWORLD.COM DECEMBER 2016 INDUSTRY NEWS Delivering the people, industry, business and product news you need to know. Submissions are welcome. Email us at news@issuesink.com. A Missouri University of Science and Technology researcher and his team are studying how climate change affects Missouri fields. Simone Silvestri, assistant professor of computer science at Missouri S&T, is using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to monitor how crops respond to climate change and drought. Silvestri and his team are using UAVs to study a corn field in Columbia, Missouri, from first planting until harvest. The researchers are proposing a framework to optimize the tradeoff between the monitoring accuracy provided by a UAV network and its cost. XTB Laboratories, a startup from the University of California, Davis, created a tool that "sniffs out" plant disease before it can be seen. This would allow companies and farmers to identify diseased plants and trees and remove them before they blight the whole field or orchard, says Cristina Davis, co-founder and chief science advisor of XTB Laboratories. She explains that diseased plants emit odors unique to each disease, and XTB's technology analyzes samples of air near the plants to detect plant disease. According to new research from University of Virginia economist Federico Ciliberto, widespread adoption of genetically modified crops has decreased the use of insecticides, but increased the use of weed-killing herbicides as weeds become more resistant. Ciliberto led the largest study of genetically modified crops and pesticide use to date. The study looked at annual data from more than 5,000 soybean and 5,000 corn farmers in the United States from 1998 to 2011, far exceeding previous studies that have been limited to one or two years of data. DuPont Pioneer and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) have agreed to jointly develop improved crops using CRISPR- Cas advanced plant breeding technology to address the needs of smallholder farmers. A range of potential product targets are under consideration by the newly formed Pioneer-CIMMYT Steering Committee. The first project will apply CRISPR-Cas to address maize lethal necrosis disease in sub-Saharan Africa. In Australia, University of Adelaide researchers have made a breakthrough in investigating salt tolerance in plants, which could lead to new salt tolerant varieties of crops, and also answer unre- solved questions in plant biology. The researchers, also from the ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology and in collabora- tion with the University’s School of Medicine, have discovered that a protein known to control salt balance in animals works the same way in plants. The Organic Seed Alliance (OSA) and Cornell University released two reports that detail plant breed- ing priorities for organic agricul- ture in the Pacific Northwest and Northeast. The assessments are a result of surveys and regional working groups that gathered input from organic farmers, organic seed and food distributors, and public and private plant breeders. The two reports seek to inform plant-breeding efforts by ranking crops and traits most important to organic farmers. A new study led by an Iowa State University agronomist may help scientists sift through vast amounts of plant seeds stored in gene bank facilities across the globe to identify those useful to plant breeders attempting to produce better varieties. The new research, published in Nature Plants, focuses on sorghum used