44 / SEEDWORLD.COM DECEMBER 2017 “Increasing yield and stress tolerance are key goals of most seed companies. Epicrop’s method has the potential to provide these traits by adding epige- netic information directly to the seeds of commercial varieties without adding any genetic material. The unique features of this method readily fit into traditional commercial breeding and seed produc- tion methods to facilitate company adop- tion of this system.” In the company’s field and greenhouse trials, epigenetically improved plants — soybeans, tomatoes, sorghum and Arabidopsis — show increased yields and stress tolerance. New research led by Z. Jeffrey Chen at the University of Texas at Austin may result in a new way of breeding heartier, more productive cotton through epige- netic modification. The researchers identified more than 500 genes that are epigenetically modi- fied between wild cotton varieties and domesticated cotton, some of which are known to relate to agronomic and domes- tication traits. This information could aid selection for the kinds of traits that breeders want to alter, like fiber yield or resistance to drought, heat or pests. For example, varieties of wild cotton might harbor genes that help them respond better to drought, but have been epige- netically silenced in domesticated cotton. Chen and his colleagues at Texas A&M University and Nanjing Agricultural University in China report they pro- Z. Jeffrey Chen and his colleagues at Texas A&M University and Nanjing Agricultural University in China produced a “methylome” — a list of genes and genetic elements that have been switched on or off through a natural epigenetic process called DNA methylation. Upland cotton (right) evolved from the hybridization of two ancestral species, one similar to G. raimondii (left) and one similar to G. arboreum (middle). Selection and domestication yielded longer, higher quality fibers than either ancestor. CHEN LABORATORY/UNIV. OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN