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 7666 / SEEDWORLD.COM FEBRUARY 2017 INDUSTRY NEWS Delivering the people, industry, business and product news you need to know. Submissions are welcome. Email us at news@issuesink.com. Corn farmers’ ongoing quest to manage and mitigate the fungus aflatoxin received a boost with the announcement that the Aflatoxin Mitigation Center of Excellence (AMCO) has approved seven new research projects for 2017. Projects will be funded at Mississippi State University, Purdue University, Texas A&M, Louisiana State University and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service in Georgia. AMCOE supports genomic/genetic research to identify the genes that contribute to mycotoxin resistance, which is an important first step in their incorporation into new hybrids. AMCOE also supports several breeding efforts, as well as transgenic and biocontrol strategies to control both fungal growth and mycotoxin production. With a hybrid crop called Salish Blue, scientists at Washington State University have combined wheat and wheatgrass in a new species with the potential to help Pacific Northwest farmers and the environment. Salish Blue is just one variety of a new peren- nial grain species, Tritipyrum aaseae. It’s the first new species to be named by wheat breeders at WSU in 122 years of breeding. Colin Curwen-McAdams, a graduate research assistant at the WSU Bread Lab at Mount Vernon, and Stephen Jones, wheat breeder and director of the lab, describe develop- ment of the species in a recent issue of Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution. Researchers at the University of Missouri, using advanced nuclear meth- ods, have determined the mechanisms corn plants use to combat the western corn rootworm. Scientists believe that using the knowledge gained from these cutting-edge studies could help breed- ers develop new resistant lines of corn. Richard Ferrieri, a research professor in the MU Interdisciplinary Plant Group, and an investigator at the MU Research Reactor (MURR), and his international team of researchers, used radioiso- topes to trace essential nutrients and hormones as they moved through live corn plants. In a series of tests, the team injected radioisotope tracers in healthy and rootworm-infested corn plants. “Our observations suggest that improving glutamine utilization could be a good place to start for crop breeding programs or for engineering rootworm- resistant corn for a growing global population,” Ferrieri says. Purdue University will host the ASTA Management Academy March 6-10 in West Lafayette, Ind. “The ASTA Management Academy is the best professional development program for seed industry professionals avail- able today because it is professional, educational, diversified, effective and motivating,” says Craig Newman, who recently retired as president and CEO of AgReliant Genetics. Newman will serve as the Executive in the Classroom for the 2017 academy. The academy focuses on a variety of management topics, including marketing, finance, strategy and organizational leadership. In the program’s 30-year history, it has graduated nearly 1,100 participants representing more than 300 firms worldwide. Scientists have developed an improved method for capturing longer DNA frag- ments, doubling the size up to 7,000 DNA bases that can be analyzed for novel genes, which provide plants with immunity to disease. RenSeq (Resistance gene enrichment sequencing) is the method to sequence Resistance (R) genes that confer disease resistance in plants. Researchers at the Earlham Institute (EI), The Sainsbury Laboratory (TSL) and the James Hutton Institute, have found a new way to decipher these large stretches of DNA to discover and annotate pathogen resistance in plants. Using the PacBio, which can read longer stretches of DNA in their entirety, along with the developed NB-LRR gene workflow “RenSeq,” the data not only targets R genes but also the important regulatory regions of DNA — promoters and terminators that signal when to start making a protein and when to stop.