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 8474 / SEEDWORLD.COM OCTOBER 2016 INDUSTRY NEWS Delivering the people, industry, business and product news you need to know. Submissions are welcome. Email us at news@issuesink.com. The price is right at $66 billion for Monsanto to sign a definitive merger agreement with Bayer. Under the deal, announced Sept. 14, Bayer will acquire Monsanto at $128 per share in an all- cash agreement. While the deal has been approved by Monsanto’s board of directors, Bayer’s board of management and Bayer’s supervisory board, it still is subject to approval of Monsanto’s shareholders. What makes flowers on a plant almost identical? A study of sepals in Arabidopsis plants has revealed the mystery of how such uniformity occurs. Though the research was done on sepals — the bud that holds a plant’s reproductive organs — the researchers suspect similar mechanisms apply to organ development in all organisms. Conducted by an interdisciplinary team led by Cornell researchers, the team found that although cells grow at differ- ent rates and in separate directions, such variability averages out over time. The research is crucial for agriculture, where distributors require standard sizes and shapes for ease in shipping fruits and other produce to market. Breeding more beneficial communities of microbes in and on crop plants might be easier in some plant tissues and grow- ing conditions than others, finds a study led by researchers at Duke University. Previous studies have shown that a plant’s genes can shape its microbiome in the lab, but few studies have measured the extent to which the plant microbiome is under genetic control in the field. University of Kentucky plant breeder Tim Phillips has developed a new tall fescue variety that is non-toxic to grazing animals. Lacefield MaxQ II is the result of selections Phillips made from endophyte- free Kentucky 31 and related lines. Researchers from the University of Adelaide and Shanghai Jiao Tong University provide the first broad picture of the evolution, and possible functions, of pollen allergens in the plant. Published in Plant Physiology, the researchers believe their work could help medical researchers reduce allergic dis- eases such as asthma and hay fever. Researchers at the University of New Hampshire discovered that spinach grown in high tunnels during the coldest months of winter has the highest sugar content. They conducted a two-year winter spinach trial at the Woodman Horticultural Research Farm to deter- mine the most suitable spinach varieties and planting dates for winter production in New Hampshire in an unheated high- tunnel environment. Scientists with the Weed Science Society of America say plants can sense and communicate in ways that might surprise you, and those findings open the door for new approaches to weed control. They found that corn seeds could detect whether weeds are growing above ground. They make that determi- nation based on light reflected by weeds that penetrates the soil surface. If the seeds sense weeds, cellular changes are triggered to delay germination. Scientists at the John Innes Centre have taken another crucial step towards understanding how plants initiate flower- ing. This new development uncovers a previously unidentified step in the process of vernalisation, which links an important gene responsible for flowering time to the proteins that regulate it. Scientists have unlocked a major genetic mystery of one of the ances- tors of cultivated strawberry. A genetic analysis conducted by New Hampshire Agricultural Experiment Station researchers, which took four years to complete, aims to improve modern culti- vation efforts of strawberry growers. Researchers at DuPont Pioneer are reporting the results of scientific studies demonstrating the potential of CRISPR- Cas as an advanced plant breeding technology to increase the productiv- ity and sustainability of agricultural products. Plant Biotechnology Journal recently featured a Pioneer manu- script describing the first application of CRISPR-Cas to improve a corn plant’s own ability to withstand drought stress.