b'INDUSTRY NEWS Delivering the people, industry, business and product news you need to know.Submissions are welcome. Email us at news@issuesink.com.The tradition of Texas A&M AgriLife having a sorghum breeding program in West Texas will continue in a new location, says Bill Rooney, Texas A&M AgriLife Research sorghum breeder, College Station. Rooney, also the Borlaug-Monsanto Chair for Plant Breeding and International Crop Improvement in the Texas A&M Department of Soil and Crop Sciences, said production issues prompted the movement of select sorghum breeding activities from near Lubbock to Bushland in the Panhandle.An invisible enemy is attacking South Dakota corn. Theand cut up these molecules using special enzyme crop may look fine above ground, but as many as eightscissors. This process produces small interfering species of a common soil fungus may be infectingRNAs (siRNAs) which spread throughout the plant the rootsand compromising yields, according toand may initiate a second stage of defense for the South Dakota State University plant disease experts.plant. Here, the siRNA molecules attach themselves Research associate Paul Okello of the Department ofto so-called Argonaute protein complexes and lead Agronomy, Horticulture and Plant Science identifiedthese to the virus RNAs, which then, in the best-case eight Fusarium species that cause root rot in Southscenario can be dismantled and broken down into Dakota cornfields as part of his doctoral research.harmless compounds.Furthermore, seven Fusarium species isolated from corn also cause disease in soybeans. Researchers at the University of California, Davis, (UC-Davis) have partnered with a federally compliant A new viral disease of cotton found in recent yearspharmaceutical company to analyze the chemical in several southeastern U.S. states has now beenand biological profiles of cannabis for the benefit of confirmed in Texas. The disease, cotton blue disease,law enforcement, health care providers and scientific was observed recently in a cotton field in Centralprofessionals. The agreement with Biopharmaceutical Texas where multiple off-type plants were noted byResearch Company, which is registered with the U.S. a research group headed by David Stelly, a cottonDrug Enforcement Administration, is among the breeder in the Department of Soil and Crop Sciences,first of its kind. UC-Davis and BRC researchers will Texas A&M University, College Station. Otheranalyze legally acquired cannabis materials in BRCs contributors to the discovery were Robert Vaughn,labs to understand the chemical composition of Ph.D., a research specialist also with the soil and croptetrahydrocannabinol or THC, cannabidiol or CBD, and sciences department, and graduate students Christianother cannabinoids. Hitzelberger and Luis De Santiago.Biologists at the University of California San Diego Scientists at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberghave developed the first system for determining gene (MLU), the Leibniz Institute of Plant Biochemistry (IPB)expression based on machine learning. Given the lack and the National Research Council in Italy (CNR) haveof such a method, the new process is considered a developed a new method to significantly easier totype of genetic Rosetta Stone for biologists. vaccinate plants against viruses in future. It enables the rapid identification and production of precisely tailoredCornell University will house the nations only substances that combat different pathogens. The newindustrial hemp germplasm repositorya seed bank method is based on a molecular defense program of co-located at Cornell AgriTech in Geneva, New York. plants that is triggered, for example, by viral infections.Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. who helped secure During a virus attack, the plants cells serve as a host to$500,000 in federal funding for the U.S. Department multiply the virus, which results in the creation of viralof Agricultures Agriculture Research Service (USDA-ribonucleic acid molecules (RNAs). Plants can detectARS) made the funding announcement on Aug. 9. At 80/ SEEDWORLD.COMOCTOBER 2019'