Japanese scientists have developed a new variety of self-fertile buckwheat

And another one with sticky and sweet grits. High-precision sequencing of the genome of buckwheat varieties gives hope for increasing the yield of this crop with growing importance. With the world's population projected to reach 9.7 billion by 2050, the current global reliance on the three main crops - rice, wheat and corn - is spurring interest in less common food crops. Sequencing the genomes of these crops using next-generation sequencing technologies could enable them to be farmed efficiently, a critical step towards achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals of Zero Hunger, Good Health and Wealth and Responsible Consumption and Production. . A research team led by the Graduate School of Agriculture at Kyoto University has deciphered the highly accurate sequence of the buckwheat genome at the chromosomal level, and this is a key step towards unraveling the evolution of the buckwheat genome and the origin of the cultivated crop, the researchers say in a university release. ...