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Australia: Unraveling the genetic keys to improve canola crop yield

Canola Seed & Rapeseed
Australia
Published May 17, 2022

Tridge summary

An international team of researchers, including one from The University of Western Australia (UWA), has successfully unraveled the genomes of 418 unique samples of rapeseed from across the globe to identify traits that breeders can use to improve crop yield.

Original content

The study, Genomic selection and genetic architecture of agronomic traits during modern rapeseed breeding, published in Nature Genetics, follows a four-year collaboration among the scientists from Australia, China and the United States.Professor Jacqueline Batley, from UWA's School of Biological Sciences and The UWA Institute of Agriculture, who is an author on the paper, said that rapeseed, known as canola in Australia, is the second most important oil-producing crop worldwide."Which means that breeders are looking at ways that they can generate plants with the desired characteristics or traits that will allow them to minimize crop losses and maximize crop yields," Professor Batley said."While the adaption, yield and quality of canola have all considerably improved in recent decades due to intensive breeding—the genetics underlying desirable traits such as the architecture of the plant, seed weight and oil content have remained unclear because these are controlled by multiple ...
Source: Phys
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