The disclosure relates to improving plant breeding methods by controlling for microbial diversity present in the plant breeding process.

Disclosed herein are markers which are associated with chilling tolerance and provide for breeding methods to identify such plants to integrate this trait into cereal plants and further to identify analogous markers in other cereal plants. Importantly, these markers are not linked with deleterious traits such as tall plant height or tannin content, providing for the creation of plant varieties and elite plant varieties with chilling tolerance, dwarf plant height and lack of tannins.

Provided herein are a sorghum genomic region, alleles, and genotypes that are shown to be associated with a cold-stress tolerance phenotype. Also provided are genetically edited plastocyanin genes that result in a cold-stress tolerance phenotype. Also provided are cold-tolerant plants comprising an introgressed genomic region associated with cold-stress tolerance.

The present invention relates to a QTL allele in maize associated with drought resistance and carbon isotope composition as well as specific marker alleles associated with the QTL allele. The present invention further relates methods for identifying maize plants based on screening for the presence of the QTL allele or marker alleles. The invention also relates to methods for modifying drought resistance and carbon isotope composition in maize plants.

The present invention relates to methods and compositions for identifying, selecting and/or producing a plant or germplasm having root increased drought tolerance and/or increased yield under non-drought conditions as compared to a control plant. A maize plant, part thereof and/or germplasm, including any progeny and/or seeds derived from a maize plant or germplasm identified, selected and/or produced by any of the methods of the present invention is also provided.

Embodiments of the present disclosure pertain to modified plants or seeds that contain a mutated gene. The mutated gene includes, without limitation, a pic30 mutant, a mutant homolog of pic30, and combinations thereof. The modified plant or seed is resistant to at least one herbicide, such as picloram. The modified plant or seed may also be resistant to one or more sources of environmental stress, such as drought, plant pathogenesis, biotic stress, and abiotic stress. Additional embodiments of the present disclosure pertain to methods of controlling the growth of weeds in a field by applying at least one herbicide to the field that includes the aforementioned modified plants or seeds. Additional embodiments of the present disclosure pertain to methods of developing the aforementioned modified plants or seeds by introducing one or more of the aforementioned mutated genes to a plant or seed.

A gene that controls epidermal bladder cell formation is isolated and identified. Specifically, a gene involved in an epidermal bladder cell formation control action is identified by: recognizing that a plant body with remarkably reduced epidermal bladder cells appears by performing EMS mutagenesis treatment on seeds; and comparing genomic DNA of the mutant and wild-type genomic DNA.

A new hardy kiwi is of the variety denominated Tango Actinidia chinensis Planch, originated from open pollination of A. chinensis selections collected in Rome. This new kiwi can be distinguished by its cold hardiness, high fruit quality, and relatively large fruit size.

A new hardy kiwi is of the variety denominated Tango Actinidia chinensis Planch, originated from open pollination of A. chinensis selections collected in Rome. This new kiwi can be distinguished by its cold hardiness, high fruit quality, and relatively large fruit size.

A nitrogen molecular sensor according to an embodiment of the present invention detects the nitrogen content in a plant. The nitrogen molecular sensor is manufactured by a novel method that includes the isolation of new nitrogen-sensitive genes. Transgenic rice plant containing the nitrogen sensor eventually may respond to nitrogen with high sensitivity. The biological nitrogen sensor can be applied to develop the crops improved nitrogen use efficiency through overcoming the current limitation of the phenotype characterization related to nitrogen metabolism in plants. As a result, it can be used as a core technology for isolating and analyzing industrially valuable genes involving in crop nitrogen use efficiency using a mutant pool harboring nitrogen sensor.