Fertilizer has been critical to crop yields from the start of agriculture, and the application of artificially fixed nitrogen has been fundamental to crop yield increases since the 1970s. However, finding definitive data about absolute amounts, costs, effects on yields and changes in application is tricky – with dispersed literature, many units, confusion with sales…
Month: October 2013
Wild banana species: their classification and the sequencing of Musa balbisiana
Crop relatives are important – we learn about the relationships of wild germplasm in comparison to the domesticated forms, and about the genetics and genes in the wild species. Two papers in the last month advance our understanding of wild banana (Musa) from different perspectives. The first presents “A draft Musa balbisiana genome sequence for…
Molecular cytogenetics, genome evolution and agricultural genomics 