Water stress and spring wheat – genetics and Pakistan

TS. Noorka IR, Schwarzacher T. 2013. Water a response factor to screen suitable genotypes to fight and traverse periodic onslaughts of water scarcity in spring wheat (Triticum aestivum L.). International Journal of Water Resources and Arid Environments 3(1): 37-44. ISSN 2079-7079 Pakistan lies in a semi arid to arid region with neither sufficient nor reliable rainfall….

Wheat-Thinopyrum introgression work wins prize for Niaz Ali, Hazara, Pakistan

Dr Niaz Ali, Hazara University, Mansehra, Pakistan works on the introgression of characters from alien species into wheat, having completed his PhD in Leicester in 2012 with Dr Trude Schwarzacher. He presented his PhD work at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Experimental Biology (SEB http://www.sebiology.org/meetings /Valencia/Programmes.html) in the session on Exploiting genetic diversity for…

New views on fixed nitrogen and other nutrients in crops and the environment

Two works have been published which substantially update long-standing views about nitrogen and crops. The first, Bender et al. (2013), points out that the whole nutrient balance of maize, and applications of NPK (nitrogen, phosphate and potassium) and micronutrients may well not have kept pace with their removal from fields – because of yield and…

Alien chromosome introgression transferring characters into bread wheat

In situ hybridization is now widely used to identify the nature and size of chromosome, chromosome arm and chromosome segment introgressions from alien or wild species in plant breeding lines. The molecular cytogenetics research group has several projects investigating introgression of chromosomes into wheat from rye, Thinopyrum (2x and 6x), Aegilops and other species or…