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Development of new plant breeding methods for more yield in food crops

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Hyderabad, India
February 18, 2008

Source: The Hindu via Checkbiotech

The leading scientific journal ‘Nature’ on Wednesday published a research paper by a scientists’ team from the city-based Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) that spoke of a breakthrough towards development of new plant breeding methods for more yield in food crops.

At a press conference here on Thursday, CCMB Director Lalji Singh announced that the breakthrough involved in identification of gene ‘DYAD’ and said that the next step was to go about devising a way of re-engineering it.

10 years

The decade-old work of the team led by Imran Siddiqi was a great step forward in breeding food crops for far greater yields, he said.

Dr. Singh said what this meant was that hybrid seeds could be produced and plants grown for seeds that would retain the original combination of genes of the parent plant with high-yielding properties.

This also meant that when the technology was perfected, farmers need not anymore buy hybrid seeds that could only be used once.

In his presentation, Dr. Siddiqi described ‘apomixis’ as the formation of asexual seeds in plants and that it occurred in about 400 known plant species.

It had two major components – ‘apomeiosis’, the avoidance of meiosis leading to the formation of an unreduced female gamete that retained the full genotype of the parent plant and ‘parthenogenesis, development of an embryo without fertilization of the egg cell.

He said what they had achieved in 10 years of research was to discover how ‘apomeiosis’ occurred and identifying the gene.

Patent

Responding to a question, Dr. Siddiqi said they had filed for a patent and that it would primarily be with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).

Once the technology was completely invented, it would be put to use for the larger good of the farming community and not commercialised as CSIR was a government organisation, he added.

“It has taken me and my students Maruthachalam Ravi and Mohan P.A. Marimuthu, both of whom are now abroad, 10 years of work,” Dr. Siddiqi summed up.

Copyright © 2008, The Hindu

 

 

 

 

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