Davis, California, USA
November 5, 2014
Greetings from the Seed Biotechnology Center. While working on our projects, time has flown by. In this E-News you’ll find out what we have been up to.
We are pleased to announce that the 2013 Annual Report is published. It is available on the SBC website or contact us and we’ll mail it to you. Kudos to Donna Van Dolah for creating such a fresh and lively document.
COURSES
Seed Business 101 – Field Crops: This program is in conjunction with the ASTA Chicago meeting, December 5-9, 2014.
Seed Business 101 – Horticulture: Davis 2014 is filled! The next offering will be on March 9-13, 2015 at UC Davis.
Seed Biology, Production & Quality: February 10-12, 2015 at UC Davis.
Program Management for Plant Breeders: September 22-24, 2015, UC Davis.
The European Plant Breeding Academy Class IV application is now open. The Academy starts in October 2015 in Gent, Belgium.
The African Plant Breeding Academy will attend their final two-week session in December 2014. 23 participants will graduate from this inaugural program. Applicants are currently applying to Class II which begins in June 2015 in Kenya.
The SBC hosted numerous courses this year with a special highlight of graduating the first Asian Plant Breeding Academy class during a joint celebration with graduating Class IV of the UC Davis Academy. Congratulations graduates. In addition, Class V of the UC Davis Academy began in September.
PEOPLE
The SBC is pleased to introduce Amanda Pietras (pictured) who joined us in late August. Amanda will split her time with the SBC and the new UC Davis Plant Breeding Center. Almost at the same, we said good-bye to Donna Van Dolah who moved on for a new challenge and opportunity. We thank Donna for her five years of support for the SBC.
In mid-October, the SBC had the good fortune to see long-time Center friends Francois Korn and Chris Zanobini receive an Award of Distinction, the highest recognition presented by our College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. Congratulations to them both!
ACTIVITIES
Seed Central happenings and programs continue at full-speed. Please join us the second Thursday of the month for our networking and speaker series. This month we also have special sessions starting at 1:30PM. For more information, go to SeedCentral.org.
SBC is excited to ask you to stay tuned for our new website. It has been nearly five years since this site went through a major overhaul. The new pages have a touch of the original feel from the early days along with a fresh layout which we hope will allow better access to information that is available for you.
The SBC thanks Aginnovation USA and Peter Marks for loaning us two new instruments, a VideoMeter Seed Analyzer (videometer.com) and a CF-Mobile Analyzer (www.centorthai.com) to enable us to explore the capabilities of these new non-destructive methods of assessing seed quality and maturity. Contact Pedro Bello (pbello@ucdavis.edu) if you would like to discuss these instruments or have suggestions for applications.
NEW PUBLICATIONS
The SBC enjoyed working with SeedWorld to publish “Training the Force” in their 2014 International Edition. We also were pleased to see the cover featuring our own Rale Gjuric.
Fisher, M. “Battle against hot pepper disease heats up.” July 1, 2014 Crop Science Society of America.
Brand, A., Borovsky, Y., Hill, T., Rahman, K., Bellalou, A., Van Deynze, A. and Paran, I. 2014. CaGLK2 regulates natural variation of chlorophyll content and fruit color in pepper fruit. Theoretical and Applied Genetics 127:2139-2148.
Gimeno, J., Eaatock, N., Van Deynze, A and Blumwald, E. 2014. Selection and validation of reference genes for gene expression analysis in Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum) using quantitative real-time RT-PCR. PLoS ONE 10:1371.
Naegele, R., Ashrafi, H.A., Hill, T., Chin-Wo, S.R., Van Deynze, A. and Hausbeck, M. 2014. QTL mapping of fruit rot resistance to the plant pathogen Phytophthora capsici in a recombinant inbred line Capsicum annuum population. Phytopathology 104:479-483.
Rehrig, W. Z., Ashrafi, H., Hill, T., Prince, J. and Van Deynze, A. 2014. CaDMR1 co-segregates with QTL Pc5.1 for resistance to Phytophthora capsici in pepper (Capsicum annuum) The Plant Genome 7:1-12.
Seungill, K., ….Van Deynze, A., Ashrafi, H., Hill, T., Kim, R.W.,….Choi, D. 2014. Genome sequence of the hot pepper provides insights into the evolution of pungency in Capsicum species Nature Genetics 46:270-8.
For more information on the Center’s activities, please go to sbc.ucdavis.edu or contact sbc@ucdavis.edu.
The SBC has a new fax number: 530-752-2278.
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