Table of Contents

FINAL ISSUE

Farewell
Ruth Irwin

PLANT RESEARCH NEWS

Bt Eggplant: A Genetically Engineered 'Minor' Crop Comes of Age in Bangladesh and the Philippines
(Corrected author list) A. M. Shelton, K. E. Hokanson, D. M. Hautea, M. J. Hossain, M.A. Hossain, V. Paranjape, R.A. Hautea, L. McCandless, and S. H. Sarwer

It has been more than 20 years since the first genetically engineered (GE) crops were commercialized. While the advent of GE crops was a transformative success story in agriculture, the use of Bt crops has largely been limited to large acreage commodity crops. Biotechnology for use in the so-called 'minor' crops, sometimes referred to as 'orphan' or 'neglected' and 'underutilized' crops, has not been as forthcoming. But now there is a new crop that is playing a pivotal role in the future success of GE technology for 'minor' crops in developing countries---Bt eggplant.

Using Biotechnology to Eliminate Mycotoxins
Monica Schmidt

Mycotoxins are health deleterious compounds produced by certain fungus. They are inadvertently ingested by both livestock and humans when crops are infected with a toxin-producing fungus. Perhaps the most problematic and widespread is the mycotoxin aflatoxin produced from certain species of the fungus Aspergillus. We have genetically engineered corn to give it the ability to turn off the toxin-producing biosynthesis pathway in Aspergillus when the fungus infects the corn kernel. Research involving the use of a host organism, in this case corn plants, to suppress or silence gene expression of an infecting pathogen, such as Aspergillus, is known as Host Induced Gene Silencing. HIGS has been used successfully to suppress pathogen growth in crops previously, but this is the first report of its successful use of the suppression of a pathogen-produced toxin.

Addition of a New Nuclease Cpf1 in the Tool Box of CRISPR System
Anindya Bandyopadhyay

Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) has been setting the world of genome editing ablaze due to its ease of application and the precise nature of its targeting. Even though Cas9 has emerged as the most commonly used CRISPR effector for genome editing-based experiments, certain limitations in its targeting location and the creation of blunt double stranded DNA breaks makes its widespread use difficult. Research on CRISPR effectors has given rise to a new effector called Cpf1, which can overcome the limitations that Cas9 faces. This article will elucidate what Cpf1 is and how it can be used, and show that Cpf1 can be used not only in mammalian models but also in model and crop plants.

Agriculture in a Changing Climate
Phill Jones

More than 90 percent of the world's food supply consists of agricultural crops or meat from farm animals raised on vegetarian feeds, according to The Research Council of Norway. By midcentury, the group says, farmers must produce 70 per cent more food on about the same area of farmland to keep pace with global population growth. The changing climate greatly increases difficulties in meeting this challenge. The US Department of Agriculture predicts that beyond the midcentury, climate change will detrimentally affect most crops and livestock. In response to this challenge, the USDA suggests methods that farmers can use to adapt to climate change in the near-term. Researchers have genetically engineered plants that can survive in the face of decreased rainfall, one of the abiotic stresses that accompany climate change.