AMES, Iowa – Sweet corn breeding has lagged behind advances in field corn due to its smaller market footprint, but an agronomist at Iowa State University is contributing to a national effort aimed at ...

The role of plant breeding has changed dramatically over the years, particularly as procedures that used to lean heavily on human instinct and insight have been replaced with high-tech computerized ...

AMES, Iowa -- It’s hard to beat fresh sweet corn in the summer. Or is it? Two Iowa State University faculty are part of a major federal research project aimed at boosting sweet corn quality, using the ...

Genetically engineered (GE) seeds are often sold to farmers and the public on the grounds that they are the wave of the future, taking over where conventional plant breeding left off by improving ...

According to estimates, the current global population is more than 7.4 billion people and is growing at a rate of 88 million people per year. Developing corn varieties that are resistant to pests is ...

URBANA, Ill. - With approximately 80 percent of our nation's water supply going towards agriculture, it's fair to say it takes a lot of water to grow crops. In a climate with less predictable rainfall ...

For the past two decades, promises of crop improvement have been the domain of genetically modified plants: mostly, crops supplemented with bacterial genes to resist pests or weedkillers like Roundup.

Total seed protein in modern hybrid and inbred varieties of corn is three times lower than that of its wild ancestor, teosinte. The reasons were unknown, until now. A gene on chromosome nine called ...