Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 82 Page 83 Page 84 Page 85 Page 86 Page 87 Page 88 Page 89 Page 90 Page 91 Page 92 Page 93 Page 94 Page 95 Page 96 Page 97 Page 98 Page 99 Page 100 Page 101 Page 102 Page 103 Page 104 Page 105 Page 106 Page 107 Page 108 Page 109 Page 110 Page 111 Page 112 Page 113 Page 114 Page 115 Page 116On the Edge 112 www.seed.ab.ca | Advancing Seed in Alberta The dataset will facilitate the identification of genes associated with important agricultural traits such as yield increase, stress response, disease resistance and, ultimately, will make possible the production of improved wheat varieties for farmers. Since the January announcement, the IWGSC project team has been fine-tuning the data so the genome assembly released to the scientific community is of the highest quality possible. The resource — based on Illumina sequencing data assembled with NRGene’s DeNovoMAGICTM software — accurately represents more than 90 per cent of the highly complex bread wheat genome, contains over 97 per cent of known genes, and assigns the data to the 21 wheat chromosomes. New GM Study Analyzes Environmental Impacts According to new research from University of Virginia economist Federico Ciliberto, widespread adoption of genetically modified crops has decreased the use of insecticides, but increased the use of weed-killing herbicides as weeds become more resistant. Ciliberto led the largest study of genetically modified crops and pesticide use to date, alongside Edward Perry of Kansas State University, David Hennessy of Michigan State University and GianCarlo Moschini of Iowa State University. The four economists studied annual data from more than 5,000 soybean and 5,000 corn farmers in the United States from 1998 to 2011, far exceeding previous studies that have been limited to one or two years of data. “The fact that we have 14 years of farm-level data from farmers all over the U.S. makes this study very special,” Ciliberto says. “We have repeated observations of the same farmers and can see when they adopted genetically modified seeds and how that changed their use of chemicals.” UBC Research Aims to Help Canadian Flax Farmers In a recent study, University of British Columbia researcher Michael Deyholos identified the genes responsible for the bane of many Canadian flax farmers’ existence: the fibres in the plant’s stem. As part of his research, Deyholos and his former graduate student at the University of Alberta dissected thousands of stems under a microscope in order to identify which genes in the plant’s makeup were responsible for the growth of the stem, and which weren’t. Due to the length of the Canadian Prairies’ growing season, farmers typically burn the stems, known as flax straw, as opposed to harvesting the material. In many European countries, flax straw is used as an additive in paper, plastics and other advanced materials such as those used in the production of automobiles. Currently, Canadian flax is used only for the value of its seeds, which can be eaten or broken down into flaxseed oil. Flaxseed oil is used in the manufacturing of paints, linoleum, and as a key element in the manufacturing of packaging materials and plastics. According to the Flax Council of Canada, Canada is one of the largest flax producers in the world with the nation’s Prairie provinces cultivating 816,000 tonnes of the plant in 2014-15 on 1.6 million acres of land. Wheat Sequencing Consortium Releases Key Resource Following the January 2016 announcement of the production of a whole genome assembly for bread wheat, the International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium (IWGSC), having completed quality control, is now making this breakthrough resource available for researchers via the IWGSC wheat sequence repository at URGI-INRA-Versailles, France. Wheat breeders and scientists around the world can download and use this invaluable new resource to accelerate crop improvement programs and wheat genomics research.