John Innes Centre scientists have led a project to unlock the genetic code of wheat, one of the world’s three most important crops

Arabidopsis thaliana, or thale cress as it is commonly known, made history back in 2000 by becoming the first plant to have its entire genetic code read by scientists, contributing to what is often referred to as biology's version of the book of life

For organisms to grow and develop, they must produce tissues with distinct functions, each one made up of similar cells

A new technique will allow plant breeders to introduce valuable crop traits even without access to the full genome sequence of that crop

Dr Saskia Hogenhout, in collaboration with the Dr Eduardo Bejarano from the University of Malaga (Spain) and Dr Ian Bedford, will pursue an innovative global health and development research project

Barley grown in Scandinavian countries is adapted in a similar way to reindeer to cope with the extremes of day length at high latitudes

The use of new genomic techniques and increased sequencing power promise to help breeding crops, but for wheat the pipeline from the laboratory to the field is held up by wheat’s complex genome and the lack of the kind of detailed genome sequence available for simpler plants

A DICER protein, known to produce tiny RNAs in cells, also helps complete an important step in gene expression, according to research on Arabidopsis thaliana

With buds bursting early, only for a mild winter to turn Arctic and wipe them out, we are witnessing how warm weather can trigger flowering, even out of season, and how important it is for plants to blossom at the right time of year