Venkatesan Sundaresan has won a Wolf Prize in Agriculture for developing "synthetic apomixis." The method for creating clonal seed at greatly reduced cost is a boon to agriculture, especially for farmers in developing countries.
If you put a cutting of, say, a geranium or an inchplant, into a cup of water, you can see tender new roots reaching out within a few days. Soon, a tiny new leaf pokes out of the stem. What you’re seeing is the result of cell division – without which, nothing grows.
Venkatesan Sundaresan, a plant reproduction biologist who specializes in rice, has been elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Sundaresan has a dual appointment as a professor in the Department of Plant Sciences, in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, and the Department of Plant Biology, College of Biological Sciences.
A simple roadside weed may hold the key to understanding and predicting DNA mutation, according to new research from University of California, Davis, and the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Germany.
The findings, published today in the journal Nature, radically change our understanding of evolution and could one day help researchers breed better crops or even help humans fight cancer.
John E. Kinsella Endowed Chair in Food, Nutrition and Health
Faculty
Phytonutrient biochemistry and physiology; Biosynthesis, accumulation and function of carotenoids and polyphenols in plants; Targeted improvement of crop phytonutrient composition and content for enhanced nutritional and medicinal values.
Distinguished Professor and John B Orr Endowed Professor in Environmental Plant Sciences
Emeriti
Plant adaptation to a changing climate, genetics and genomics of leafy salad crops, non-food woody biomass crops for bioenergy. Sustainability, ecosystem services, plants and the Sustainable Development Goals.
Plant breeding, genetics and genomics of quantitative traits; quantitative genetics; use of wild species in crop and germplasm improvement; QTL introgression; marker-assisted selection and genomics in breeding.
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