The HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology along with partners at the University of Nebraska will work on understanding how sorghum responds to nitrogen-based fertilizer and educating the next generation of scientists in Agrigenomics. The opportunity comes from a four-year, $3.9 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF).
HudsonAlpha researchers collaborated on a project led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory identifying a common set of genes that different drought-resistant plants to survive in semi-arid conditions. This discovery could play a significant role in bioengineering and creating energy crops that are tolerant to water deficits.
Read the full press release from Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
On the slopes of the Northern Rocky Mountains, the flowering mustard plant Boechera stricta is undergoing a quiet transformation – that is, evolving into a fitter species better adapted to its local environment. HudsonAlpha faculty investigator Jeremy Schmutz was part of a team led by Thomas Mitchell-Olds of Duke University who analyzed the mechanisms by which Boechera stricta living in a hybrid zone in the Northern Rocky Mountains experienced positive directional selection. Their study was published in Nature Ecology and Evolution in April 2017.