Seed physiological performance of soybeans with altered saturated fatty acid contents

Soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merr.) seeds with elevated or reduced percentages of palmitate and elevated percentages of stearate were compared with seeds of typical composition in tests for germination, seedling growth rate and leachate conductivity. In general, seeds with altered compositions did well in these physiological tests, but their vigour tended to be negatively correlated with the percentages of stearate and palmitate in various lipid classes

Seed physiological performance of soybeans with altered saturated fatty acid contents

Soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merr.) seeds with elevated or reduced percentages of palmitate and elevated percentages of stearate were compared with seeds of typical composition in tests for germination, seedling growth rate and leachate conductivity. In general, seeds with altered compositions did well in these physiological tests, but their vigour tended to be negatively correlated with the percentages of stearate and palmitate in various lipid classes.This article is from Seed Science Research, 11 (2001): 93–97, doi: 10.1079/SSR200063.</p

Effects of Genetics and Environment on the Metabolome of Commercial Maize Hybrids: A Multisite Study

This study was designed to elucidate the biological variation in expression of many metabolites due to environment, genotype, or both, and to investigate the potential utility of metabolomics to supplement compositional analysis for substantial equivalence assessments of genetically modified (GM) crops. A total of 654 grain and 695 forage samples from 50 genetically diverse non-GM DuPont Pioneer maize hybrids grown at six locations in the U.S. and Canada were analyzed by coupled gas chromatography time-of-flight-mass spectrometry (GC/TOF-MS). A total of 156 and 185 metabolites were measured in grain and forage samples, respectively. Univariate and multivariate statistical analyses were employed extensively to compare and correlate the metabolite profiles. We show that the environment had far more impact on the forage metabolome compared to the grain metabolome, and the environment affected up to 50% of the metabolites compared to less than 2% by the genetic background. The findings from this study demonstrate that the combination of GC/TOF-MS metabolomics and comprehensive multivariate statistical analysis is a powerful approach to identify the sources of natural variation contributed by the environment and genotype

Follow the Yellow Brick Road: Finding New Paths in Interdisciplinary Research and Scholarship

This roundtable unites scholars from multiple disciplines to dissect a common text, as an invitation to speculate on the institutional, pedagogical, and intellectual changes of creating a truly interdisciplinary environment