European perspectives of organic plant breeding and seed production in a genomics era.

For further optimisation of organic agricultural systems, more focus is required on organically produced seeds and the development of better adapted varieties. Organic plant breeding and seed production need to comply with the concept of naturalness as applied in organic agriculture, which not only includes the nonchemical and agro-ecological approaches, but also the integrity of life approach. As organic environments are less controllable and are more variable, breeding should aim at improved yield stability and product quality by being adapted to organic soil fertility as well as sustainable weed, pest and disease management. Also the ability to produce economicacceptable seed yield avoiding seed-borne diseases should be included. On the short term, organic plant production can gain better yield stability by increasing within-crop diversity by the use of mixtures of conventionally bred varieties or crop populations. Because of expected genotype by environment interaction more research is needed to define the best selection environment for selecting organic varieties. To arrive at better adapted varieties for organic farming systems the role of practical participatory plant breeding may be crucial. Although organic farming is clear on excluding the use of genetically modified organisms and their derivates, the use of molecular markers is still under debate. Questions arise with respect to their efficiency in selecting the most important organic traits, such as yield stability, and on the compounds and substances to produce and apply them. A major concern for a GM-free organic agriculture is an increasing contamination with genetically modified organisms in organic production and products, i.e., the problems related to co-existence of GM and non- GM agriculture. This paper discusses some important factors with regard to possible impact of co-existence on organic farming. Perspectives to a global scale of organic plant breeding and seed production are given from a European point of view

Biologisch uienzaad verplicht: hoe verder met veredeling?

Stand van zaken en verwachtingen van ui-veredelingsonderzoek. Biologisch uienzaad staat op de 'nationale annex'. Dit betekent dat er geen ontheffing meer wordt verleend voor het gebruik van gangbaar uienzaad in de biologische teelt. Is het huidige aanbod van uienrassen eigenlijk wel voldoende geschikt voor de biologische teelt? In dit artikel schetsen de auteurs wat er op korte en langere termijn te verwachten is, zowel vanuit de zaadbedrijven als vanuit veredelingsonderzoek van Louis Bolk Instituut (LBI) en Plant Research International (PRI

Финансовое обеспечение деятельности туристического предприятия

Целью статьи является разработка рекомендаций по повышению эффективности финансового обеспечения деятельности туристического предприятия, определение приоритетных путей совершенствования финансовых показателей его деятельности

Agronomic performance of two generations (F12 and F13) of thirteen winter wheat composite cross wheat populations with differing cultivation histories in 2014/15.

As environmental and agronomic conditions are heterogeneous between and within locations, diversity within varieties or crop populations should increase adaptability to the changing and variable range of growing environments. The additional pressure of plant genetic diversity loss, has driven novel breeding approaches such as Composite Cross Populations (CCPs) and other genotype mixtures, thereby increasing both intra- and inter-varietal diversity and ensuring a “wider adaptation” capacity for crop varieties (Döring et al., 2011). A winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) CCP was created by intercrossing 20 varieties in 2001, through collaboration with the Elm Farm Research Centre and the John Innes Institute. In 2005, a seed batch of the F4 was equally divided and distributed to Hungary and Germany. In 2007, it was decided to submit one of the CCPs to changes in environments every year. A pattern was developed between eight partners whereby these “cycling” populations would be grown in a plot of >100m2 and sent to the next cycling partner the following year. The aim of the project was to compare a total of 13 populations that all originated from the same seed batch in 2005, but that have been exposed to vastly different climatic conditions over time, in one site (Germany). In 2014/15, the second experimental year, saved seed from 2013 (F12) and harvested seed from 2014 (F13) were sown, in order to compare two generations in one growing season. The experimental year 2014/15 was characterized by long dry periods, particularly between February and June 2015, and under these dry conditions most populations outyielded the selected reference varieties. There was no effect of differential seed size of the two generations for most agronomic characteristics for each population. Although the harvested TGW of both the F12 and the F13 of each population was not significantly different from one another, there were still significant differences of harvested TGW between the populations in the F12. These significant differences of harvested TGW were no longer present in the F13 between each population after one year under the same management system. These results indicate that the heritability of seed size is low as has been shown before (Silvertown, 1989) and that seed size variation tends to be a result of phenotypic plasticity, which is thought to be adaptive, especially as the result of environmental variation (Marshall et al., 1985; Vaughton and Ramsey, 1998; Lehtilä and Ehrlén, 2005)

Noncoding deletions reveal a gene that is critical for intestinal function.

Large-scale genome sequencing is poised to provide a substantial increase in the rate of discovery of disease-associated mutations, but the functional interpretation of such mutations remains challenging. Here we show that deletions of a sequence on human chromosome 16 that we term the intestine-critical region (ICR) cause intractable congenital diarrhoea in infants1,2. Reporter assays in transgenic mice show that the ICR contains a regulatory sequence that activates transcription during the development of the gastrointestinal system. Targeted deletion of the ICR in mice caused symptoms that recapitulated the human condition. Transcriptome analysis revealed that an unannotated open reading frame (Percc1) flanks the regulatory sequence, and the expression of this gene was lost in the developing gut of mice that lacked the ICR. Percc1-knockout mice displayed phenotypes similar to those observed upon ICR deletion in mice and patients, whereas an ICR-driven Percc1 transgene was sufficient to rescue the phenotypes found in mice that lacked the ICR. Together, our results identify a gene that is critical for intestinal function and underscore the need for targeted in vivo studies to interpret the growing number of clinical genetic findings that do not affect known protein-coding genes

Predicting the F(ab)-mediated effect of monoclonal antibodies in vivo by combining cell-level kinetic and pharmacokinetic modelling

Cell-level kinetic models for therapeutically relevant processes increasingly benefit the early stages of drug development. Later stages of the drug development processes, however, rely on pharmacokinetic compartment models while cell-level dynamics are typically neglected. We here present a systematic approach to integrate cell-level kinetic models and pharmacokinetic compartment models. Incorporating target dynamics into pharmacokinetic models is especially useful for the development of therapeutic antibodies because their effect and pharmacokinetics are inherently interdependent. The approach is illustrated by analysing the F(ab)-mediated inhibitory effect of therapeutic antibodies targeting the epidermal growth factor receptor. We build a multi-level model for anti-EGFR antibodies by combining a systems biology model with in vitro determined parameters and a pharmacokinetic model based on in vivo pharmacokinetic data. Using this model, we investigated in silico the impact of biochemical properties of anti-EGFR antibodies on their F(ab)-mediated inhibitory effect. The multi-level model suggests that the F(ab)-mediated inhibitory effect saturates with increasing drug-receptor affinity, thereby limiting the impact of increasing antibody affinity on improving the effect. This indicates that observed differences in the therapeutic effects of high affinity antibodies in the market and in clinical development may result mainly from Fc-mediated indirect mechanisms such as antibody-dependent cell cytotoxicity

Biologisch uienzaad verplicht: hoe verder met veredeling?

Stand van zaken en verwachtingen van ui-veredelingsonderzoek. Biologisch uienzaad staat op de 'nationale annex'. Dit betekent dat er geen ontheffing meer wordt verleend voor het gebruik van gangbaar uienzaad in de biologische teelt. Is het huidige aanbod van uienrassen eigenlijk wel voldoende geschikt voor de biologische teelt? In dit artikel schetsen de auteurs wat er op korte en langere termijn te verwachten is, zowel vanuit de zaadbedrijven als vanuit veredelingsonderzoek van Louis Bolk Instituut (LBI) en Plant Research International (PRI

Groene veredeling : veredelingsonderzoek naar damping-off in spinazie

Het belangrijkste doel van het project is een veredelingsstrategie te ontwikkelen voor spinazie gericht op het vergroten van de weerbaarheid tegen Pythium