Agricultural genetics articles from across Nature Portfolio

Asian soybean rust (ASR) is a devastating disease of soybean. Here, the author report the identification of an atypical pair of nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeat (NLR) encoding genes and how they function together to confer broad-spectrum resistance to ASR.

Two studies report the use of paternal haploids to enable one-step transfer of cytoplasmic male sterility in maize and broccoli, which resolves a key technical bottleneck in hybrid crop breeding.

Orphan crops hold the potential to diversify our food systems. Considering their unique characteristics, our deep understanding of major crops, and the availability of modern genomic tools, taking a different research path from what major crops have gone through could accelerate the genetic improvement of orphan crops.

Underutilised crops or orphan crops are important for diversifying our food systems towards food and nutrition security. Here, the authors discuss how the development of underutilised crop genomic resource should align with their breeding and capacity building strategies, and leverage advances made in major crops.

Climate change is exacerbating challenges both for global food production and from its environmental impacts. Sustainable and socially responsible solutions for future world-wide food security are urgently needed.

A robust strategy to obtain edited crops without integration of a transgene is developed based on co-editing the ALS gene and a gene of interest.