LiveScience's Image of the Day

Scientists Help Out Soybeans

Tuesday November 8, 2005

More Images...

Scientists are giving soybeans a genetic boost to help fight off pesky Chinese soybean aphids.

These pests were first detected in Wisconsin in 2000, and have since spread across the Midwest and into the South, causing millions of dollars of crop damage. Currently farmers are fighting back with expensive insecticide sprays.

Now, USDA Agricultural Research Service scientist Glen Hartman has discovered Rag1, a gene that could give soybean plants the ability to resist the exotic aphid.

The sap-sucking pest causes a variety of harm to the plant, including stunted growth, disfigured leaves, poor pod formation, and eventual death. But when scientists let wingless females and their nymph offspring go after the resistant beans' leaves, neither form of the pest survived long.

 

About 94 to 100 percent of the females died within 10 days - compared to 17 percent on a nonresistant plant, Hartman reports, adding that nymphs suffered a similar fate.

These new, high-yielding, Rag1-expressing plants could be available by 2008. Until then, scientists will continue searching for other resistance genes.

This work is detailed in the November 2005 issue of Agricultural Research magazine.

--Bjorn Carey

Amazing Images: Science & Nature Photos from Our Readers

Credit: Jim Kalsich / USDA 

Advertisement

From the Blogs

LiveScience Blogs
  1. The Bug Hunt Is On. Target: Marine Aliens
  2. HARPS Discovery - HD 40307 And Its Three Super-Earths
  3. Can This British Columbia Lake Tell Us Something About Life On Other Planets?
  4. Power Equals Positive Action But Only When Acquired Legitimately
  5. X Chromosome Gets Some Respect As An Evolutionary Tool
  6. Estrogen Therapy May Limit Strokes In Women - But The Timing Has To Be Right
  7. Reminder: Garth Sundem's Foolproof Equations On The Science Channel Tonight At 6PM
  1. 6.15.2008 | Tariq Malik
    Father?s Day on Earth, in Space
    t’s Father’s Day on Earth, and just in time for the seven-astronaut crew of NASA’s shuttle Discovery, which landed yesterday in... ...
  2. 6.14.2008 | Robert Roy Britt
    Cutting the Technotether That Ruins Your Life
    he deluge of office and personal email and IM and texting, along with web surfing, putzing with iTunes and so on has workers increasingly distracted... ...

Related Items from the LiveScience Store

  1. Go to Store
  2. Go to Store

More Stores to Explore