Dosage differences in 12-OXOPHYTODIENOATE REDUCTASE genes modulate wheat root growth.

Wheat, an essential crop for global food security, is well adapted to a wide variety of soils. However, the gene networks shaping different root architectures remain poorly understood. We report here that dosage differences in a cluster of monocot-specific 12-OXOPHYTODIENOATE REDUCTASE genes from subfamily III (OPRIII) modulate key differences in wheat root architecture, which are associated with grain yield under water-limited conditions. Wheat plants with loss-of-function mutations in OPRIII show longer seminal roots, whereas increased OPRIII dosage or transgenic over-expression result in reduced seminal root growth, precocious development of lateral roots and increased jasmonic acid (JA and JA-Ile). Pharmacological inhibition of JA-biosynthesis abolishes root length differences, consistent with a JA-mediated mechanism. Transcriptome analyses of transgenic and wild-type lines show significant enriched JA-biosynthetic and reactive oxygen species (ROS) pathways, which parallel changes in ROS distribution. OPRIII genes provide a useful entry point to engineer root architecture in wheat and other cereals.

Using artificial intelligence to automate meat cut identification from the semimembranosus muscle on beef boning lines.

The identification of different meat cuts for labeling and quality control on production lines is still largely a manual process. As a result, it is a labor-intensive exercise with the potential for not only error but also bacterial cross-contamination. Artificial intelligence is used in many disciplines to identify objects within images, but these approaches usually require a considerable volume of images for training and validation. The objective of this study was to identify five different meat cuts from images and weights collected by a trained operator within the working environment of a commercial Irish beef plant. Individual cut images and weights from 7,987 meats cuts extracted from semimembranosus muscles (i.e., Topside muscle), post editing, were available. A variety of classical neural networks and a novel Ensemble machine learning approaches were then tasked with identifying each individual meat cut; performance of the approaches was dictated by accuracy (the percentage of correct predictions), precision (the ratio of correctly predicted objects relative to the number of objects identified as positive), and recall (also known as true positive rate or sensitivity). A novel Ensemble approach outperformed a selection of the classical neural networks including convolutional neural network and residual network. The accuracy, precision, and recall for the novel Ensemble method were 99.13%, 99.00%, and 98.00%, respectively, while that of the next best method were 98.00%, 98.00%, and 95.00%, respectively. The Ensemble approach, which requires relatively few gold-standard measures, can readily be deployed under normal abattoir conditions; the strategy could also be evaluated in the cuts from other primals or indeed other species.

Barley plants carrying the altered function Sln1d allele display modified responses to low phosphorus supply: implications for phosphorus utilisation efficiency.

The module GA-GID1-DELLA (Gibberellin-Gibberellin Receptor-DELLA proteins) provides a point for the integration of signals potentially relevant in determining nutrient utilisation and acquisition efficiencies. In this study, we explored the role of components of this module during the acclimation of barley plants (Hordeum vulgare L.) to different phosphorus (P) supplies by using two related genotypes, harbouring either the WT or the Sln1d alleles of the DELLA-coding gene Sln1. Dwarf Sln1d plants exhibited reduced shoot P utilisation efficiency (PUtE) and better performance at low levels of P supply. The superior PUtE displayed by WT plants disappeared when corrected by internal P concentration, indicating that multiple analyses are necessary to fully understand the meaning of PUtE estimates. Over a wide range of external supplies of P, Sln1d plants displayed enhanced P concentration, which was associated with low relative growth rate, high biomass partitioning to roots and high P-uptake-rate, thus suggesting that the effect of the Sln1d allele on P dynamics is not simply a consequence of slow growth habit. An enhanced P concentration was also found in a mutant with defective GAs-synthesis. Our results suggest that components of the GA-GID1-DELLAs module contribute to set the acclimation response of barley plants to low P supply through both P-dynamics dependent and P-dynamics independent mechanisms.