A special issue of Agri Magazine in collaboration with The Robert H Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment

Decoding the genetic basis of floret fertility in wheat - A high grain yield is undoubtedly a desirable trait in cereal crops. Floret fertility is a key factor which determines the number of grains per inflorescence of cereals such as bread wheat or barley. Nonetheless, until recently little was known about its genetic basis. Whilst investigating floret fertility, a group of researchers have now discovered the locus Grain Number Increase 1 (GNI1), an important contributor to floret fertility. A writeup from Science Daily of an international collaboration, including researchers from the Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, to decode the genetic basis of floret fertility in wheat.

I24 News Story about the first academic course in Israel in wine-making - the next step in growing the local wine industry

Jerusalem Post covers Food Tech Nation Conference at the Faculty - The future of healthy eating drew crowds Thursday at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture in Rehovot. About 300 people came to an event celebrating the institution’s 75th anniversary and giving students the opportunity to showcase their work. It featured some of the latest developments in Israeli food technology ranging from 3D printed meals to protein powder made from fly larva.

Nanotech pioneer Prof. Oded Shoseyov has already founded 11 companies based on his inventions. Now he’s on his next: a 4D printing platform to create customized meals.

in Israeli-UC Davis Vet Team-up - From jweekly: Three decades of joint research at the Faculty and UC Davis vet schools, supported by Koret grants.: A list of the collaborative work between the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine and the Koret School of Veterinary Medicine — the only veterinary school in Israel — reads something like a “who’s who” of the animal kingdom....

Faculty scientists Professors Ido Braslavsky and Oded Shoseyov develop technique to print food according to pre-defined criteria in a process that will serve a variety of special-needs populations.

https://www.afhu.org/2017/10/23/yissum-announces-new-platform-for-3d-printing-of-personalized-food/

 

Journal club article in PNAS about BitterPredict, a machine learning tool that predicts whether a chemical tastes bitter. BitterPredict was developed by members of Prof Masha Niv's lab.

What do you get when you combine the strongest materials from the plant world with the most elastic ones from the insect kingdom? Super-performing materials that might transform ... everything. Nanobiotechnologist Prof. Oded Shoseyov of our Faculty walks us through examples of amazing materials found throughout nature, in everything from cat fleas to sequoia trees, and shows the creative ways his team is harnessing them in everything from sports shoes to medical implants.

The genome sequence of wild emmer wheat was determined by an international group of scientists headed by Dr Assaf Distelfeld. Wild Emmer wheat is the original form of nearly all the domesticated wheat in the world, including durum (pasta) and bread wheat. Wild emmer is too low-yielding to be of use to farmers today, but it contains many attractive characteristics that are being used by plant breeders to improve wheat.

"In first-of-its-kind research, a 10-member international team of scientists, led by Maor Matzrafi of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Ittai Herrmann from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and UC Davis agricultural entomologist Christian Nansen, used hyperspectral technologies to successfully predict the viability of the weed seeds and herbicide response. The research, published in the current edition of Frontiers of Plant Science, (here) offers growers of cotton, soybean, corn, watermelon and other crops a new tool in their toolbox to thwart the growth of the herbicide-resistant Palmer amaranth, a fast-growing and highly aggressive weed which cripples crop yields."

62% of school-age children and 85% of pregnant women in Israel have low iodine intakes, according to the country's first national iodine survey. Government funding and legislation, and a government-regulated program of salt or food iodization, are essential to reducing the deficiency, which poses a high risk of impaired neurological development.

Prof. Zohar Kerem of the Institute of Biochemistry, Food Science and Nutrition was interviewed on CTV Ottawa about  olive oil and the principles of the mediterranean diet. Professor Kerem was in Canada to promote the new International MSc in Viticulture and Enology

Smart pest management for fruit, nut and grape growers
FieldIn’s software helps commercial farmers eliminate spraying mistakes, reducing the number of sprays and overall use of pesticides on their crops. By Abigail Klein Leichman, Israel21c - "Controlling pests with minimal spraying is a difficult balancing act for commercial growers. And surprisingly, they don’t have a reliable mechanism to assure that the right quantity reaches every tree or vine; some may be missed or over-sprayed. Israeli ag-tech startup FieldIn innovated an end-to-end pest-management software to achieve that balance with input from innovative tractor hardware and a host of agronomic data....."