WEST LAFAYETTE, IN – When thinking about university-led research for cotton, you’d be right to name schools in the South. However, thanks to a recent $2.3 million National Science Foundation grant, Purdue University cell biologist Dan Szymanski will lead an effort to increase fiber length for upland-grown cotton in an effort to increase the value of the crop. So how will Szymanski’s team do this? According to a recent press release from the school, his team will engineer complex cascades of molecular and genetic processes, by simplifying cotton fibers as they emerge from the developing seed coat. Much of this preliminary work has already been done in a similar single-cell systems.
(SOURCE: All Ag News)