Growth Spurts

Three new leaf lettuce breeding lines with resistance to corky root, a serious disease of lettuce, have been released by the Agricultural Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Corky root is caused by a bacterium called Sphingomonas suberifaciens which lives in the soil and attacks the plant’s roots, causing them to enlarge and develop [...]

Two new sugarcane cultivars specifically developed for Florida’s sand soils have been released by the USDA Agricultural Research Service.
The new cultivars, CP 00-1446 and CP 00-2180, were developed at the ARS Sugarcane Field Station in Canal Point, Florida, as part of an effort to provide growers with more cultivars that yield well on sand soils. [...]

A new peanut variety (dubbed Tifguard) developed by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists may help farmers in their battle against two key peanut problems — the peanut root-knot nematode and the tomato spotted wilt virus (TSWV).
While certain peanut varieties exhibit resistance to either the peanut root-knot nematode or the TSWV pathogen, Tifguard is the first [...]

Three new hardy safflower germplasm lines developed by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists are now available.
The germplasm lines — dubbed WSRC01, WSRC02 and WSRC03 — owe their superior winter hardiness to three Chinese safflower accessions maintained at the ARS Plant Germplasm Introduction and Testing Research Unit in Pullman, Washington. They are the first U.S. safflower [...]

A new habanero pepper developed and released by the USDA Agricultural Research Service, TigerPaw-NR, is among the spiciest peppers ever developed.
The super-hot, bright orange pepper offers extreme pungency, plus nematode resistance that will appeal to growers, home gardeners and pepper aficionados alike.
The firm, shiny pepper gets its name from its tiger-paw-like appearance. Its “NR” initials [...]

A new germplasm line named “ABC-Weihing” is now available for breeding high-yielding varieties of great northern beans that can resist common bacterial blight.
Miklas and Carlos Urrea, a University of Nebraska (UN) bean breeder, developed ABC-Weihing using marker-assisted selection, a method of detecting inherited genes that is faster than conventional screening of plants for disease resistance [...]