Drugs and pesticide residues in broiler feed can compromise the therapeutic and production benefits of antibiotic (ANT) application and affect gene expression. In this study, we analyzed the expression of 13 key pancreatic genes and blood physiology parameters after administering one maximum residue limit of herbicide glyphosate (GLY), two ANTs, and one anticoccidial drug (AD). A total of 260 Ross 308 broilers aged 1‍-‍40 d were divided into the following four groups of 65 birds each: control group, which was fed the main diet (MD), and three experimental groups, which were fed MD supplemented with GLY, GLY+ANTs (enrofloxacin and colistin methanesulfonate), and GLY+AD (ammonium maduramicin), respectively. The results showed that the addition of GLY, GLY+ANTs, and GLY+AD caused significant changes in the expression of several genes of physiological and economic importance. In particular, genes related to inflammation and apoptosis (interleukin 6 (IL6), prostaglandin-endoperoxide synthase 2 (PTGS2), and caspase 6 (CASP6)) were downregulated by up to 99.1%, and those related to antioxidant protection (catalase (CAT), superoxide dismutase 1 (SOD1) and peroxiredoxin 6 (PRDX6)) by up to 98.6%, compared to controls. There was also a significant decline in the values of immunological characteristics in the blood serum observed in the experimental groups, and certain changes in gene expression were concordant with changes in the functioning of the pancreas and blood. The changes revealed in gene expression and blood indices in response to GLY, ANTs, and AD provide insights into the possible mechanisms of action of these agents at the molecular level. Specifically, these changes may be indicative of physiological mechanisms to overcome the negative effects of GLY, GLY+ANTs, and GLY+AD in broilers.
Animals ; Glyphosate ; Glycine/administration & dosage* ; Chickens/blood* ; Pancreas/metabolism* ; Anti-Bacterial Agents/pharmacology* ; Animal Feed ; Gene Expression/drug effects* ; Herbicides

Rice is the world's largest food crop, and its yield and quality are directly related to food security and human health. Grain size, as one of the important factors determining the rice yield, has been widely concerned by breeders and researchers for a long time. To decipher the regulatory mechanism of rice grain size, we obtained a multi-tiller, dwarf, and small-grain mutant htd1 by ethyl methanesulfonate (EMS) mutation from the Japonica rice cultivar 'Zhonghua 11' ('ZH11'). Genetic analysis indicated that the phenotype of htd1 was controlled by a single recessive gene. Using the mutation site map (Mutmap) method, we identified the candidate gene OsHTD1, which encoded a carotenoid cleavage dioxygenase involved in the biosynthesis of strigolactone (SL). The SL content in htd1 was significantly lower than that in 'ZH11'. Cytological analysis showed that the grain size of the mutant decreased due to the reductions in the length and width of glume cells. The function of htd1 was further verified by the CRISPR/cas9 gene editing technology. The plants with the gene knockout exhibited similar grain size to the mutant. In addition, gene expression analysis showed that the expression levels of multiple grain size-related genes in the mutant changed significantly, suggesting that HTD1 may interact with other genes regulating grain size. This study provides a new theoretical basis for research on the regulatory mechanism of rice grain size and potential genetic resources for breeding the rice cultivars with high yields.
Oryza/growth & development* ; Mutation ; Edible Grain/growth & development* ; Alleles ; Plant Proteins/genetics* ; Dioxygenases/genetics* ; Lactones/metabolism* ; Gene Expression Regulation, Plant ; Genes, Plant ; Gene Editing ; CRISPR-Cas Systems ; Phenotype

Agriculture, the strategic cornerstone of national long-term stability, is undergoing a fundamental shift from resource-dependent to technology-driven, driven by global food security and ecological conservation needs. Traditional agriculture can no longer sustain the growing food demand. Scientific and technological advancements are fundamental guarantees for ensuring food supply security and are the primary driver for future agricultural development. This special issue compiles the latest research advancements from diverse experts, covering fields such as microbe-driven green agriculture, pesticide technology innovation, intelligent agricultural machinery, smart manufacturing, and molecular design breeding fundamentals. It aims to inspire researchers to explore cutting-edge directions in future agriculture, promote interdisciplinary collaboration and technological integration, and thereby drive innovative breakthroughs and industrial transformation in agricultural modernization.
Agriculture/methods* ; Crops, Agricultural/genetics* ; Food Supply ; Biotechnology ; Pesticides

To explore the feasibility of using UAV-LiDAR for measuring the leaf area index (LAI) of crop canopies, we employed UAV-LiDAR to scan sugarcane canopies during the tillering and elongation stages, acquiring canopy point cloud data. Subsequently, features such as average row height, projected row area, point cloud density at different canopy layers, and the ratios between these parameters were extracted. Three feature selection methods-partial least squares regression (PLSR), XGBoost feature importance (XGBoost-FI), and random forest-recursive feature elimination (RF-RFE)-were adopted to evaluate and identify the optimal input variables for modeling. With these selected variables, LAI inversion models were developed based on random forest (RF) and adaptive boosting (AdaBoost) algorithms, and their performance was assessed. Among the extracted features, the projected row area S_p and the total row point count C_total exhibited strong correlations with LAI, with correlation coefficients of 0.73 and 0.72, respectively. The AdaBoost-based LAI inversion model, using the projected row area S_p, average height H_avg, mid-layer point cloud density C_m, and total row point count C_total as input variables, achieved the best performance, with a coefficient of determination (R_v²) of 0.713 and a root mean square error (RMSE_v) of 0.25 on the validation set. This study provides an effective method for high-throughput acquisition of LAI in field crops, offering valuable scientific support for sugarcane field management and breeding efforts.
Plant Leaves/growth & development* ; Saccharum/growth & development* ; Algorithms ; Unmanned Aerial Devices ; Remote Sensing Technology/methods* ; Crops, Agricultural/growth & development*

Accurately obtaining the crop quantity and density is not only crucial for the demand-based input of water and fertilizer in the field but also vital for ensuring the yield and quality of crops. Aerial photography by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can quickly acquire the distribution image information of crops over a large area. However, the accurate recognition of a single type of dense targets is a huge challenge for most recognition algorithms. Taking banana seedlings as an example in this study, we captured the images of banana plantations by UAVs from high altitudes to explore an efficient recognition method for dense targets. We proposed a strategy of "cut-recognition-stitch" and constructed a counting method based on the improved Faster R-CNN algorithm. First, the images containing highly dense targets were cropped into a large number of image tiles according to different sizes (simulating different flight altitudes), and the Contrast Limited Adaptive Histogram Equalization (CLAHE) algorithm was adopted to improve the image quality. A banana seedling dataset containing 36 000 image tiles was constructed. Then, the Faster R-CNN network with optimized parameters was used to train the banana seedling recognition model. Finally, the recognition results were reversely stitched together, and a boundary deduplication algorithm was designed to correct the final counting results to reduce the repeated recognition caused by image cropping. The results show that the recognition accuracy of the Faster R-CNN with optimized parameters for banana image datasets of different sizes can reach up to 0.99 at most. The deduplication algorithm can reduce the average counting error for the original aerial images from 1.60% to 0.60%, and the average counting accuracy of banana seedlings reaches 99.4%. The proposed method effectively addresses the challenge of recognizing dense small objects in high-resolution aerial images, providing an efficient and reliable technical solution for intelligent crop density monitoring in precision agriculture.
Musa/growth & development* ; Crops, Agricultural/growth & development* ; Algorithms ; Neural Networks, Computer ; Unmanned Aerial Devices ; Seedlings/growth & development* ; Image Processing, Computer-Assisted/methods* ; Photography ; Agriculture/methods*

Genetically modified (GM) crops, as a pivotal innovation in modern agriculture, exhibit significant advantages such as pest and disease resistance, herbicide tolerance, stress tolerance, and yield enhancement. However, their widespread adoption has been associated with potential ecological risks, including weediness of transgenic plants, gene flow, emergence of novel viral strains in virus-resistant crops, impacts on non-target organisms and soil ecosystems, and evolution of target pest resistance. This review focuses on the dual characteristics of GM crops, systematically examining their agronomic benefits and the underlying mechanisms of ecological risks. This review provides a theoretical foundation for optimizing the development of GM crops and ecological risk management, facilitating sustainable agricultural practices.
Plants, Genetically Modified/growth & development* ; Crops, Agricultural/growth & development* ; Ecosystem ; Ecology

Epigenetics refers to a heritable phenomenon that dynamically modulates gene expression without altering the DNA sequence, through molecular mechanisms such as DNA methylation, histone modification, non-coding RNA, chromatin remodeling, and RNA modifications. In plants, these modifications are extensively involved in key biological processes, including flowering time, gametogenesis, stress responses, and immune defenses. Over the past few decades, the research on epigenetics has gradually shifted from fundamental studies primarily conducted in Arabidopsis thaliana to investigations in various crop species such as rice and tomato. This transition has revealed the multifaceted roles of epigenetic regulation in shaping agronomic traits. This review integrates current knowledge of epigenetic regulatory mechanisms and their functions in plant responses to both biotic and abiotic stresses. Epigenetic editing tools such as CRISPR-dCas9 enable targeted DNA methylation or histone acetylation. Emerging transformation technologies, including magnetic nanoparticles and virus-based delivery systems, have the potential to overcome the bottlenecks of plant regeneration, offering new possibilities for precise epigenetic editing. In future agriculture, it is essential to further elucidate multi-layered epigenetic regulatory mechanisms at the single-cell level, develop efficient delivery systems, and leverage artificial intelligence to advance the application of epigenetic breeding for sustainable agricultural development.
Epigenesis, Genetic/genetics* ; Crops, Agricultural/genetics* ; Plant Breeding/methods* ; DNA Methylation/genetics* ; Gene Editing ; Disease Resistance/genetics* ; CRISPR-Cas Systems

Objective: To estimate the risk for type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) death attributed to insufficient whole grain intake in seven regions of China from 2005 to 2018. Methods: Based on China National Nutrition and Health Surveys and China Adult Chronic Disease and Nutrition Surveillance, ordinary Kriging method and locally weighted regression were used to estimate the level of whole grain intake of Chinese residents from 2005 to 2018. Based on the results of the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2019 and Chronic Diseases Risk Factors Surveillance in China, we calculated the population attributable fraction (PAF), attributable death number and attributable mortality rate of T2DM due to insufficient whole grain intake in people aged ≥20 years in different regions of China, and we used the 2010 Chinese census data to compare the changes in T2DM deaths attributed to insufficient intake of whole grains in seven regions of China. Results: The whole grain intake levels of Chinese people over 20 years old in 2002, 2010 and 2015 were 19.0 g/d, 14.3 g/d and 19.8 g/d, respectively. The estimated overall whole grain intake level was 20.1 g/d in Chinese residents in 2018, and the intake level was 19.4 g/d in men and 20.8 g/d in women. Among the seven regions, the intake level was highest in northern China (47.4 g/d) and lowest in southwestern China (6.0 g/d). In 2018, the PAF was lowest in northern China (12.8%) and highest in southwestern China (19.3%). From 2005 to 2018, the PAF varied in the seven regions, and the PAF in northeastern China fluctuated around 18.5%. Other regions showed downward trends, especially in northern China and northwestern China, decreased by 26.4% and 21.2%, respectively. Over the past 14 years, the number of attributable deaths in the seven regions showed upward trends, with the highest annual average growth rate of 6.7% in southern China and the lowest annual average growth rate of 2.4% in northern China. In 2018, the standardized T2DM mortality rate attributed to insufficient whole grain intake in China was 3.13/100 000, and the attributable mortality was 3.21/100 000 in men and 3.05/100 000 in women. The standardized attributable mortality rate was highest in southwestern China (3.97/100 000) and lowest in northern China (1.78/100 000). From 2005 to 2018, the standardized attributable mortality rate increased by 11.5% in men and decreased by 8.1% in women. The standardized attributable mortality rate in southwestern, southern and central China increased by 23.7%, 21.3% and 4.2%, respectively. The standardized attributable mortality rate in northern, northwestern, eastern and northeastern China decreased by 20.9%, 11.0%, 4.5% and 3.9%, respectively. Conclusion: The whole grain intake level of Chinese residents was low, and the whole grain intake of residents in all seven regions should be increased, especially in the southwest, and men should have more whole grain intake than women to reduce the death risk in patients with T2DM.
Adult ; Male ; Humans ; Female ; Young Adult ; Whole Grains ; Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2/epidemiology* ; Risk Factors ; Chronic Disease ; China/epidemiology*

The CRISPR-Cas9 system is composed of a clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR) and its associated proteins, which are widely present in bacteria and archaea, serving as a specific immune protection against viral and phage secondary infections. CRISPR-Cas9 technology is the third generation of targeted genome editing technologies following zinc finger nucleases (ZFNs) and transcription activator like effector nucleases (TALENs). The CRISPR-Cas9 technology is now widely used in various fields. Firstly, this article introduces the generation, working mechanism and advantages of CRISPR-Cas9 technology; secondly, it reviews the applications of CRISPR-Cas9 technology in gene knockout, gene knock-in, gene regulation and genome in breeding and domestication of important food crops such as rice, wheat, maize, soybean and potato. Finally, the article summarizes the current problems and challenges encountered by CRISPR-Cas9 technology and prospects future development and application of CRISPR-Cas9 technology.
Gene Editing ; CRISPR-Cas Systems/genetics* ; Plant Breeding ; Crops, Agricultural/genetics* ; Technology

Iron (Fe) deficiency and excess cadmium (Cd) in rice grain are important problems to be solved in agricultural production. Previous studies have shown that OsVIT1 and OsVIT2 are vacuolar iron transporters. In this study, wild-type ZH11 was selected as the background material and OsVIT1 and OsVIT2 were overexpressed in endosperm by using endosperm specific promoter Glb-1. Field experiments were conducted to study the effect of OsVIT1 and OsVIT2 overexpression on Fe and Cd accumulation in different parts of rice. The results showed that OsVIT1 overexpression in endosperm significantly reduced Fe content in grain by about 50%, while significantly increased zinc (Zn) and copper (Cu) contents in straw and Cu content in grain. OsVIT2 overexpression in endosperm significantly decreased Fe and Cd contents in grain by about 50%, and significantly increased Fe content in straw by 45%-120%. Overexpression of OsVIT1 and OsVIT2 in endosperm did not affect the agronomic traits of rice. In conclusion, OsVIT1 and OsVIT2 overexpression in endosperm reduced Fe accumulation in rice grain, which did not achieve the expected effect. OsVIT2 overexpression in endosperm also decreased Cd accumulation in grain and increased Fe accumulation in straw, which provided reference for iron biofortification and cadmium reduction in rice.
Cadmium ; Endosperm/chemistry* ; Oryza/genetics* ; Iron ; Zinc ; Edible Grain ; Soil Pollutants