The global wheat industry sometimes loses as much as $1 billion a year because prolonged rainfall and high humidity contribute to grains germinating before they are fully mature. The result is both a lower yield of wheat and grains of inferior quality.

Approximately 30 percent of the world's total land is too acidic to support crop production, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. However, a solution may lie in a strand of corn that is able to grow successfully in acidic soil, thanks to a genetic variation recently identified with help from the University of Florida Genetics Institute.

Melissa Mitchum, a plant scientist and molecular nematologist at the University of Missouri, cloned the first gene linked to natural soybean cyst nematode resistance.

DuPont Co. said Tuesday that it is indefinitely delaying the commercial launch of the genetically-modified soybean seed at the center of a long-running court battle with archrival Monsanto Co.