Increasing maize grain yield has been a major focus of both plant breeding and genetic engineering to meet the global demand for food, feed, and industrial uses. We report that increasing and extending expression of a maize MADS-box transcription factor gene, zmm28, under the control of a moderate-constitutive maize promoter, results in maize plants with increased plant growth, photosynthesis capacity, and nitrogen utilization. Molecular and biochemical characterization of zmm28 transgenic plants demonstrated that their enhanced agronomic traits are associated with elevated plant carbon assimilation, nitrogen utilization, and plant growth. Overall, these positive attributes are associated with a significant increase in grain yield relative to wild-type controls that is consistent across years, environments, and elite germplasm backgrounds.
The UK's withdrawal from the European Union (EU) is an assertion of UK nation-state sovereignty. Notwithstanding this state-centrism, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have distinct interests to protect as part of the Brexit negotiations. This article explores how the interests of one regional case, Wales, were accommodated in the pre-negotiation phase, at a domestic level-through intergovernmental structures-and an EU-level through paradiplomacy. We explore the structures for sub-state influence, Wales' engagement with these structures and what has informed its approach. We argue that Wales' behaviour reflects its positioning as a 'Good Unionist' and a 'Good European'. Despite the weakness of intra-UK structures, Wales has preferred to pursue policy influence at a UK (not an EU) level. In Brussels, regional interests inform the context for Brexit. Here, Wales has focused on awareness-raising, highlighting that the UK Government does not command the 'monopoly on perspectives' towards Brexit in the UK.
Two issues currently dominate the UK's constitutional landscape: the UK's membership of the European Union (EU) on the one hand; and the unsettled constitutional settlements between the UK and the devolved administrations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland on the other. This article considers these two issues in concert. It stresses the distinct relationships between the EU and the devolved territories within the UK—concerning both devolved and non‐devolved policy areas—highlighting the salience of a devolved perspective in any consideration of UK–EU relations. Despite its importance, sensitivity to this has been lacking. The article explores the implications of a ‘Leave’ or ‘Remain’ outcome on the future of the internal territorial dynamics within the UK. While there are too many unknowns to be certain of anything, that there will be knock‐on effects is, however, beyond doubt.
For some years now, there has been a growing orthodoxy in EU legal studies which maintains that the EU project is less about achieving uniformity of laws across the Member States, and more about managing flexibility and differentiation. However, for the most part, space for differentiation is recognised only as between states or groups of states. The present paper moves beyond this level to explore the scope for local differentiation, at a sub‐state level. This inquiry has been motivated by the recent Horvath judgment, in which the European Court of Justice was asked whether differential implementation by the devolved administrations of the UK of certain EU law obligations was lawful. The paper places these developments alongside other judicial, legal and political developments, to demonstrate a growing recognition of the role of regions within the EU's multi‐levelled system of governance, revealing that the EU order is, in some respects, finally catching up with the realities of the rise of devolution and decentralisation taking place across Europe. However, it is submitted that there is further the EU could and should go in recognising, if not a ‘Europe of the Regions’, then a ‘Europe with the Regions’.
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