How a plant's refusal to self-pollinate could help India grow more of its own cooking oil

Most people assume plants reproduce through whatever pollen happens to land on them. This is not true. A collaborative research initiative involving the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar (IITGN) has mapped and functionally tested the genes that control a natural "self-rejection" system in two widely grown Indian oilseed crops, Brassica rapa (mustard) varieties toria and yellow sarson. This system governs the molecular "lock-and-key" mechanism in certain mustard plants that allows them to reject their own pollen.