An international team of researchers has fully sequenced the genome of a climate resilient bean that could bolster food security in drought-prone regions.
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Plant trichomes are highly specialized structures that develop from the epidermal pavement cells of different plant tissues. They are known to defend plants from biotic and abiotic stresses such as water loss, insect-inflicted damage, pathogen attacks, deadly ultraviolet radiation, and leaf temperature reduction. A research team from China recently utilized computer vision, artificial intelligence, and deep learning techniques to develop an automatic algorithm to count and measure maize trichomes.
Over the past few decades, it has become obvious that climate change, and consequent extreme weather events, can wreak havoc on crop yields. Concerningly, there is a large disparity in agricultural vulnerability between developed and developing countries. In a new study, researchers have looked at major food grains in India to understand the long- and short-term effects of climate change on crop yields.
Researchers have reconstructed the evolutionary history of a highly specific olfactory receptor in the Egyptian cotton leafworm, a crop pest. This receptor plays an essential role in moth reproduction because it allows males to recognise the female sex pheromone. The scientists determined that the receptor appeared around 7 million years ago and that eight amino acids underlie receptor-pheromone binding. Their findings can guide the development of biocontrol strategies directed against this pest.
A four-year field experiment conducted on the shores of restored Lake Mustijärv in Viljandi, Estonia, has revealed that recycling phosphorus-rich lake sediments back to agriculture could have positive impacts on crop production.
The impact of the fall armyworm pest on maize crops and communities in Sub-Saharan Africa were worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to paper. Drawing upon recent empirical literature on the pest since it was first reported in Africa in 2016, scientists from Nairobi, Kenya, highlighted how it was responsible for up to 58% of maize losses worth up to US $9.4 billion.
A research group characterizes a new transcription factor that regulates, during the ripening of strawberries, the production of anthocyanins responsible for giving them their red hue.
Genomic surveillance could aid in tracking pathogen evolution and crop resistance, preventing crop failures, suggests a new study.
Did humans favor certain wild plants for domestication because they were more easily “tamed”? New research calls for a reappraisal of the process of plant domestication, based on almost a decade of observations and experiments. The behavior of erect knotweed, a buckwheat relative, has paleoethnobotanists completely reassessing our understanding of plant domestication.
Tobacco plants have been engineered to manufacture an alluring perfume of insect sex pheromones, which could be used to confuse would-be pests looking for love and reduce the need for pesticides.
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