Worldwide, farmers are being challenged with a variety of issues, including growing populations, a changing climate and soil degradation, among many others. To combat these challenges, researchers are looking for solutions and have begun to focus their work on the viability of sustainable agriculture practices, like cover crops.
There are flowering plants that have the ability to self-pollinate, meaning that they can fertilise themselves without a partner. However, selfing also has clear negative consequences for the plants – first and foremost the loss of genetic variability and biological fitness of the species. Thus, many flowering plants have mechanisms in place to prevent selfing, for example by recognising and rejecting their own pollen.
Researchers have discovered that the green color of soybean pods is due to chlorophyll, which plays a crucial role in the plant’s photosynthetic process. The study found that pod and seed photosynthesis contribute significantly to soybean yield, challenging conventional notions about the importance of leaves. This finding offers new insights for optimizing plant productivity and increasing food production.
Paleobotanists have made an important breakthrough in understanding the origin and geographic distribution of cycads. By combining genetic data with leaf morphological data from both fossil and living species for the first time, the researchers created a phylogenetic tree of these fascinating and endangered plants.
The cellular life inside a plant is as vibrant as the blossom. In each plant tissue—from root tip to leaf tip—there are hundreds of cell types that relay information about functional needs and environmental changes. Now, a new technology can capture this internal plant world at an unprecedented resolution, opening the door for understanding how plants respond to a changing climate and leading to more resilient crops.
In a discovery aimed at accelerating the development of process-advantaged crops for jet biofuels, scientists developed a capability to insert multiple genes into plants in a single step.
New knowledge of ancient grain may enable breeding for climate change adaptation. An international team of researchers has unlocked a large-scale genomic analysis of Setaria or foxtail millet, an important cereal crop. The study advances our understanding of the domestication and evolution of foxtail millet, as well as the genetic basis for important agricultural traits.
New esearch has found using environmental DNA (eDNA), in conjunction with conventional methods, to monitor how insects interact with flowers could potentially improve conservation rates.
For several years, ecological research has argued that climate often has no determining influence on the distribution of forests and savannas in tropical regions. However, an international research team has now succeeded in proving that it depends mostly on climatic factors whether regions in Africa are covered by forest or savanna. The study, confirms the dominant role of climate in the formation of global vegetation patterns.
Corn leaves on the lowest rung of a plant’s stem spend much of the day shrouded in shade. A gust of wind can crack the window to photosynthesis, and growth, for those leaves, but they typically can’t adjust in time to seize the moment. Research is identifying genes that could open the way to breeding plants better at capitalizing on yield-boosting sunlight.
