Understanding how plants process light is key to improving crop yields. Light helps plants know when to grow and flower at the right time. Plants find light using proteins called photoreceptors. The research team uncovered how proteins called UBP12 and UBP13 help regulate a photoreceptor called CRY2. Their discovery might reveal new ways to control growth—which could have broad applications beyond agriculture.
An awn is a needle-like structure seen in grass species, whose presence or absence in plants is controlled genetically. However, this mechanism is poorly understood in sorghum, a cereal widely consumed around the world. Now, researchers from Japan have identified the “DOMINANT AWN INHIBITOR” (or DAI) gene in sorghum to be responsible for inhibiting awn elongation. Their findings provide novel insights into common mechanisms of awn inhibition across various cereal crops.
Underneath the surface, plant roots are hard at work. Roots, of course, are how plants get water and minerals from the soil. But digging into how different root systems affect crop yields has been challenging for researchers.
An AI-powered imaging system provides rapid automated phenotyping of seed germination and root growth that could help select plants that grow well.
New research has revealed that plants make their own ‘secret’ decisions about how much carbon to release back into the atmosphere via a previously unknown process, a discovery with “profound implications” for the use of plants as carbon stores.
Although about 20% of Illinois cropping systems are planted to continuous corn, it’s nearly impossible to find fields planted this way for decades at a time. Yet long-term experiments, including over 40 years of continuous corn under different nitrogen fertilizer rates, provide incredible learning opportunities and soil management lessons for researchers and farmers alike.
Over 200 years ago, a Spanish botanist described Artocarpus odoratissimus, a species of fruit-bearing tree found in Borneo and the Philippines. The Iban people, who are indigenous to Borneo, know the tree to have two different varieties, which they call lumok and pingan, distinguished by their fruit size and shape. Despite this knowledge, Western botanists have long considered the tree as a single species, but a genetic analysis confirms the Iban people were right all along.
Researchers find that local community perceptions of ecosystem services provided by symbolic wild cherry trees could be used in community-based management and conservation of traditional forest landscapes in Japan.
Researchers are forecasting that by 2040-60, Sosnowsky’s hogweed will likely exploit global warming to expand its habitat, threatening to infest almost the entire European part of Russia.
The length of time a flower remained open (i.e., from anthesis to flower senescence) is called floral longevity. Floral longevity has been considered as one of the most important reproductive traits as it determines opportunities for pollen dispersal and capture of pollen by stigmas as well as has the potential to influence intra pollinator foraging and opportunities for geitonogamous self-pollination.
