Scientists have discovered how plants manage to live alongside each other in places that are dark and shady. Moderate shade or even the threat of shade – detected by phytochrome photoreceptors – causes plants to elongate to try to outgrow the competition.
An international study has revealed the structure of a membrane-remodeling protein that builds and maintains photosynthetic membranes. These fundamental insights lay the groundwork for bioengineering efforts to strengthen plants against environmental stress, helping to sustaining human food supply and fight against climate change.
The Musa genus, which includes over 70 species and around 1,000 cultivars of bananas, represents a globally important source of food and livelihoods. MusaNet collects and shares global resources on banana (Musa) across the whole value chain – from collecting germplasm to post-harvest qualities.
As well as bright colours and subtle scents, flowers possess many invisible ways of attracting their pollinators, and a new study shows that bumblebees may use the humidity of a flower to tell them about the presence of nectar, according to recent research.
The first plant embryo gene expression atlas at the single cell level was developed by a team of researchers. The work is a milestone on the way to uncovering the molecular mechanisms that determine how the most fundamental plant cell-types are established at the beginning of life.
Findings reveal how plants use a blend of genes, geography, demography and environmental conditions to evolve defense chemicals over time.
Researchers continue to track the evolution of different strains of the plant pathogen that caused the Irish potato famine in the 1840s, which set down roots in the United States before attacking Europe
Researchers discover that the fungus Fusarium verticillioides uses volatile compounds to manipulate insects and plants, promoting its own dissemination.
The enormous potential of Big Data has already been demonstrated in areas such as financial services and telecommunications. An international team of researchers has now tapped the potential of big data for the first time on a large scale for plant research. To this end, data from three projects were used to increase the predictive accuracy for yield in hybrid varieties of wheat.
The mystery of the formation of one of the most peculiar plant forms – the Romanesco cauliflower – has been solved by a team of international and multidisciplinar scientists.
