Plants regulate their growth and development using hormones, including a group called strigolactones that prevent excessive budding and branching. For the first time, scientists have synthesized strigolactones from microbes.
A new method for quantifying plant evolution reveals that after the onset of early seed plants, complexity halted for 250 million years until the diversification of flowering plants about 100 million years ago.
Researchers have successfully developed plants that can be used to detect organic pollutants, such as polychlorinated biphenyls and endocrine-disrupting chemicals, which contaminate soil and water.
Coconut trees grow slowly and are difficult to clone. Scientists have developed a method to multiply seedlings faster and conserve coconut genetic resources for the long term. This will help to preserve coconut tree biodiversity and meet the increasing demand for coconuts and derived products.
The current world population of 7.8 billion is predicted to reach 10 billion by 2057. Future access to affordable and healthy food will be challenging, with malnutrition already affecting one in three people worldwide. Two new papers recognized that global crop production systems need to expand their outputs sustainably to feed this rapidly growing human population.
Invasive shrubs in Northeastern forests that sprout leaves earlier in the spring and keep them longer in the fall not only absorb more sunlight than native shrubs, but their foliage lowers air temperatures on the forest floor, likely giving them another competitive advantage.
Scientists discover endophytic bacteria that can survive the unfavorable interior of passion fruit seeds and get transmitted to the seedlings on germination
A study into the energy-making process in plants could help engineer crops more resistant to stress or bacteria that produce pharmaceuticals.
How flowers form properly within a limited time frame has been a mystery. Now researchers have found that KNUCKLES, a small multi-functional protein, supports the correct timing of floral development for the proper formation of flower reproductive organs
Velloziaceae is a monocot family that is made up of five genera and c. 250 species with a disjunct distribution in Africa mainland, Madagascar, Arabian Peninsula, China and South America. They are recognized as the largest lineage of vascular plants that can tolerate desiccation, hence are resurrection plants.
