A research team has discovered how a pathogenic fungus can bypass the immune system of plants. By releasing an ‘effector’ molecule, it avoids elimination at a critical stage in its reproduction cycle.
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For plant breeding, it is important to create as many combinations as possible of genetic variants within a short time to select the most suitable candidates between plants with many different characteristics. A working group has now developed a method…
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A brown blotch on a plant leaf may be a sign that the plant’s defenses are hard at work: When a plant is infected by a virus, fungus or bacterium, its immune response keeps the disease from spreading by killing…
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Iron (Fe) is an indispensable microelement for plant growth and development, but Fe excess can be toxic to plants. To maintain Fe homeostasis, plants must sense the environmental Fe concentration and fine-tune the expression of Fe uptake-associated genes accordingly. Previous studies…
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Scientists are a step closer to breeding plants with genes from only one parent. New research shows the underlying mechanism behind eliminating half the genome and could make for easier and more rapid breeding of crop plants with desirable traits…
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Photosystem II is a protein in plants, algae and cyanobacteria that uses sunlight to break water down into its atomic components, unlocking hydrogen and oxygen. A longstanding question about this process is how water molecules are funneled into the center of…
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Years ago, the African Union decided on an ambitious program: degraded ecosystems in parts of the Sahel are to be successively restored in order to secure food for the people living there and to protect the soil against further degradation.…
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With commitments to restore more than 47.5 million hectares of degraded land and forests by 2030, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and India hope to become exemplar land custodians. While commitments ending deforestation are critical to obtaining that image—Indonesia is one…
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After a spell of unexpected rain, before the harvest season, a farmer may be faced with the unpredictable problem of untimely sprouting of barley. Sprouted barley fetches considerably low market prices and poses an economic burden on farmers and corporations…
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valuable trait. Some major examples of crops with these so-called “transgenes” include disease-resistant cotton and beta-carotene-enhanced golden rice. However, when foreign DNA is introduced into a host organism, a natural defensive response in plants is to repress or silence the…
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