Plant breeders around the globe have worked for decades to create peanut varieties that can fight off fungal diseases, and several have been successful. Now DNA detectives show how important peanut seed exchange is to food security.
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New research sheds fresh light on plant chloroplasts, and the proteins inside them. The regulation of chloroplast proteins is important for plant development and stress acclimation and is increasingly significant as plants - including our staple crops, wheat, rice, barley…
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Today’s cities don’t have walls for protection like ancient ones, but they are separate from less urban and rural land. Most goods that city-dwellers purchase are brought in from rural farms and manufacturers. There is an active community of urban…
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Pollinators – such as bees, butterflies and birds – are essential for agricultural production. However, natural pollination can also fail or be insufficient, which can lead to lower yields and poorer quality. This means alternative solutions are needed. Hand pollination,…
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It is commonly assumed that any important scientific knowledge would be available in English, and so scientific knowledge used in international studies is predominantly sourced from English-language documents. But is this assumption correct? According to new research the answer is…
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New study provides new target for increasing oil content of plant tissues for potential applications in bioenergy, chemical engineering, and nutrition.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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…
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