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.
Plants are constantly exposed to microbes: pathogens that cause disease, commensals that cause no harm or benefit, and mutualists that promote plant growth or help fend off pathogens. For example, most land plants can form positive relationships with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi to improve nutrient uptake. How plants fight off pathogens without also killing beneficial microbes or wasting energy on commensal microbes is a largely unanswered question.
To describe something as slow and boring we say it’s “like watching grass grow”, but scientists studying the early morning activity of plants have found they make a rapid start to their day – within minutes of dawn.
