Plant scientists team up to pinpoint the exact mechanism that controls epigenetic inheritance in plants. Their discovery could have implications for agriculture, food supplies, the environment, and our understanding of the human genome.
A new study demonstrates that one of the two branches of plant immunity was likely to have evolved early during the establishment of plants on dry land. This insight into prehistoric plant immunity may have implications for breeding more resistant plant species.
The global demand for rice is projected to rise significantly by 2050, necessitating sustainable intensification of existing croplands. Now, researchers have made significant progress by developing deep-learning algorithms that can rapidly estimate rice yield through the analysis of thousands of photographs. The model exhibited high precision across diverse conditions and cultivars, surpassing previous methods, while effectively detecting yield differences between cultivars and also with different water management practices.
As climate change continues to pose severe challenges to ensuring sustainable food supplies around the world, scientists are looking for ways to improve the resilience and nutritional quality of potatoes. The team have created a potato super pangenome to identify genetic traits that can help produce the next super spud.
A recent study shows that a single mutation that has immediate effects on plant fitness is maintained over the long term in natural plant populations, despite theories predict the contrary. The researchers located and identified the gene that regulates the amount of an active defense hormone. Mutants in this gene are susceptible to herbivore attack. However, they compensate for impaired defenses through robust genetic networks. When fewer herbivores attack, they even grow faster and produce more offspring.
Retention of dead biomass by plants is common in the temperate herbaceous flora and can be related to certain plant traits, indicating relevance to ecosystem functioning. These are the main findings of an experimental study on more than 100 plant species jointly performed by researchers from the Germany and Czech Republic.
Maize roots secrete certain chemicals that affect the quality of soil. In some fields, this effect increases yields of wheat planted subsequent to maize in the same soil by more than 4%. While the findings from several field experiments show that these effects are highly variable, in the long term they may yet help to make the cultivation of grains more sustainable, without the need for additional fertilizers or pesticides.
The two OsRALF peptides are essential for pollen tube germination and elongation, a vital step in the fertilization of rice crops.
A 390-million-year-old moss called Takakia lives in some of Earth’s most remote places, including the icy cliffs of the Tibetan Plateau. In a decade-long project, a team of scientists climbed some of the tallest peaks in the world to find Takakia, sequence its DNA for the first time, and study how climate change is impacting the moss. Their results show that Takakia is one of the fastest evolving species ever studied — but it likely isn’t evolving fast enough to survive climate change.
A research group identified a genetic sequence in thale cress that is essential for plant reproduction. As this region is found in all plant species, it is expected to contribute to future crossbreeding between plant species.
