New research has tracked Japanese hanami (flower viewing) via social media images, producing an unprecedented map of cherry blossoms across Japan to document their annual bloom and calculate its peak in major cities.
Wikifarmer and the Global Plant Council organized a joint webinar that brought together leading speakers in the field of new breeding technologies and gene-edited crops. With a focus on geographical specificities, each expert shared their unique perspectives and expertise, aiming to inspire advancements in the agricultural industry and pave the way for sustainable and productive crops in the future.
Did humans favor certain wild plants for domestication because they were more easily “tamed”? New research calls for a reappraisal of the process of plant domestication, based on almost a decade of observations and experiments. The behavior of erect knotweed, a buckwheat relative, has paleoethnobotanists completely reassessing our understanding of plant domestication.
A herb that grows abundantly in coastal areas can be used to rid the soil around nuclear plants of caesium, a radioactive by-product of reactors, says a new study.
Doing research outside of the lab is important to career advancement in scientific fields like ecology, geology and paleontology, but it comes with a host of unique challenges. That’s why a team developed a guide for making fieldwork safer and more equitable, especially for researchers from marginalized groups.
Cell division ensures growth or renewal and is thus vital for all organisms. However, the process differs somewhat in animals, bacteria, fungi, plants, and algae. Until now, little was known about how cell division occurs in algae. Researchers have used confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) to capture the very first high-resolution three-dimensional images of cell division in live cells of the microalga Volvox carteri, and have identified new cellular structures involved in the process.
Live imaging of microbes in soil would help scientists understand how soil microbial processes occur on the scale of micrometers, where microbial cells interact with minerals, organic matter, plant roots and other microorganisms. Because the soil environment is both heterogeneous and dynamic, these interactions may vary substantially within a small area and over short timescales.
Angiosperms may be distinguished from their gymnosperm peers by their flowers, and thus a flower is a good proxy of fossil angiosperms. However, flowers and their parts are usually too frail to be preserved in the fossil, which makes the origin of angiosperms and their flowers the foci of controversy. Recently, researchers reported a fossil flower bud, Florigerminis jurassica gen. et sp. nov., from the Jurassic in Inner Mongolia, China. This is the earliest fossil record of flower buds in the world so far.
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 gardeners and landscape architects who are trying to bring more of the “country” back into the city. And for good reason. Urban landscapes combining trees and crops – urban agroforestry – can offer ecological, cultural, economic benefits and more.
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 no, and science written in languages other than English may hold untapped information crucial to the conservation of global biodiversity.
