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Climate change has raised the risk of a fungal disease that ravages banana crops, new research shows. Black Sigatoka disease emerged from Asia in the late 20th Century and has recently completed its invasion of banana-growing areas in Latin America…

The leaves of date palms can heat up to temperatures around 50 degrees Celsius. They survive thanks to a unique wax mixture that is essential for the existence in the desert. In 1956, the Würzburg botanist Otto Ludwig Lange observed…

Although pesticides are a standard part of crop production, Michigan State University researchers believe pesticide use could be reduced by taking cues from wild plants. The team recently identified an evolutionary function in wild tomato plants that could be used…

The EU’s policy on GMO is extremely strict and prevents new GMO crops from being authorized. The policy is based on arguments about the risk and unnaturalness of GMO plants – but these arguments cannot justify the restrictive regulation, three…

New research published identifies the genomic features that might have made domestication possible for corn and soybeans, two of the world’s most critical crop species. The research, published in the peer-reviewed academic journal Genome Biology, has implications for how scientists…