A research team has discovered how a pathogenic fungus can bypass the immune system of plants. By releasing an ‘effector’ molecule, it avoids elimination at a critical stage in its reproduction cycle.
For plant breeding, it is important to create as many combinations as possible of genetic variants within a short time to select the most suitable candidates between plants with many different characteristics. A working group has now developed a method…
A brown blotch on a plant leaf may be a sign that the plant’s defenses are hard at work: When a plant is infected by a virus, fungus or bacterium, its immune response keeps the disease from spreading by killing…
Iron (Fe) is an indispensable microelement for plant growth and development, but Fe excess can be toxic to plants. To maintain Fe homeostasis, plants must sense the environmental Fe concentration and fine-tune the expression of Fe uptake-associated genes accordingly. Previous studies…
Scientists are a step closer to breeding plants with genes from only one parent. New research shows the underlying mechanism behind eliminating half the genome and could make for easier and more rapid breeding of crop plants with desirable traits…