Researchers have successfully developed plants that can be used to detect organic pollutants, such as polychlorinated biphenyls and endocrine-disrupting chemicals, which contaminate soil and water.
A water-absorbent coat to keep rust away? It may seem counterintuitive but when it comes to soybean plants and rust disease, researchers from Japan have discovered that applying a coating that makes leaf surfaces water absorbent helps to protect against infection.
Invasive shrubs in Northeastern forests that sprout leaves earlier in the spring and keep them longer in the fall not only absorb more sunlight than native shrubs, but their foliage lowers air temperatures on the forest floor, likely giving them another competitive advantage.
Ask a farmer, a scientist, and a conservation professional to define soil health, and you might come up with three rather different answers. That mismatch may be at the root of lower-than-ideal adoption of soil conservation practices, according to a new study.
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.
Researchers have re-animated specimens of a fungus that causes coffee wilt to discover how the disease evolved and how its spread can be prevented.
Plant diseases don’t stop at national borders and miles of oceans don’t prevent their spread, either. That’s why plant disease surveillance, improved detection systems, and global predictive disease modeling are necessary to mitigate future disease outbreaks and protect the global food supply, according to a team of researchers.
The detrimental impact of pesticides on non-target organisms is one of the most urgent concerns in current agriculture. Double-stranded RNAs (dsRNAs) represent the most species-specific class of pesticides to date, potentially allowing control of a target pest without effecting other species.
A recent work describes a new rapid ‘leaf-disk assay’ that uses chlorophyll fluorescence emissions to determine whether a weed is resistant to various systemic and contact herbicides.
