As the world continues to warm, many arid regions that already have marginal conditions for agriculture will be increasingly under stress, potentially leading to severe food shortages. Now, researchers have come up with a promising process for protecting seeds from the stress of water shortage during their crucial germination phase, and even providing the plants with extra nutrition at the same time.
Italian ryegrass (Lolium multiflorum) is a widely cultivated forage with excellent quality, high yield, good palatability and rich nutritional value. However, its growth is inhibited by salt tress, which is a major growth limiting factor.
New techniques allow live-observation of forming cell walls in the vascular tissue. The so-called xylem, also known as wood, is a network of hollow cells with extremely strong cell walls that reinforce the cells against the mechanical conflicts arising from growing tall. These walls wrap around the cells in filigree band and spiral patterns. So far, it is only partly known, how these patterns are created. Scientists recently study the formation of such reinforced and patterned cell walls.
Plants produce toxic substances to defend themselves against herbivores. In a new study, scientists were able to describe in detail the biosynthesis and exact mode of action of an important group of defensive substances, the diterpene glycosides, in wild tobacco plants. Diterpene glycosides allow plants to fend off herbivores. The study shows that these plant chemicals attack certain parts of the cell membrane.
The sensory quality of watermelon fruit is determined by the content of sugar and organic acid, which determines the taste of watermelon during the development and maturation of watermelon fruit. The changes of sugar and organic acid during the watermelon fruit development were analyzed and the key gene networks controlling the metabolism of sugar and organic acid during the fruit development were identified.
Nitrogen is one the most essential nutrients for plants. Its availability in the soil plays a major role in plant growth and development, thereby affecting agricultural productivity. Scientists were now able to show, how plants adjust their root growth to varying sources of nitrogen. In a new study they give insights in the molecular pathways of roots adaptation.
Climate warming is linked to a widening interval between leaf unfolding and flowering in European trees, with implications for tree fitness and the wider environment, according to new research.
Plants have the same variation in body clocks as that found in humans, according to new research that explores the genes governing circadian rhythms in plants.
To develop a successful parasitic relationship, parasitic plants form a specialized structure, the haustorium which attaches to and invades the host plant. The formation of haustoria is regulated by signal molecules derived from the host plant and allows the parasitic plant to absorb water, nutrients, and small materials from the host plant. Now, researchers find that the plant hormone ethylene mediates the invasion of hosts by parasitic plants
Researchers have found a way to engineer more efficient versions of the plant enzyme Rubisco by using a red-algae-like Rubisco from a bacterium. For 50 years scientists have striven to boost the activity of Rubisco, a promising target to increase crop production, as it controls how much and how fast plants fix carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into sugars and energy during photosynthesis.
