A machine vision system capable of locating and identifying apple king flowers within clusters of blossoms on trees in orchards was devised by researchers — a critical early step in the development of a robotic pollination system — in a first-of-its-kind study.
Scientists are drawing inspiration from plants to develop new techniques to separate and extract valuable minerals, metals and nutrients from resource-rich wastewater.
Under cold conditions, not only the mother plant but also the father plant can pass on its chloroplasts to the offspring.
Non-vascular bryophytes live in colonies that cover the ground and resemble tiny forests. In a real forest, plants compete for light in different layers of the canopy. If a plant does not receive enough sunlight, it stops lateral branching and instead grows vertically to reach the sunlight. Researchers discovered that the liverwort Marchantia polymorpha, whose plant body is fundamentally different from those of vascular plants, also adapts its architecture in response to shade.
Researchers have traced the evolution of mint genomes for potential future applications that range from medicines to pesticides to antimicrobials.
Researchers have now investigated how a mixture of crops of faba beans (broad beans) and wheat affects the number of pollinating insects. They found that areas of mixed crops compared with areas of single crops are visited equally often by foraging bees.
Researchers have successfully demonstrated precision gene editing in miscanthus, a promising perennial crop for sustainable bioenergy production.
A research group finds that populations of Siebold’s beech, Fagus crenata, at their northernmost limit are more genetically diverse than estimated, and may have persisted there since before the last glacial maximum.
In a paper published botanists have shown that some Nepenthes (tropical pitcher plants) are capturing more nitrogen, and therefore nutrients, from mammal droppings as compared to those that capture insects.
Mycorrhizal symbiosis helps plants expand their root surface area, giving plants greater access to nutrients and water. Although the first and foremost role of mycorrhizal symbiosis is to facilitate plant nutrition, how mycorrhizal types mediate the nutrient acquisition and interactions of coexisting trees in forests has not been clear to scientists.
