A tiny mutation in the genetic material of barley ensures that those plants develop faster and thus flower earlier than established barley varieties. At the same time, plant yields remain the same. According to the researchers, this is advantageous as the plants could potentially adapt better to the effects of climate change and continue to produce stable harvests.
Adding silicon to soil could help protect canola from clubroot. Treatment may also help crops weather drought and extreme heat, researchers find.
Hybrids — common in agriculture as well as in nature — have chromosomes from two or more parent species. In some cases, including strawberries, goldfish and several other species, these disparate parental chromosomes become doubled, a condition known as allopolyploidy. A recent article outlines a way to trace these genomes back to the polypoid hybrid’s parent species.
Worldwide, farmers are being challenged with a variety of issues, including growing populations, a changing climate and soil degradation, among many others. To combat these challenges, researchers are looking for solutions and have begun to focus their work on the viability of sustainable agriculture practices, like cover crops.
There are flowering plants that have the ability to self-pollinate, meaning that they can fertilise themselves without a partner. However, selfing also has clear negative consequences for the plants – first and foremost the loss of genetic variability and biological fitness of the species. Thus, many flowering plants have mechanisms in place to prevent selfing, for example by recognising and rejecting their own pollen.
Paleobotanists have made an important breakthrough in understanding the origin and geographic distribution of cycads. By combining genetic data with leaf morphological data from both fossil and living species for the first time, the researchers created a phylogenetic tree of these fascinating and endangered plants.
The cellular life inside a plant is as vibrant as the blossom. In each plant tissue—from root tip to leaf tip—there are hundreds of cell types that relay information about functional needs and environmental changes. Now, a new technology can capture this internal plant world at an unprecedented resolution, opening the door for understanding how plants respond to a changing climate and leading to more resilient crops.
In a discovery aimed at accelerating the development of process-advantaged crops for jet biofuels, scientists developed a capability to insert multiple genes into plants in a single step.
New knowledge of ancient grain may enable breeding for climate change adaptation. An international team of researchers has unlocked a large-scale genomic analysis of Setaria or foxtail millet, an important cereal crop. The study advances our understanding of the domestication and evolution of foxtail millet, as well as the genetic basis for important agricultural traits.
New esearch has found using environmental DNA (eDNA), in conjunction with conventional methods, to monitor how insects interact with flowers could potentially improve conservation rates.
