Plant breeders around the globe have worked for decades to create peanut varieties that can fight off fungal diseases, and several have been successful. Now DNA detectives show how important peanut seed exchange is to food security.
New research sheds fresh light on plant chloroplasts, and the proteins inside them. The regulation of chloroplast proteins is important for plant development and stress acclimation and is increasingly significant as plants – including our staple crops, wheat, rice, barley – are having to respond to our changing environments.
Pollinators – such as bees, butterflies and birds – are essential for agricultural production. However, natural pollination can also fail or be insufficient, which can lead to lower yields and poorer quality. This means alternative solutions are needed. Hand pollination, in which pollen is applied manually or mechanically to the flower, can supplement or replace pollination by animals.
New study provides new target for increasing oil content of plant tissues for potential applications in bioenergy, chemical engineering, and nutrition.
Plants regulate their growth and development using hormones, including a group called strigolactones that prevent excessive budding and branching. For the first time, scientists have synthesized strigolactones from microbes.
A new method for quantifying plant evolution reveals that after the onset of early seed plants, complexity halted for 250 million years until the diversification of flowering plants about 100 million years ago.
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.
Scientists discover endophytic bacteria that can survive the unfavorable interior of passion fruit seeds and get transmitted to the seedlings on germination
A study into the energy-making process in plants could help engineer crops more resistant to stress or bacteria that produce pharmaceuticals.
