A research team led by the University of Georgia has discovered that manipulation of the same gene in poplar trees and switchgrass produced plants that grow better and are more efficiently converted to biofuels.
Despite the bad rap snakes often get, they are more central to ecology than most people realize. New research reveals that snakes might even play a key role in dispersing plant seeds.
House Speaker Beth Harwell led a delegation of Tennessee legislators to campus Monday, Feb. 5, to learn more about Middle Tennessee State University’s Tennessee Center for Botanical Medicine Research and its ongoing studies with nonpsychotropic cannabinoids, which are derived from hemp.
After 100 years of assertions about the roots of citrus, a global group of scientists – including a University of Florida professor – has traced the evolutionary history of Florida’s signature crop up to 8 million years ago in the Himalayas of Southeast Asia.
A new tool may help growers make better decisions in applying nitrogen fertilizer to their rice fields.
A rare, coastal flowering plant known as Tidestrom's lupine -- threatened by native deer mice that can munch up to three-quarters of its unripe fruits under cover of an invasive beachgrass -- has been given a new life with the large-scale removal of that grass, a long-term study shows.
A $20,000 grant in support of enhancing the St. Louis region as a world center for agtech, bioscience, and other industries that are defining the future of the region.
Microbes are in your gut, in your medicine…and in the soil! The Soil Science Society of America (SSSA) February 1 Soils Matter blog post explains how the soil microbiome makes a big impact on plants’ productivity and health.
What’s a responsible farmer to do? Manure injection is an important soil management practice that reduces the chance of manure runoff. But recent studies by Carol Adair and colleagues at the University of Vermont show manure injection can increase the release of harmful greenhouse gases.
A team of scientists led by University of Wisconsin-Madison entomologist Sean Schoville sequenced the Colorado potato beetle's genome, probing its genes for clues to its surprising adaptability to new environments and insecticides. The new information sheds light on how this insect jumps to new plant hosts and handles toxins, and it will help researchers explore more ways to control the beetle.
Whether it’s trade agreements, labor, water supply or how to manage post-Irma, growers are trying to make the best decisions for their business, said Spiro Stefanou, chair of the UF/IFAS food and resource economics department, which organizes the conference.
In a sneak attack, some pathogenic microbes manipulate plant hormones to gain access to their hosts undetected. Biologists at Washington University in St. Louis have exposed one such interloper by characterizing the unique biochemical pathway it uses to synthesize auxin, a central hormone in plant development.In a paper published in the Jan.
West Virginia University researchers are taking an innovative approach to develop a more sustainable and economical pest control solution.
We often “flush it and forget it” when it comes to waste from toilets and sinks. However, it’s important to be able to track this wastewater to ensure it doesn’t end up in unwanted places. Tracing where this water ends up is hard to measure: What’s something found in all wastewater that will allow us to account for all of it? The answer, of all things, is artificial sweeteners.
As an example of their work at the conference, researchers incorporated new models for crops like the cereal tef and cassava, which are typically grown in developing countries, said Jim Jones, a UF/IFAS professor of agricultural and biological engineering.
A team led by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has uncovered how certain soil microbes cope in a phosphorus-poor environment to survive in a tropical ecosystem. Their novel approach could be applied in other ecosystems to study various nutrient limitations and inform agriculture and terrestrial biosphere modeling.
Facing a climate crisis, we may someday spray sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere to form a cloud that cools the Earth, but suddenly stopping the spraying would have a severe global impact on animals and plants, according to the first study on the potential biological impacts of geoengineering, or climate intervention.
A new synthetic hormone promises to tease apart the many different roles of the plant hormone auxin and could lead to a new way to ripen fruit.
Can farmers produce at least 1 billion tons of biomass per year that can be used as biofuels feedstock? The answer is yes.
Consumption of crops is outgrowing the production of crops around the world. Malnutrition and starvation are major international issues. Fertilizers can help growers increase food production, but how? The January 22 Sustainable, Secure Food blog post explains how fertilizers help growers provide nutritious, affordable food for the world’s growing population.
Researchers have created the first network map for 200 of the membrane proteins that help plants sense microbes or other stresses. The map shows how a few key proteins act as master nodes critical for network integrity, and the map also reveals unknown interactions.
New research from a Florida State University scientist has revealed a surprising relationship between surging atmospheric carbon dioxide and flower blooms in a remote tropical forest.
Three University of Florida scientists will use the grants to study ways to help growers cope with the disease, including research on genetic editing that may produce potentially resistant fruit and trees.
An international review led by the University of Queensland and WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society) says that many native carnivores that live in and around human habitation are declining at an unprecedented rate – spelling bad news for humans who indirectly rely on them for a variety of beneficial services.
West Virginia University biologist Jonathan Cumming is studying willow and poplar trees by analyzing their differential sensitivity to soils that are left behind after mining.
Pharmaceuticals and other man-made contaminants are forcing fish that live downstream from a typical sewage treatment plant to work at least 30 per cent harder just to survive, McMaster researchers have found.
A bedding system new to Texas – hügelkultur – is trending among home gardeners looking for low-maintenance ways to grow flowers, fruits and vegetables, said Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service horticulturist Dr. Joe Masabni.
A new program uses Landsat satellite data to automatically differentiate land cover into 16 categories in 30-meter resolution— and does so more accurately than other land cover products.
A new study integrating data from around the globe has shown that honey bees are the world’s most important single species of pollinator in natural ecosystems and a key contributor to natural ecosystem functions. The report weaves together information from 80 plant-pollinator interaction networks.
The future of weeding is here, and it comes in the form of a robot. Specialty crops such as lettuce, broccoli, tomatoes, and onions may be the first to benefit.
From U.S. Navy laboratories to battlefields in Afghanistan, researchers are lining up to explore the use of unmanned aerial vehicles to detect unexploded landmines. At Missouri University of Science and Technology, civil engineering doctoral student Paul Manley is enlisting a third variable —plant health — to see if drones can be used to more safely locate such weapons of destruction.
A University of Rhode Island scientist who studies the invasive plant Phragmites was part of an international research team that found that the most significant factor in determining whether a plant will become invasive is the size of its genome.
The Eveland laboratory’s research findings, “Brassinosteroids modulate meristem fate and differentiation of unique inflorescence morphology in Setaria viridis”, were recently published in the journal The Plant Cell.
Using satellite imaging and drone reconnaissance, archaeologists from Washington University in St. Louis have discovered an ancient irrigation system that allowed a farming community in arid northwestern China to raise livestock and cultivate crops in one of the world’s driest desert climates.Lost for centuries in the barren foothills of China’s Tian Shan Mountains, the ancient farming community remains hidden in plain sight — appearing little more than an odd scattering of round boulders and sandy ruts when viewed from the ground.
Understanding dodder’s covert communications weaponry system, which operates much like a computer virus, could provide researchers with a method to engineer parasite-resistant plants.
In the U.S., alfalfa is grown mainly in western and northern states. The cold winters and other factors can lead to losses for farmers and forage shortages. Researchers have identified annual forage crops that can be cultivated in fields with winter-killed or terminated alfalfa.
Grazing animals, such as cattle and sheep, should eat their legumes and brassicas. The Soil Science Society of America (SSSA) January 1 Soils Matter blog post explains how a variety of forage grasses benefits these animals as well as the soil and environment.
Middle Tennessee State University researchers will use the grant to experiment with ginseng. The effort is expected to improve farmers’ income across the state and conserve wild ginseng, which is considered an endangered species, in Tennessee.
A pan-genome is a valuable resource for unlocking natural diversity. Having plant pan-genomes for crops important for fuel and food applications would enable breeders to harness natural diversity to improve traits such as yield, disease resistance, and tolerance of marginal growing conditions.
Plants don’t sleep like humans do—but just like some people don’t rest well in the heat, some plants don’t either. The canola plant isn’t as productive if the temperature is high at nighttime, and scientists are trying to find out why.
The combined effects of pesticides and a lack of nutrition form a deadly one-two punch for animals, new research shows for the first time. Researchers studied how honey bees fared with exposure to pesticides and limited nutrient sources, scenarios found in agricultural areas.
Data on soils, crop and livestock performance and environmental parameters, such as greenhouse gas emissions, will help convince producers to try cover crops in their rotation plans.
In Nature Genetics, a team led by JGI researchers assembled a catalog of bacterial genomes to identify and characterize candidate genes that aid bacteria in adapting to plant environments, specifically genes involved in bacterial root colonization.
The latest resupply mission to the International Space Station delivered hundreds of seeds to the spacefaring research lab Sunday, Dec. 17, to test how plants grow in the stressful environment of zero gravity. This is the fourth plants-in-space experiment for University of Wisconsin–Madison Professor of Botany Simon Gilroy.
“From what I’ve seen, we’ve got some reasonably tolerant scion/rootstock combinations that growers should be taking a look at as short-term solutions to living with greening until true HLB-resistant trees are developed,” said Michael Rogers, director of the UF/IFAS Citrus Research and Education Center.
Tulane University awarded the $1 million grand prize for the Tulane Nitrogen Reduction Challenge to Adapt-N, a team from Cornell University that developed a cloud-based computer modeling system to predict optimum nitrogen application rates for crops using data on weather, field conditions and soil management practices.
Farmers in the Northeast are adapting to longer growing seasons and warming climate conditions, but they may face spring-planting whiplash as they confront fields increasingly saturated with rain, according to a research paper published in the journal Climatic Change.
Evolutionary bottlenecks brought on by domestication have caused the genome of corn to retain harmful mutations over the course of millennia, according to a new study from an Iowa State University scientist. The study takes a journey through the past by studying genetic changes in corn.
The 2009 film “Avatar” created a lush imaginary world, illuminated by magical, glowing plants. Now researchers are starting to bring this spellbinding vision to life to help reduce our dependence on artificial lighting. They report in ACS’ journal Nano Letters a way to infuse plants with the luminescence of fireflies.
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