Researchers with UF/IFAS’ Center for Aquatic and Invasive Plants spent more than a year developing a searchable website and database to help Floridians assess problem— or just plain puzzling —non-native plants.
What some farmers grow as pasture plants others view as weeds. But with the need to cheaply feed food animals rising, circumstances are right for the weed invasion to escalate.
On August 14, 1864, in a Union Army camp in Georgia, a captain from Wisconsin plucked a plant, pressed it onto a sheet of paper, wrote a letter describing the plant as "certainly the most interesting specimen I ever saw," and sent it with the plant to a scientist he called "Friend" in Wisconsin.
A patent-pending technology at Kansas State University has built resistance to certain viruses in wheat plants. These viruses can be an economic drain to wheat farmers by costing them 5 to 10 percent or more in yield reductions per crop. Although the technology involves genetic engineering, which is not an option for wheat in today's market, the research has extended to building this resistance in non-genetically engineered wheat lines as well.
Scientists using a microbe that occurs naturally in eastern cottonwood trees have boosted the ability of willow and lawn grass to withstand the withering effects of the nasty industrial pollutant phenanthrene.
Thousand cankers disease, which kills black walnut trees, has been confirmed in 15 states. The Kansas Forest Service encourages people to avoid moving firewood or lumber this winter to prevent spreading the disease to other states.
Researchers at Simon Gilroy's lab in the Department of Botany at the University of Wisconsin-Madison this afternoon greeted a truck carrying small containers holding more than 1,000 frozen plants that germinated and grew aboard the International Space Station.
Scientists at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) are growing the first American chestnut trees that can withstand the blight that virtually eliminated the tree from the eastern United States.
It’s late autumn, and most of the blossom-laden plants that colored summer are fading. But seasonal changes offer no excuse for roses in experimental plots around Texas. They had better be loaded with colorful, fragrant autumn blooms and healthy green foliage if they ever expect to be planted in someone’s yard. That’s the contention of picky rose breeder Dr. David Byrne, Texas A&M AgriLife Research scientist based in College Station.
In a large scale study of native and invasive Phargmites, researchers from URI and LSU found that the intensity of plant invasions by non-native species can vary considerably with changes in latitude.
A series of detailed genetic studies points scientists to a new way to dramatically increase the accumulation of oil in plant leaves, an abundant source of biomass for fuel production.
Researchers led by Colorado State University uncovered more than 167,000 kinds of bacteria, archaea and eukaryotes in the soil beneath one of the nation's iconic urban environments. That’s 260 times as many species of birds, plants and invertebrates that live in the Park - combined.
It’s the first day of autumn, and the telltale signs are here: crisp weather, pumpkin spice lattes and, most importantly, the leaves are changing colors. Ever wonder why some leaves turn red, others yellow and some just turn brown? We’ll tell you all about the chemistry behind this seasonal spectacle in the latest Reactions episode.
The smell of cut grass in recent years has been identified as the plant’s way of signalling distress, but new research says the aroma also summons beneficial insects to the rescue.
Rising temperatures and shifting precipitation patterns may get the lion’s share of our climate change attention, but predators may want to give some thought to wind, according to a University of Wisconsin Madison zoologist’s study, which is among the first to demonstrate the way “global stilling” may alter predator-prey relationships.
The mechanical force that a single fungal cell or bacterial colony exerts on a plant cell may seem vanishingly small, but it plays a heavy role in setting up some of the most fundamental symbiotic relationships in biology, according to a new study led by Jean-Michel Ané, a professor of agronomy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
In research to be published in the journal Ecology — and currently posted online as a preprint — Thomas Givnish, a professor of botany at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, attempts to resolve a debate as to which factors actually set maximum tree height, and how their relative importance varies in different parts of the world.
Coffee drinkers beware: Surprise ingredients may be hiding in your coffee, and growing shortages may well increase the chance of having more fillers in the future. A new test that will be reported today at the 248th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society, may quickly find them before the beverage reaches stores and restaurants.
A fundamental chemical pathway that all plants use to create an essential amino acid needed by all animals to make proteins has now been traced to two groups of ancient bacteria.
Copious corn growing in tiny backyard plots? Roses blooming in December? Thanks to technology that the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Richard Vierstra has been developing for years, these things may soon be possible. And now, new findings out of the genetics professor’s lab promise to advance that technology even further.
Salk scientists find that a plant used for centuries by healers of São Tomé e Príncipe holds lessons for modern medicine.
For the millions of adults and children in the U.S. who have to shun nuts to avoid an allergic reaction, help could be on the way. Scientists are now developing a way to process cashews — and potentially other nuts — that could make them safer for people who are allergic to them. They’re presenting their work at the 248th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society.
Location. Location. Location. The popular real estate mantra also is equally important to the growing of grapes and the storing of the bottles of the beverage, according to researchers. Those are just two of the many scientific subjects that will be covered in a symposium titled, “Advances in Wine Research,” at the 248th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society. A new video explains these topics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Km3UujrPLEU.
New research at the University of Adelaide has opened the way for the development of new lines of barley with resistance to powdery mildew.
Crape myrtle, an iconic tree in many yards around the country, has a new disease problem, researchers have found.
After collectors found specimens of the prickly plant in 1974 and 1990, it was wrongly identified as three different species. Now a University of Utah botanist and colleagues identified the plant as a new, possibly endangered species named “from the heart” in Latin because it was found in Valentine, Texas.
In new research on how pollinators find flowers when background odors are strong, researchers have found that both natural plant odors and human sources of pollution can conceal the scent of sought-after flowers.
Some clover species have two forms, one of which releases cyanide to discourage nibbling by snails and insects and the other of which does not. A scientist at Washington University in St. Louis found that this "polymorphism" has evolved independently in six different species of clover, each time by the wholesale deletion of a gene. The clover species are in a sense predisposed to develop this trait, suggesting that evolution is not entirely free form but instead bumps up against constraints.
A naturally occurring microbe in soil that inhibits the rice blast fungus has been identified by a team of researcher from the University of Delaware and the University of California at Davis.
Many have assumed that warmer winters as a result of climate change would increase the growth of trees and shrubs because the growing season would be longer. But shrubs achieve less yearly growth when cold winter temperatures are interrupted by temperatures warm enough to trigger growth.
A South American insect may hold the key to controlling the spread of the invasive Brazilian peppertree, which supplants native vegetation critical to many organisms in several states.
Plant scientists find fatty acid desaturating enzymes link up to pass intermediate products from one enzyme to another. Engineering these enzyme interactions could be a new approach for tailoring plants to produce useful products.
Just in time for Mother's Day, UF/IFAS Horticultural Researcher Ria Leonard, demonstrates the proper way to select and care for cut flowers to keep them looking good for longer.
Iowa State University engineers and plant scientists are working together to study and develop better crops. The research team has organized an International Workshop on Engineered Crops April 28-29 in Des Moines, Iowa.
A common plant puts out a welcome mat to bacteria seeking to invade, and scientists have discovered the mat’s molecular mix. The team showed that the humble and oft-studied plant Arabidopsis puts out a molecular signal that invites an attack from a pathogen. The study reveals new targets during the battle between microbe and host.
Did domesticating a plant typically take a few hundred or many thousands of years? Genetic studies often indicate that domestication traits have a fairly simple genetic basis, which should facilitate their rapid evolution under selection. On the other hand, recent archeological studies of crop domestication have suggested a relatively slow spread and fixation of domestication traits. An article in “The Modern View of Domestication,” a special issue of PNAS, tries to resolve the discrepancy.
A recent interdisciplinary conference that led to the publication of a special issue of PNAS on domestication raised more questions than it answered. Washington University in St. Louis scientists Fiona Marshall and Ken Olsen, who participated in the conference and contributed to the special issue, discuss some of the key questions that have been raised about this pivotal event in human history.
Biologists at UC San Diego have succeeded in visualizing the movement within plants of a key hormone responsible for growth and resistance to drought. The achievement will allow researchers to conduct further studies to determine how the hormone helps plants respond to drought and other environmental stresses driven by the continuing increase in the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide, or CO2, concentration.
A new study overturns a long-held theory in plant science, showing that plant sugars--not the the plant hormone auxin-- play a dominant role in regulating branching at plant stems.
For Simon Gilroy, sometimes seeing is believing. In this case, it was seeing the wave of calcium sweep root-to-shoot in the plants the University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of botany is studying that made him a believer.
An international research group led by Arizona State University professor Qiang "Shawn" Chen has developed a new generation of potentially safer and more cost-effective therapeutics against West Nile virus and other pathogens.
Plants fine-tune the response of their cells to the potent plant hormone auxin by means of large families of proteins that either step on the gas or put on the brake in auxin’s presence. Scientists at Washington University have learned that one of these proteins, a transcription factor, has an interaction region that, like a button magnet, has a positive and negative face. Because of this domain, the protein can bind two other proteins or even chains of proteins arranged back-to-front.
By thoroughly mapping a single specialized tissue involved in wood formation, scientists at North Carolina State University have developed the equivalent of turn-by-turn directions for future plant research.
By engineering plants that emitted sex pheromones that mimic those naturally produced by two species of moths, researchers have demonstrated that an effective, environmentally friendly, plant-based method of insect control is possible.
Visit the website Notes from Nature, a crowdsourcing project that aims to enable transcription of specimen labels and ledgers from the world's 3 billion biodiversity research specimens.
Field ecologists go to great lengths to get data: radio collars and automatic video cameras are only two of their creative techniques for documenting the natural world. So when a group of ecologists set out to see how wind moves seeds through isolated patches of habitat carved into a longleaf pine plantation in South Carolina, they twisted colored yarn to create mock seeds that would drift with the wind much like native seeds.
Plant roots and certain human membrane systems resist chemical transport in much the same way, say researchers at Missouri University of Science and Technology in a recent journal article. This similarity could make it easier to assess chemical risks for both people and plants, and may even lead to a new approach to testing medications.
An international research team has determined the distribution of species of vegetation over nearly half the world’s land area could be affected by predicted global warming.
For plants, the only way to grow is for cells to expand. Unlike animals, cell division in plants happens only within a tiny region of the root and stem apex, making cell expansion the critical path to increased stature. Now, a team of scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison reports the discovery of a hormone and receptor that control cell expansion in plants.
Spraying fungicide to kill coffee rust disease, which has ravaged Latin American plantations since late 2012, is an approach that is "doomed to failure," according to University of Michigan ecologists.
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