Feature Channels: Plants

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Rutgers doctoral student Didik Prasetyo’s passion is learning more about the endangered apes and trying to conserve their habitats and populations, which face enormous pressure from deforestation from logging, palm oil and paper pulp production, and hunting. He coauthored an alarming recent study in Current Biology on the estimated loss of more than 100,000 Bornean orangutans between 1999 and 2015.

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How will the farms of the future feed a projected 9.8 billion people by 2050? Berkeley Lab’s “smart farm” project marries microbiology and machine learning in an effort to reduce the need for chemical fertilizers and enhance soil carbon uptake, thus improving the long-term viability of the land while increasing crop yields.

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Biologists at Washington University in St. Louis have discovered the molecular brakeman that holds kinesins in check until their cargo is needed.

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MANHATTAN, Kan. – Kansas State University researchers have discovered how weeds develop resistance to the popular herbicide glyphosate, a finding that could have broad future implications in agriculture and many other industries. Their work is detailed in the March 12 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Can one seedling, or one female bird, be so superior to the rest that it will inevitably become the “lucky” one to grow to the sky, or help perpetuate the species? The short answer: No.

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When a team of scientists started studying how native eucalyptus trees in Australia reacted to extreme heat and drought, they thought they knew what they would find. They expected to learn about the mechanisms of the trees' decline. They expected hydraulic failure and carbon starvation. But that's not what they saw.

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The colleges of engineering and agriculture worked together over the summer to find out if turfgrass conserves more water than real grass does. At the end of the project they concluded that turfgrass requires a lot more water to stay cool throughout the day than real grass does.

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This new study punches a hole in the idea that increased genetic complexity of sex chromosomes accompanied the origin of sexes.

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Home and large-scale growers share a common struggle: weeds! The March 7th Sustainable, Secure Food blog post explains what makes weeds survive—and how to tackle them.

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Researchers at Durham University in the UK have identified a crucial link in the process of how plants regulate their antiviral responses. The research is published in the March 2 issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

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The same products that get rid of internal parasites in livestock may adversely impact the dung beetles that help break down dung. That could be bad news for the dung beetles and livestock production.

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Letting the soil rest can be difficult economically for farmers. Researchers experimented with crop rotation and grazing to discover the least possible amount of time it would take to allow the soil to heal.

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Fertilisers with lower environmental impacts and reduced costs for farmers are being developed by University of Adelaide researchers in the world-first use of the new advanced material graphene as a fertiliser carrier.

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For years, scientists have argued about whether managing both nitrogen and phosphorus – versus managing strictly phosphorus or just nitrogen – would control harmful algal blooms.

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A team of University of Georgia researchers has developed a new way to breed plants with better traits. By introducing a human protein into the model plant species Arabidopsis thaliana, researchers found that they could selectively activate silenced genes already present within the plant.

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University of Adelaide researchers have discovered how grapes “breathe”, and that shortage of oxygen leads to cell death in the grape. The discovery raises many questions about the potentially significant impacts on grape and wine quality and flavour and vine management, and may lead to new ways of selecting varieties for warming climates.

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With St. Patrick’s Day right around the corner, thoughts turn to the Irish experience of the 1800s. This includes the devastating conditions in Ireland that led many to the U.S. The Soil Science Society of America (SSSA) March 1 Soils Matter blog post explains the agricultural lessons behind Irish Potato Famine.

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A new study involving Iowa State University scientists explores how birds in the Mariana Islands help to disperse the seeds of a wild chili plant. The research highlights the unique ways different species help one another, a concept known as mutualism.

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When Lena Struwe was hiking in the Monteverde Cloud Forest Biological Reserve in Costa Rica three years ago, she spotted a yellowish harvestman, a spider-type animal, on a hiking trail rail and took a photo with her camera. It turned out her photo of the long-legged arachnid, Eucynorta conigera, was the first ever of that species and only the third sighting of it ever reported.

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Forests across the United States—and especially forest soils—store massive amounts of carbon, offsetting about 10 percent of the country's annual greenhouse gas emissions and helping to mitigate climate change.

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Fungicides can help prevent the lodging and yield loss that stem canker causes, but timing is crucial. A new disease-forecasting model that predicts stem canker risk can help.

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Researchers at the University of Delaware and the University of California-Davis have uncovered new details of how chloroplasts move about in times of trouble. It's the fundamental kind of research information that helps scientists understand plant biology and could help farmers prevent crop loss.

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New University of Colorado Boulder-led research has established a causal link between climate warming and the localized extinction of a common Rocky Mountain flowering plant, a result that could serve as a herald of future population declines.

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New University of Colorado Boulder-led research has established a causal link between climate warming and the localized extinction of a common Rocky Mountain flowering plant, a result that could serve as a herald of future population declines.

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Which is better for bird diversity: Arabica or Robusta beans?

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Armed with a $600,000 grant, Michigan State University researchers will work alongside Latino migrant farmers to reshape how Michigan harvests fruit – and cultivate a new workforce.

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What can be made with unwanted materials, looks like charcoal, and provides multiple benefits to soil health? Biochar! The Soil Science Society of America (SSSA) February 15 Soils Matter blog explains what biochar is and how it helps improve—or decontaminate--soil.

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Scientists have discovered an extreme lack of genetic diversity and other threats to the future adaptability of domestic chickpeas, the primary source of protein of 20 percent of the world's people. But they also collected wild relatives of chickpeas in Turkey that hold great promise as a source of new genes for traits like drought-resistance, resistance to pod-boring beetles, and heat tolerance.

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A circle of life–and nitrogen–is playing out in farms across the United States. And researchers are trying to get the timing right. The goal is to time nutrient release from cover crops to better match the nutrient needs of specific cash crops.

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When it comes to avoiding Lyme disease, know your forest. That's the cautionary tale from a new study which found that ticks in urban parks in Delaware dominated by an invasive rose bush were nearly twice as likely to be infected with Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacteria that causes Lyme disease, as compared to ticks from uninvaded forest fragments.

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A team of scientists led by WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society) has developed a conservation blueprint to protect one of the most biodiverse regions in Africa: the Albertine Rift, home to mountain and Grauer’s gorillas, golden monkeys, chimpanzees, elephants, and 162 vertebrate, and 350 plant species unique to this region.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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A new tool may help growers make better decisions in applying nitrogen fertilizer to their rice fields.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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West Virginia University researchers are taking an innovative approach to develop a more sustainable and economical pest control solution.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.