Healthy rains in the fall and early winter put Texas on track for a spectacular 2016 spring wildflower season, according to a Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center expert, but spotty rain and unusual warmth recently could dampen displays in some areas.
“Plant diagnostic labs and specialists are your plant emergency room, family doctor and physical therapist all in one," said Carrie Harmon, a UF/IFAS Extension specialist in plant pathology and director of the UF/IFAS Plant Diagnostic Center. "Our connection to anyone who works with plants is built on the Extension system, supporting the state and federal departments of agriculture goals to protect crops and livelihoods across the country."
Scientists find how nematodes use key hormones to take over root cells.
Do you want to know if it’s the right time of year to plant a vegetable? Want to buy Florida produce but you don’t know whether it’s in season? UF/IFAS has a new app to guide you. It’s called the “Florida Fresh” veggie app, and you can now download it for free on your mobile device.
Berkeley Lab scientists have shown for the first time that an enzyme can be tweaked to reduce lignin in plants. Their technique could help lower the cost of converting biomass into carbon-neutral fuels to power your car and other sustainably developed bio-products.
The types of beneficial fungi that associate with tree roots can alter the fate of a patch of tropical forest, boosting plant diversity or, conversely, giving one tree species a distinct advantage over many others, researchers report.
Between 1947 and 1956, John Curtis and his colleagues and students conducted their prairie relic study, surveying more than 200 undisturbed prairie remnants in Wisconsin. Today [Feb. 19, 2016] UW-Madison graduate student Amy Alstad and a team of researchers have published a third survey based on Curtis’ legacy work. They found that human influence has accelerated the rate of species change in these prairies.
Pollinators select for orchid scent differently in lowlands, highlands.
A new variety of upright pinto bean, Long’s Peak, combines upright architecture with high yields, excellent seed color and weight, and resistance to several diseases such as common rust. The International Year of Pulses coincidentally highlights the importance of this and other beans for the health of the soil -- and humans.
Researchers today announced in the journal Nature Plants the discovery of the first-ever fossil specimens of an "asterid" - a family of flowering plants that gave us everything from the potato to tomatoes, tobacco, petunias and our morning cup of coffee.
A study reported Feb. 12 in the journal PLOS Biology employs genome-wide sequencing to reveal highly specific details about the evolutionary mechanisms that drove genetic divergence in 13 species of wild tomatoes that share a recent common ancestor.
A new plant just discovered in Hawaii might offer plant lovers the ultimate Valentine’s Day gift.
Roses are red; violets are blue, and University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences researchers are developing better breeds of Valentine’s Day plants just for you.
Climate change may harm early-flowering plants not through plant-pollinator mismatch but through frost damage, a Dartmouth College-led study shows.
Study analyzes 40 years of science against 4 areas of sustainability.
The U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory welcomes two new biologists, Crysten and Ian Blaby, who have been brought to the Lab to explore the many genes that play a role in a plant's ability to harness energy and what those genes could mean for enhancing bioenergy crops. The organism that brought this dynamic duo to Brookhaven: an alga.
A new study by researchers at Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI) has uncovered a veritable trove of genes used by plants to form symbiotic relationships with fungi, vastly increasing the knowledge of the genetic basis for this agriculturally valuable interaction.
This rare orchid is unique for several reasons. First, it resembles a ghost when its white flower moves at night; hence, it is known as the Ghost Orchid. It is also leafless, and its roots attach to the bark of the host tree. About 2,000 ghost orchids remain in Florida, all the more reason to step up efforts to stabilize the current populations. Ghost orchids became more famous through a popular book, “Orchid Thief,” about a man arrested for stealing them from trees in a forest in Collier County, near the Everglades.
Carnivorous plants such as the Venus flytrap depend on meals of insects to survive in nutrient-poor soil. They sense the arrival of juicy insects, lured by the plants' fruity scent, with the aid of sensitive trigger hairs on the inner surfaces of their traps. Now, researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on January 21 have looked more closely at exactly how the plants decide when to keep their traps shut and begin producing their acidic, prey-decomposing cocktail of enzymes. The short answer is: they count.
What may seem like a failure in systems is actually an exceptional opportunity for scientists back on Earth to better understand how plants grow in microgravity.
A new elegant orchid species that grows on rocks in deciduous forests of the Pacific slope of Oaxaca state, Mexico, has finally put an end to a long standing dispute among taxonomists. 'Sheltered' under the name of a close relative, the plant has been proved by a research team, led by Dr. Leopardi-Verde, to be different enough for a species of its own. Its distinct features, including shape, size and colors, are discussed and published in the open-access journal PhytoKeys.
Aphids suck up an almost endless supply of sugary sap from their plant hosts. They can survive on this junk food diet because bacterial partners help them convert the handful of amino acids in the sap into other, essential amino acids—not by recycling them, but by breaking them down and rebuilding from scratch, a new study finds.
New study offers recommendations for creating landscapes with year-round visual appeal.
Plants are able to predict when infections are more likely to occur and regulate their immune response accordingly, new research has found. Led by the University of Warwick, the researchers discovered that a plants’ molecular clock is connected to their immune system to increase levels of resistance to infection at dawn – the time at which fungal infections appear most likely to occur, with plants unable to maintain the highest level of resistance at all times of day.
Researchers at Umeå University and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences have discovered that increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have shifted photosynthetic metabolism in plants over the 20th century. This is the first study worldwide that deduces biochemical regulation of plant metabolism from historical specimens. The findings are now published in the leading journal PNAS and will have an impact on new models of future CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.
Including plants' acclimation to changes in temperature could significantly improve the accuracy of climate models, a Purdue University study shows.
The Genome Analysis Centre (TGAC) in collaboration with IBERS, has sequenced and assembled the DNA of red clover to help breeders improve the beneficial traits of this important forage crop. The genome is published in Scientific Reports, a journal from the Nature publishing group.
The sweet, juicy peaches we love today might have been a popular snack long before modern humans arrived on the scene. Scientists have found eight well-preserved fossilized peach endocarps, or pits, in southwest China dating back more than two and a half million years. Despite their age, the fossils appear nearly identical to modern peach pits.
A long-term project aimed at improving photosynthesis in rice is entering its third stage, marking another step on the road to significantly increased crop yields that will help meet the food needs of billions of people across the developing world.
Researchers with the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences have developed genetically modified citrus trees that show enhanced resistance to greening, and have the potential to resist canker and black spot, as well. However, the commercial availability of those trees is still several years away.
Scientist led by Linköping University in Sweden have created cyborg roses with tiny electronic circuits threaded through their vascular systems.
Research led by University of Sussex suggest plants trick bees into repeatedly visiting their flowers by producing the caffeine in its nectar. The scientists believe the bees are fooled into thinking the nectar contains more sugar than it actually does. This compound encourages the bee to return to the flowers that give them their fix rather than the ones that do not contain the compound.
HHMI scientists have identified a set of proteins that plays a surprisingly broad role in guiding tissue formation in plant roots.
Taking genetic engineering to the next level, Colorado State University researchers are creating modular, programmable genetic circuits that control specific plant functions.
To uncover what plants honey bees rely on, researchers from The Ohio State University are using the latest DNA sequencing technology and a supercomputer. They spent months collecting pollen from beehives and have developed a multi-locus metabarcoding approach to identify which plants, and what proportions of each, are present in pollen samples.
Analysis results in greater understanding of important biological traits related to crop drought tolerance
NYU Abu Dhabi researchers have developed a map of genetic changes across the genome of date palms. They have also established genetic differences between Middle Eastern and North African date palms, an important discovery that sheds light on that long elusive question.
Engineers at Washington University in St. Louis are working to increase nutrient content in fruits and vegetables by using nanoparticles to boost the nutrient content and growth of tomato plants.
"The fact that we found these two with little effort suggests there are a lot more new and undescribed fungal species that we walk over all the time."
Sometimes, the way forward is to look back. This may be the case with soybeans, whose wild relatives have higher levels of beneficial fatty acids.
Prof. Avihai Danon has discovered plants’ “off” switch for producing starch, 50 years after the “on” switch was found. Further, his team at the Weizmann Institute learned that the on and off switches are active at the same time, which is like driving while pressing both the gas and the brakes – but why?
The iconic sugar maple, one of the most economically and ecologically important trees in the eastern United States and Canada, shows signs of being in a significant decline, according to research results published today (Oct. 21, 2015) in the open-access journal “Ecosphere.”
A new study documents that trees play a minor role in offsetting carbon emissions in urban areas. Researchers examined carbon emissions and trees' carbon storage in the Twin Cities (Minnesota) and found hotspots where more trees could yield benefits. Findings published online in the journal PLOS One.
The very act of tolerating some forms of soil pollution may give trees an advantage in the natural world, says University of Montreal plant biologists. Their findings were published this week in BMC Plant Biology.
The genetic and developmental innovations plants used to make the leap to land have been enduring secrets of nature. Now, an international team of researchers reveals that the aquatic algae from which terrestrial plant life first arose were genetically pre-adapted to form the symbiotic relationships with microorganisms that most land plants need to acquire nutrients from the soil.
Research conducted by UD alumna Karin Burghardt and Doug Tallamy, professor of entomology in the University’s College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, found that non-native plants are compounding the problem of declining species diversity by supporting fewer herbivores across landscapes.
Researchers have discovered how a tiny viral protein enables the infection of a complex plant, and the finding could lead to understanding viral diseases in other plants, animals and humans, according to a team of Texas A&M AgriLife Research biochemists.
This monkey puzzle tree (Araucaria araucaria) is one of the stranger trees growing in the Smithsonian’s Enid A. Haupt Garden in Washington, D.C. Its triangular leaves, which cover the entire tree, both branches and trunk, are thick, tough, and scale-like, with sharp edges and tips. Each leaf can last 10 to 15 years.
A new spectroscopy method is bringing researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) closer to understanding – and artificially replicating – the solar water-splitting reaction at the heart of photosynthetic energy production.
Associate Professor Edward L. Webb, from the Department of Biological Sciences at the National University of Singapore (NUS), and NUS PhD graduate Dr Jacob Phelps, have uncovered a previously little recognised Southeast Asian wildlife trade – the illegal sale of wild-collected ornamental plants, especially orchids.
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