Plants under attack can turn hungry caterpillars into cannibals
When does a (typically) vegetarian caterpillar become a cannibalistic caterpillar, even when there is still plenty of plant left to eat?
When does a (typically) vegetarian caterpillar become a cannibalistic caterpillar, even when there is still plenty of plant left to eat?
Biotechnology
Jul 10, 2017
0
555
Breeding in plants and animals typically involves straightforward addition. As beneficial new traits are discovered—like resistance to drought or larger fruits—they are added to existing prized varieties, delivered via ...
Biotechnology
May 18, 2017
0
1039
The male reproductive organs of tomato plants can't stand the heat. When temperatures rise above 32 degrees Celsius for several consecutive days, their appearance changes and they produce less and less fertile pollen, leading ...
Plants & Animals
Dec 13, 2016
0
8
Using a simple and powerful genetic method to tweak genes native to two popular varieties of tomato plants, a team at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) has devised a rapid method to make them flower and produce ripe fruit ...
Biotechnology
Dec 5, 2016
0
326
Plants are constantly challenged by hungry animals and infectious microbes. For tomato plants, major enemies are nematodes of the species Meloidogyne incognita. These are little worms that first induce the roots to form galls, ...
Biotechnology
Nov 15, 2016
0
8
There is staggering diversity in the number of flowers produced by each of the 2,800 or so species of plants in the nightshade family, which includes economically important crops such as tomatoes, peppers, and potatoes. Some ...
Biotechnology
Nov 7, 2016
0
256
Researchers at the Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI) and Virginia Tech have discovered a new mechanism in the continual arms race between plants and pathogenic bacteria, which tomatoes use to detect the causal agent of bacterial ...
Biotechnology
Sep 1, 2016
0
318
Intumescence injury, also known as edema or oedema, is a nonpathogenic physiological disorder that can cause blister- or callus-like tumor growths to develop on the surface of leaves, petioles, and stems of plants. Problematic ...
Biotechnology
Aug 30, 2016
1
0
Tomatoes are already an ideal model species for plant research, but scientists at the Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI) just made them even more useful by cutting the time required to modify their genes by six weeks.
Biotechnology
Aug 30, 2016
0
1
Plant scientists at the University of Cambridge have found that the cucumber mosaic virus (CMV) alters gene expression in the tomato plants it infects, causing changes to air-borne chemicals - the scent - emitted by the plants. ...
Plants & Animals
Aug 11, 2016
0
26