Poaceae is a large monocotyledonous plant family encompassing the true grasses, characterized by herbaceous, often culm-forming stems with hollow internodes, leaves composed of sheaths, ligules, and linear blades, and a distinctive inflorescence of spikelets bearing reduced, wind-pollinated florets. Flowers are typically subtended by glumes and lemmas, with lodicules facilitating anthesis, and produce single-seeded dry fruits (caryopses) in which the seed coat is fused to the pericarp. Poaceae exhibits C3, C4, and intermediate photosynthetic pathways, occupies diverse terrestrial habitats worldwide, and plays central roles in primary productivity, biogeochemical cycling, and the evolution of grass-dominated ecosystems.
Bread, pasta and breakfast cereals may seem far removed from dry fields in North America, Europe or Asia. Yet when water shortages hit several of the world's most important wheat-growing regions simultaneously, the consequences ...
Ecology
Aug 21, 2026
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Producing enough food is only one part of ensuring global food security. A new study shows that transport networks and economic inequality are important factors in determining global food accessibility. A research team led ...
Agriculture
Aug 20, 2026
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100 million years ago, long before human intervention, ancestors of grasses, including wheat, rice and maize, developed "bypasses" in chemical pathways used to create two critical compounds: lignin and starch. These more ...
Plants & Animals
Aug 20, 2026
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When was the last time you bought a loaf of bread?
Agriculture
Aug 20, 2026
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Rye is not only a hardy and high-yielding crop, but also possesses a valuable gene pool for wheat breeding. An international research team led by the IPK Leibniz Institute has significantly improved the foundations for research ...
Molecular & Computational biology
Aug 19, 2026
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9
Although climate change is already having a negative impact on crops, declines in yields have so far been offset by technological advances in agriculture. For field crops that do not rely on pollinators, however, this trend ...
Ecology
Aug 19, 2026
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Sunflowers are unable to fully recover from drought, new research has found, contradicting previous findings on the plant's ability to reverse drought-induced failure of water-transporting tissues and revealing new insights ...
Plants & Animals
Aug 17, 2026
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28
Researchers at the University of Maryland and their collaborators have cloned a gene that makes wheat resistant to feeding by Hessian fly larvae and demonstrated its direct interaction with a protein produced by the insect. ...
Molecular & Computational biology
Aug 14, 2026
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24
In the Midwestern summer, humans and plants have to breathe through the heat and humidity. Researchers hope that a retooled crop plant—one with an improved ventilation system within its leaves—could thrive while avoiding ...
Biotechnology
Aug 11, 2026
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12
A coalition of farmers, consumer associations and environmental groups is urging Malaysia's National Biosafety Board to reject a proposed field trial of genetically modified rice, warning Tuesday the project could pose risks ...
Agriculture
Aug 11, 2026
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