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.
Rising day and night temperatures are threatening rice, wheat, and maize production by disrupting plant growth, grain filling, and grain quality, putting global food security at risk. Precision breeding and genome editing ...
Biotechnology
Feb 6, 2026
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38
A new discovery by researchers from Adelaide University, in collaboration with Denmark's Carlsberg Research Laboratory, will allow barley growers to optimize seed dormancy for their crops and improve growing efficiency. The ...
Molecular & Computational biology
Feb 2, 2026
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11
With insect farming projected to produce millions of tons of insects in the coming years, Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station researchers offer evidence that the insect farming byproduct called "frass" can improve soil ...
Ecology
Jan 30, 2026
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Once a seed germinates, it is committed to one location. Plants are sessile—stuck where they started out—forced to cope with whatever conditions arrive next. The only way out of trouble is to rebuild themselves in place.
Ecology
Jan 29, 2026
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22
Phosphorus is crucial for crop growth. But too little can lower crop yields, and too much can lead to pollution downstream. Studies show that some soils are losing phosphorus, while others are accumulating and leaking into ...
Ecology
Jan 26, 2026
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16
Corn is a colossal grain in the global food and feed chain, with the U.S. producing roughly 30% of the world's supply, or nearly 278 million metric tons in the 2024–25 growing season alone. But its journey from wild grass ...
Plants & Animals
Jan 22, 2026
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34
Researchers at the John Innes Center and the Earlham Institute are pioneering powerful single-cell visualization techniques that could unlock higher yields of global wheat.
Cell & Microbiology
Jan 20, 2026
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338
When anyone talks about the future of sustainable aviation fuel, one question dominates: how do we replace fossil carbon without compromising food security or biodiversity? Experience leads some researchers to believe the ...
Biotechnology
Jan 19, 2026
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19
Cereals have natural resistance to pathogenic fungi, but powdery mildew, for example, can overcome this resistance. A team at the University of Zurich has now discovered a new mechanism that enables powdery mildew to outsmart ...
Cell & Microbiology
Jan 12, 2026
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23
A 60-year study covering 205 countries and regions worldwide has systematically uncovered the evolutionary patterns of nitrogen and phosphorus use efficiency (NUE and PUE) in the four major staple crops—rice, wheat, maize, ...
Agriculture
Jan 12, 2026
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