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.
On a quiet weekend morning in a greenhouse in Aarhus University Flakkebjerg, rows of wheat plants stand with their roots submerged in clear water. There is no soil, no buffer, no automation to take over the work. Every day, ...
Cell & Microbiology
Jun 10, 2026
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Rapidly intensifying global climate instability is causing increasingly erratic temperature fluctuations. When sudden cold snaps strike during a crop's critical flowering window, they trigger irreversible pollen abortion, ...
Molecular & Computational biology
Jun 10, 2026
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11
For many Florida homeowners, lawn mowing can feel like a never-ending chore, especially in the heat of summer. New guidance from experts suggests autonomous or robotic lawn mowers can ease that burden while effectively managing ...
Plants & Animals
Jun 10, 2026
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18
Rice is a staple food for nearly half the global population and an important dietary source of magnesium, a mineral essential for human health, plant growth and energy metabolism. Although magnesium is known to influence ...
Molecular & Computational biology
Jun 8, 2026
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14
Maize (Zea mays L.) plays an important role in global food security. During 9,000 years of maize domestication and breeding, however, protein content was not a major breeding target. Consequently, many beneficial gene variants ...
Molecular & Computational biology
Jun 8, 2026
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9
A major goal of modern crop breeding is to efficiently combine multiple desirable traits by "stacking" the favorable gene variants (alleles) that contribute to those traits in a single crop variety. However, current strategies ...
Biotechnology
Jun 7, 2026
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15
The arrival of winter marks not only a change in weather, temperature, and day length, but also a change in our activity and behavior. The social outdoor events and trips to the beach over summer soon become a distant memory, ...
In its native habitat, switchgrass flowered earlier when growing farther north. In experiments with diverse genetic samples, it flowered earlier in the south.
Plants & Animals
Jun 3, 2026
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9
It's a mild early spring morning at the historic Cottonwood Field Station in western South Dakota, and a herd of 150 Angus steers are scheduled to move to a new pasture rotation. Moving cattle can be tricky and often requires ...
Biotechnology
Jun 2, 2026
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24
New research by scientists at the University of Calgary has found that plants, ranging from canola to rice to tomatoes, actively shut down their own ability to take up iron when they experience drought. It's a finding that ...
Ecology
Jun 1, 2026
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