Below the soil of a diverse grassland area you'll find a jungle of plant roots. It is also home to a wide variety of bacteria and fungi, of which some are pathogenic and looking for a host in the tangle of roots. It appears ...
Biotechnology
Nov 3, 2015
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12
The concept that biodiversity feeds upon itself is not uncommon in the world of evolution. The problem is a lack of hard data that shows this process to be naturally occurring.
Evolution
Oct 22, 2015
14
650
Invisible to the naked eye, plant-parasitic nematodes are a huge threat to agriculture, causing billions in crop losses every year. Plant scientists at the University of Missouri and the University of Bonn in Germany have ...
Biotechnology
Sep 29, 2015
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37
Using a species of butterfly as an example, researchers from the Department of Environmental Sciences at the University of Basel have demonstrated how insects adapt their offspring to changing environmental conditions. The ...
Ecology
Sep 22, 2015
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14
(Phys.org)—In sub-Saharan Africa, few agricultural parasites are as devastating to a wide variety of crops as Striga hermonthica, commonly known as witchweed. It chokes out such staple crops as sorghum, millet and rice, ...
A molecular approach has been used to identify the protein responsible for germination of Striga seeds through visualization by green fluorescence. Striga, a parasitic plant known as witchweed has seriously affected millions ...
Biotechnology
Aug 21, 2015
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20
The soil environment harbors a diverse range of bacteria, many of which could potentially be detrimental if they are able to gain entry to plant tissues. We are interested in determining how the host plant selects which bacteria ...
Biotechnology
Jul 31, 2015
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13
Much like the microbes in our gut, the plant microbiome also elicits a low-level immune response in the host plant, according to research presented at the annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology. Researchers ...
Biotechnology
Jun 2, 2015
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61
Thousands of plant species have adopted a "parasitic" mode of life, living off a host plant which supplies it with water and nutrients. Most of these remain harmless, but a few have evolved to become serious agricultural ...
Biotechnology
Apr 9, 2015
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15
Oakblue butterflies may use a variety of chemical strategies to deceive ants and avoid their attack, according to a study published April 8, 2015 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Yoko Inui from Osaka Kyoiku University, ...
Plants & Animals
Apr 8, 2015
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116
