Branching out for a new green revolution

Researchers at the University of Oxford and the Chinese Academy of Sciences have discovered a new gene that improves the yield and fertilizer use efficiency of rice.

A new molecular family tree of grasses

The evolutionary relationships among grasses—including important crop plants like wheat, rice, corn, and sugarcane—have been clarified in a new molecular study of the grass family tree. Having a clear picture of the relationships ...

Rice plants evolve to adapt to flooding

Although water is essential for plant growth, excessive amounts can waterlog and kill a plant. In South and Southeast Asia, where periodic flooding occurs during the rainy season, the water depth can reach several meters ...

Unraveling the Chinese cabbage genome

Clues into the evolutionary diversification of brassicas have emerged from the draft Chinese cabbage genome sequence. Brassica crops include many agriculturally important vegetables, such as Chinese cabbage, pak choi, turnip, ...

How plants interact with beneficial microbes in the soil

Scientists have wondered for years how legumes such as soybeans, whose roots host nitrogen-fixing bacteria that produce essential plant nutrients out of thin air, are able to recognize these bacteria as both friendly and ...

How our plants have turned into thieves to survive

Scientists have discovered that grasses are able to short cut evolution by taking genes from their neighbours. The findings suggest wild grasses are naturally genetically modifying themselves to gain a competitive advantage.

Genes controlling mycorrhizal colonization discovered in soybean

Like most plants, soybeans pair up with soil fungi in a symbiotic mycorrhizal relationship. In exchange for a bit of sugar, the fungus acts as an extension of the root system to pull in more phosphorus, nitrogen, micronutrients, ...

How scavenging fungi became a plant's best friend

Glomeromycota is an ancient lineage of fungi that has a symbiotic relationship with roots that goes back nearly 420 million years to the earliest plants. More than two thirds of the world's plants depend on this soil-dwelling ...

Study uncovers the secrets of plant regeneration

Plants have the unique ability to regenerate entirely from a somatic cell, i.e., an ordinary cell that does not typically participate in reproduction. This process involves the de novo (or new) formation of a shoot apical ...

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