Related topics: plants

Discovery of family of hormones may be key to increased crop yields

Crops often face harsh growing environments. Instead of using energy for growth, factors such as disease, extreme temperatures, and salty soils force plants to use it to respond to the resulting stress. This is known as the ...

The missing link: Fatty acid metabolism impacts plant immunity

That healthy salad you ate for lunch contains fatty acids—surprised? Fatty acids, lipids, and fats in our food may sound undesirable, but they are foundational to human life and to the plants we consume. Their interaction ...

How a harmful fungus renders its host plant defenseless

The fungus Ustilago maydis attacks corn and can cause significant damage to its host. To do this, it first ensures that the plant offers little resistance to the infection. The surgical precision it applies is shown by a ...

Research uncovers mechanism of plant hormone signaling

The plant hormone jasmonate (JA) regulates plant immunity and adaptive growth through orchestrating a genome-wide transcriptional program, which is mainly regulated by the master transcription factor MYC2. It's well known ...

Molecular feedback-loop for plant growth

Plant growth is not a uniform process: Plants grow in length at the shoot and root tip in particular, while in other places they form new leaves or flowers. These different processes must be coordinated with each another ...

How plants' threat-detection mechanisms raise the alarm

New work led by Carnegie's Zhiyong Wang untangles a complex cellular signaling process that underpins plants' ability to balance expending energy on growth and defending themselves from pathogens. These findings, published ...

Toward customizable timber, grown in a lab

Each year, the world loses about 10 million hectares of forest—an area about the size of Iceland—because of deforestation. At that rate, some scientists predict the world's forests could disappear in 100 to 200 years.

Herbicide residues in soil affect hormone levels in crop plants

A new study finds that glyphosate residues in soil affect phytohormones in aboveground plant parts. Academy of Finland funded postdoctoral researcher Dr. Benjamin Fuchs investigates the effects of herbicide residues in soil ...

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