Scientists grow date palm plants from 2,000-year-old seeds

Methuselah, Adam, Jonah, Uriel, Boaz, Judith and Hannah—all sat dormant in Judea since biblical times. Now scientists have resurrected them in the hopes of better understanding their vanished lineage.

Can chickpea genes save mustard seeds from blight disease?

During visits to fields in Assam, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, India, plant biologists Muthappa Senthil-Kumar and Urooj Fatima found mustard plants infested with Alternaria blight disease. They also noticed that an adjacent ...

Scientists learn how to increase corn crop yields

NSF-funded scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory are figuring out how to pack more kernels onto a corn cob. One way to boost the productivity of a plant, they say, is to redirect some of its resources away from maintaining ...

New insights into the earliest events of seed germination

Plant seeds may strike the casual observer as unspectacular—but they have properties that are nothing short of superpowers. In a dry state they can store their energy for years and then suddenly release it for germination ...

'Lost crops' could have fed as many as maize

Make some room in the garden, you storied three sisters: the winter squash, climbing beans and the vegetable we know as corn. Grown together, newly examined "lost crops" could have produced enough seed to feed as many indigenous ...

Shifting the balance of growth vs. defense boosts crop yield

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) scientists are figuring out how to pack more kernels onto a corn cob. One way to boost the productivity of a plant, they say, is to redirect some of its resources away from maintaining ...

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