Prescribed fires help native plants find mates, reproduce and flourish: study
For a prairie plant, a fiery love life isn't just fun—it's essential.
Ecology
Jan 27, 2020
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Page 9 - News tagged with plant seeds
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 ...
Cell & Microbiology
Dec 27, 2019
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295
'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 ...
Ecology
Dec 23, 2019
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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 ...
Biotechnology
Dec 18, 2019
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56
When plant roots learned to follow gravity
Highly developed seed plants evolved deep root systems that are able to sense Earth's gravity. The how and when of this evolutionary step has, until now, remained unknown. Plant biologists at the Institute of Science and ...
Plants & Animals
Aug 2, 2019
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Little helpers for the rainforest
Tropical rainforests store large quantities of carbon dioxide, produce oxygen and provide habitats for many animal and plant species. If these ecosystems, which are so important for the global climate and biodiversity, are ...
Plants & Animals
Jul 25, 2019
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135
Grazing animals drove domestication of grain crops
Many familiar grains today, like quinoa, amaranth, millets, hemp and buckwheat, have traits that indicate that they co-evolved for dispersion by large grazing mammals. During the Pleistocene, massive herds directed the ecology ...
Evolution
Jul 8, 2019
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117
New mutations for herbicide resistance rarer than expected, study finds
After exposing more than 70 million grain amaranth seeds to a soil-based herbicide, researchers were not able to find a single herbicide-resistant mutant. Though preliminary, the findings suggest that the mutation rate in ...
Ecology
May 28, 2019
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245
Deciphering seed dispersal decisions of agouti rodents
Much like the squirrels and chipmunks in deciduous climates, there is a cat-sized creature in tropical regions that practices scatter hoarding – burying the seeds they find if they don't eat them right away.
Plants & Animals
May 1, 2019
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46
'Specialized' microbes within plant species promote diversity
It's widely accepted within agriculture that maintaining genetic diversity is important. In areas where crop plants are more diverse, pathogens might kill some plants but are less likely to wipe out an entire crop.
Ecology
Mar 7, 2019
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142
