Molecules that promote plant-to-plant communications below ground

Plants have evolved elaborate mechanisms for detecting neighboring plants, which typically involve the perception of "cues'" inadvertently produced by their neighbors. Strigolactones are hormonal signaling molecules that ...

Plant smoke detectors evolve as hormone sensors

Wildfires are devastating, but they can also bring new life by clearing existing vegetation and allowing new plants to spring up. Many plants in fire-prone areas actually require exposure to fire for seeds to germinate. In ...

Strigolactones increase tolerance to weevils in tobacco plants

A team of researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, has discovered that strigolactones, a class of novel plant hormones, mediate the fine-tuning of the production plant defensive substances ...

Study sheds new light on vein formation in plants

An international team of researchers including the University of Adelaide, has found plant hormones known as strigolactones suppress the transportation of auxin, the main plant hormone involved in vein formation, so that ...

Metabolite stimulates a crop while suppressing a weed

A newly discovered, naturally occurring metabolite that promotes growth in rice plants and thwarts infestation by a common parasitic plant could help improve global food security, say KAUST researchers. Plant scientists are ...

Plant hormone makes space farming a possibility

With scarce nutrients and weak gravity, growing potatoes on the moon or on other planets seems unimaginable. But the plant hormone strigolactone could make it possible, plant biologists from the University of Zurich have ...

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