In many places in the world, fresh fruits and vegetables are hard to come by—and not just in the places you'd think. Often, certain areas within cities, called nutritional islands, have the lowest levels of access to these ...
Biotechnology
Oct 30, 2017
0
14
Farmers can grow big, juicy tomatoes thanks to a mutation in the Cell Size Regulator gene that occurred during the tomato domestication process. Esther van der Knaap of the University of Georgia, Athens and colleagues describe ...
Biotechnology
Aug 17, 2017
0
158
When does a (typically) vegetarian caterpillar become a cannibalistic caterpillar, even when there is still plenty of plant left to eat?
Biotechnology
Jul 10, 2017
0
555
Breeding in plants and animals typically involves straightforward addition. As beneficial new traits are discovered—like resistance to drought or larger fruits—they are added to existing prized varieties, delivered via ...
Biotechnology
May 18, 2017
0
1039
What's wrong with the supermarket tomato? Consumers say they lack flavor, so a University of Florida researcher led a global team on a mission to identify the important factors that have been lost and put them back into modern ...
Biotechnology
Jan 26, 2017
2
954
The male reproductive organs of tomato plants can't stand the heat. When temperatures rise above 32 degrees Celsius for several consecutive days, their appearance changes and they produce less and less fertile pollen, leading ...
Plants & Animals
Dec 13, 2016
0
8
Using a simple and powerful genetic method to tweak genes native to two popular varieties of tomato plants, a team at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) has devised a rapid method to make them flower and produce ripe fruit ...
Biotechnology
Dec 5, 2016
0
326
Plants are constantly challenged by hungry animals and infectious microbes. For tomato plants, major enemies are nematodes of the species Meloidogyne incognita. These are little worms that first induce the roots to form galls, ...
Biotechnology
Nov 15, 2016
0
8
There is staggering diversity in the number of flowers produced by each of the 2,800 or so species of plants in the nightshade family, which includes economically important crops such as tomatoes, peppers, and potatoes. Some ...
Biotechnology
Nov 7, 2016
0
256
If you buy tomatoes from John Banscher at his farmstand in New Jersey, he'll recommend keeping them out of the fridge or they'll lose some of their taste.
Biotechnology
Oct 18, 2016
0
162
