From elongated oblongs to near-perfect spheres, vegetables come in almost every size and shape. But what differentiates a fingerling potato from a russet or a Roma tomato from a beefsteak? Researchers at the University of ...
Plants & Animals
Nov 12, 2018
0
175
Crops such as wheat and maize have undergone a breeding process lasting thousands of years, in the course of which mankind has gradually modified the properties of wild plants into highly cultivated variants. One motive was ...
Plants & Animals
Oct 2, 2018
0
155
It is well known that certain wasps suppress the immune systems of their caterpillar hosts so they can successfully raise their young within those hosts. Now researchers at Penn State show that, in addition to suppressing ...
Ecology
May 1, 2018
0
32
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
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
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
