News by Subject Agriculture

For the first time, scientists have shown that fungal hitchhikers use birds to colonize new territories with their plant partners. In a New Phytologist study, the researchers provide the first evidence that birds don't just carry plants to new places, but their fungal partners too.

An international collaboration including Osaka University researchers has found that a peptide hormone regulates two different cell division processes that generate centrally important structures for the flow of water through plants. By binding to different receptors, the hormone controls the formation of not only xylem (the vessels that transport water up from the roots), but also stomata (the leaf pores through which water evaporates).

A new advanced line of rice, with higher yield, is ready for final field testing prior to release. On average, it has a protein content of 10.6 percent, a 53 percent increase from its original protein content. It also needs less heat, time, and usually less water to cook.

Researchers of the Department of Conservation Biology at the University of Göttingen have carried out research in Southwest Cameroon to assess which proportion of forest would be necessary in order to provide sufficient habitat for rainforest bird species. The results of the study were published in the journal Biological Conservation.

Recent research has shown that rising carbon dioxide levels will likely boost yields, but at the cost of nutrition. A new study in Plant Journal suggests that this is an incomplete picture of the complex environmental interactions that will affect crops in the future -- and rising temperatures may actually benefit nutrition but at the expense of lower yields.

A new study from researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research published in the journal PNAS shows that the crosstalk between plant responses to physical and biological stresses varies between young and old leaves to enable optimal plant performance when the two kinds of stress are encountered simultaneously.

Governments must provide stronger protection for crucial small mangrove patches, is the call led by scientists at international conservation charity ZSL (Zoological Society of London), which hosts the IUCN SSC Mangrove Specialist Group, in a letter published in Science today.

How do plants space out their roots? A Japanese research team has identified a peptide and its receptor that help lateral roots to grow with the right spacing. The findings were published on Dec. 20, 2018 in the online edition of Developmental Cell.