News by Subject Agriculture

The most comprehensive study of the family tree for legumes, the plant family that includes beans, soybeans, peanuts, and many other economically important crop plants, reveals a history of whole-genome duplications.

Plant pathogen needs membrane-bound protein complex to be virulent

A cross-institutional collaboration between Kobe University's Engineering Biology Research Center and the Takasaki Advanced Radiation Research Institute has developed a technique to repartition carbon resources from carbohydrates to lipids in microalgae. It is hoped that this method can be applied to biofuel production.

A study published in Cretaceous Research expands the paleontological richness of continental fossils of the Lower Cretaceous with the discovery of a new water plant (charophytes), the species Mesochara dobrogeica. The study also identifies a new variety of carophytes from the Clavator genus (in particular, Clavator ampullaceus var. latibracteatus) and reveals a set of paleobiographical data from the Cretaceous much richer than other continental records such as dinosaurs'.

When millions of Americans began working from home, city traffic halted. Although the air became cleaner, researchers discovered that sound levels increased in nature conservation areas due to cars driving faster.

Five years after introducing see-through wood building material, researchers in Sweden have taken it to another level. They found a way to make their composite 100 percent renewable - and more translucent - by infusing wood with a clear bio-plastic made from citrus fruit.

Micropropagation is a technique used for growing large quantities of new plants from fewer "parent" plants, yielding clones with the same, predictable qualities. The cannabis (Cannabis sativa) industry, however, has been largely left out of this beneficial technique, because this species of plant is extremely difficult to micropropagate.

Microplastics do not just end up in the open sea - in fact, a lot also end up in the ecosystems of the coastal zones, a new study shows and this may threaten wildlife.