News by Subject Agriculture

Half of the world's tropical plant species may struggle to germinate by 2070 because of global warming, a new UNSW study predicts.

Applying zinc to the leaves of bread wheat can increase wheat grain zinc concentrations and improve its nutritional content.

Researchers at Helmholtz Zentrum München and Ludwig-Maximilians-University (LMU) mapped the signaling network in plants and discovered novel insights about how plants process information about their environment. This gives new potential to strategies to protect crops and help them thrive in the time of increasing droughts.

Winter squash is an important crop grown in the Willamette Valley, and the most important processing cultivar, Golden Delicious, has been grown in Oregon since the 1970s. Over the last two decades, however, growers have noticed yield declines throughout the valley. Agriculture specialists have identified an association between yield decline and disease symptoms such as stunting, vascular discoloration, late-season vine collapse, and root and crown rot, all symptoms of soilborne disease.

Researchers have discovered that bacteria such as salmonella, E.coli and listeria have a backdoor to take advantage of humans' reliance on leafy greens for a healthy diet. They found that wild strains of salmonella are delivering foodborne illnesses by circumventing a plant's immune defense system, getting into the leaves of lettuce by opening up the plant's tiny breathing pores.