Entries by Mary Williams

Review: How does a plant orchestrate defense in time and space? Using glucosinolates in Arabidopsis as case study

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Plants, like human societies, must live with the inherent conflict between investing in defense and investing in growth and infrastructure. Burrow and Halkier provide an interesting and highly readable overview of the strategies by which Arabidopsis optimizes the production and distribution of glucosinolates, key defense compounds. This would be an excellent article to show students […]

What We’re Reading: June 16th

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Review: How does a plant orchestrate defense in time and space? Using glucosinolates in Arabidopsis as case study Plants, like human societies, must live with the inherent conflict between investing in defense and investing in growth and infrastructure. Burrow and Halkier provide an interesting and highly readable overview of the strategies by which Arabidopsis optimizes […]

Update: Leaf hydraulic architecture and stomatal conductance: a functional perspective

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By Fulton E. Rockwell, and N. Michele Holbrook The structure of leaf vasculature viewed over a broad phylogenetic scale from lycophytes to eudicots correlates with stomatal conductance (gs), providing the basis for the hypothesis that increasing vein density drove the evolution of high fluxes in angiosperms. Yet the relationship between vascular geometry and gas fluxes […]

Profile of Mark Tester’s research into salinity tolerance

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A bright future for sustainable agriculture May 28, 2017 Passionate plant scientist Mark Tester conducts ground-breaking research into plants that could one day help feed the world. Imagine a scenario where crops, such as barley, rice and quinoa, are grown in near-desert conditions, in poor-quality soils or on otherwise barren, marginal lands. These staples, irrigated […]

The SingAboutScience.org database: An educational resource for instructors and students

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Setting something to music is a well-known method for supporting learning (think about the alphabet song that you learned as a child). Gregory J. Crowther has assembled a searchable database of science-themed songs, along with lesson plans and suggestions for how to use songs in your teaching. Yes, there are songs about plants too! Check […]

Applications open for 2017-2018 Plantae Fellows

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Are you a creative, articulate and web-savvy plant scientist looking to connect with other like-minded folks? We need your help to nurture and grow Plantae, the online community for the global plant science community.  We are looking for individuals who are interested in being highly engaged contributors by curating content and facilitating discussions. The benefits […]

Harnessing the hidden genetic diversity for improving multiple abiotic stress tolerance in rice

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Ali et al. describe a rice breeding strategy to improve abiotic stress tolerance as well as to accelerate the speed to achieving homozygosity. The researchers named this particular technique as “Green Super Rice” (GSR) breeding technology. They use a backcross (BC) breeding approach to fix breeding lines which are tolerant of multiple abiotic stresses and […]