Image Description: Graphic is a white rectangle with a green border that says “Stories Plantarum Ep. 3 Hidden Giants” over the Stories Plantarum logo, an icon of an open book with a plant growing from it. On the left side is a drawing of the X-Men character Krakoa. On the right side is an image […]
Image Description: Graphic is a white rectangle with a green border that says “Stories Plantarum Ep. 1 Big wood, old wood, Redwood, Gold wood” over the Stories Plantarum logo, an icon of an open book with a plant growing from it. On the left side is a drawing of a Mallorn grove from The Lord […]
Image Description: Graphic is a white rectangle with a green border that says “Stories Plantarum Ep. 1 Vampire Vines” over the Stories Plantarum logo, an icon of an open book with a plant growing from it. On the left side is a drawing of an alien ship from the movie War of the Worlds. On […]
Global food security is increasingly threatened by expanding industrialization and skyrocketing human populations set in the backdrop of dramatically shifting environmental conditions due to climate change. Innovations in agricultural practices and technology are required to overcome the unprecedented challenges posed by these conditions. In this editorial, Kwak suggests that the sweetpotato plant (Ipomoea batatas) is […]
If you are in search of an exciting hands-on way to entice the public to interact with your pollinator-themed outreach booth, look no further than the Pollination Selfie Station. The Ashman Lab outreach team from University of Pittsburgh This idea was developed after creating a giant flower prop for a video project and first rolled […]
Despite the widespread success of genetically modified (GM) crops resistant to herbicides and insect herbivory, GM food crops with nutritional enhancement traits remain on the fringes of commercial agriculture. In this review, Napier et al. examine the current state of GM food crops and the obstacles that hinder the continued development of such traits in […]
When pollen is deposited on a flower’s stigma, pollen tubes penetrate the stigma and elongate towards ovules where two non-motile sperm will double fertilize an egg and a central cell, which requires cooperation between many cell types. Johnson et al. review our current understanding of these processes. Ca2+ circuits mediate the signaling events that make […]
Insects provide a valuable service to the agricultural industry through pollination, which increases both the quality and harvest volume for many important food crops, however little is known regarding the role of insect functional trait differences in promoting crop pollination. Woodcock et al. tested two contrasting hypotheses that propose mechanisms through which pollinator community structure […]
When trying to understand the repercussions climate change will have on future plant communities, trait-based approaches provide valuable insight. Unfortunately, many trait-based studies focus only on the above-ground traits of un-stressed adult plants, ignoring the critical seedling stage. Harrison and LaForgia measured above- and below-ground traits of several native wildflowers and compared seedling mortality between […]