Rain contributes to plant disease. Rain can contain high concentrations of pathogens (like Pseudomonas, Xanthomonas, Alternaria, Fusarium sp., etc.), and high humidity associated with rain antagonizes stomatal closure, leaving open entry points for some pathogens. Matsumura and colleagues have demonstrated a novel function of Arabidopsis mechanosensory cells present in the leaves, the trichomes. The authors […]
Recently, there has been a huge impetus to develop plants that can perform well under stress conditions and produce high yields so that an ever-increasing human population can be fed. Another point, less discussed but equally important, is the nutritional value that these crops can provide. Cantwell-Jones and colleagues have taken a very interesting phylogenomics […]
How would you feel if you developed a plant that is tolerant to a particular stress stimulus and found out that it can also tolerate another stress? Bettgenhaeuser and found that this happened when plant breeders developed barley varieties resistant to the powdery mildew disease (caused by the fungal pathogen B. graminis f. sp. hordei; […]
Have you ever heard the terms ‘zoochauvinism’, ‘plant blindness’ or ‘plant awareness disparity’? Do you know that in a Twitter poll about 30% of the participants voted plants out of wildlife? Ever noticed how important documentaries like ‘Planet Earth II’ and ‘Our Planet’ prefer animals in their content over plants? All these discriminatory and potentially […]
The versatility of roles that the hormone auxin plays led Paque and Weijers to suggest a new meaning to the acronym IAA (originally- Indole Acetic Acid)- ‘Influences Almost Anything’. It is known that PIN-FORMED (PIN) auxin exporters are responsible for cell-to-cell directional auxin flow and auxin induces the co-ordination and polarization of PINs. In their […]
Soil salinity is a major stress that hampers plant growth, but plants have evolved signaling pathways to sense and respond to salinity. Zhou and colleagues have recently reported a novel pathway in Arabidopsis thaliana that that involves a peptide ligand, PAMP-INDUCED SECRETED PEPTIDE 3 (PIP3) and its cognate receptor, RECEPTOR-LIKE KINASE 7 (RLK7). Exposure to […]
Machine Learning (ML) is described by Wikipedia as ‘the study of computer algorithms that can improve automatically through experience and by the use of data’. In agronomy, machine learning can predict important crop traits (including yield) by analysing the large datasets such as data generated from field trial experiments conducted for several years and form […]
Acidic soils often negatively impact plant growth, yet the application of fertilizers containing urea or ammonia have the effect of acidifying soils. In a recent paper, Ye and colleagues investigated how nitrate uptake through the nitrate transporter NITRATE TRANSPORTER 1.1 (NRT1.1) can mitigate some of the effects of acidic soil. The key players in their […]
‘Fine tuning’ is a very significant process that takes place in the cell to correctly modulate plant responses. BOTRYTIS-INDUCED KINASE 1 (BIK1) is an important hub protein that is at the center of the signaling hub that controls defense responses. Hence, plants fine tune this important protein through several processes, including proteasomal degradation mediated by […]