Dissecting the genetic controls of ABA is challenging, granted the complex modulation of ABA turnover and redundancy of the hormone perception machinery. In the recent study, Kalladan and colleagues explored natural variation of low-water-potential induced ABA accumulation. Using heuristic GWAS,…

Despite the significant developments in computational biology and modern plant breeding, crop phenotyping poses challenges for automation. Previous machine learning approaches of plant phenotyping have mainly focused on leaf counting in rosette forms or leaf segmentation, and rely on large datasets not…

Long ago, the dinosaurs roamed amongst majestic forests of ancient tree ferns, cycads and conifers. But longer ago still, prior to the birth of both the kings of the animal and plant kingdoms, majestic forests of gigantic trees were unimaginable, with the landscape covered in small plants lacking leaves,…

In vascular plants, structure and composition of microbial endosphere associations has not been studied much in the specific context of vascular diseases. This is the case of Pierce's disease which is caused by Xylella fastidiosa and affects multiple crops and ornamental plants. This bacterium is currently…

The capacity of plants to regenerate new shoots from differentiated tissue – a process called de novo shoot regeneration – confers plasticity to plant development and has also important agricultural applications. Previous studies revealed that DNA METHYLTRANSFERASE1 (MET1) inhibits shoot regeneration…

AraGWAS (aragwas.1001genomes.org) is a new useful tool developed within the 1001 Genome project that fully integrates and complements GWAP, EasyGWAS, AraPheno and AraGeno. With the availability of the 1001 genomes of Arabidopsis, the number of association studies is dramatically increasing but a way…

During pathogen invasion, plant resources are diverted from further growth to activation of plant immune response. This review focuses on the recent advances in understanding the complex relationship between immunity regulation and yield production in the model monocot crop rice (Oryza sativa). Many…

The ability to engineer precise changes in nucleic acid sequences has advanced rapidly over the last few years.  Since the development of genome editing technologies such as CRISPR-Cas9, a modified version known as base editing has sought to reliably convert individual nucleotides.  All known base…