The discovery of semidwarfing genes in wheat and rice was a crucial turning point of the Green Revolution in the late 1960s. The Green Revolution aimed to maintain per capita food supplies worldwide despite the projected doubling of global population by the end of the 20th century. Its main features…

Plants rely on two branches of the innate immunity system to prevent or eliminate microbial infections: one involves cell surface receptors to respond to pathogen- or microbe- associated molecular patterns, and the other acts inside plant cells by using proteins with nucleotide-binding site (NBS) and…

Phosphorus (P) is an essential macronutrient, and P deficiency limits plant productivity. P influences many aspects of photosynthesis P-deficient plants typically remain green and do not develop leaf chlorosis and yet P starvation immediately affects CO2 assimilation. Specifically, P deficiency is believed…

One of the more prevalent methods used to initiate plant senescence under laboratory conditions is to grow plants in prolonged dark conditions. The course of “dark-induced senescence” depends upon whether individual leaves on the plant or the entire plant is darkened: an individually darkened leaf…

Soil pH has a strong influence on the availability of mineral nutrients and the distribution of species in natural plant communities. Iron (Fe) solubility decreases dramatically with increasing pH. In alkaline soils, calcifuge (“chalk-fleeing”) species are unable to compete due to their inability…

Transient changes in intracellular free Ca2+ concentration ([Ca2+]) are involved in the sensing of a wide variety of abiotic and biotic stimuli iIn plants. The unique spatiotemporal patterns in [Ca2+] that result enable specific stimulus-response coupling. Several intracellular compartments of the plant…

During seed development, protein reserves and minerals are stored in specialized vacuoles called protein storage vacuoles (PSVs). PSVs are functionally different from the lytic vacuoles (LVs) that serve a lysosome-like role in vegetative plant tissues. Embryonic vacuole (EVs) are also present during…

Determining the function of a gene often relies on transgenic plants with altered transcriptional or translational levels. This is usually achieved through overexpression, knockout, or knockdown. However, each of these approaches has specific advantages and drawbacks. For instance, knockouts, which…