Tag: Applied Plant Biology

This interesting article by Cathie Martin and Eugenio Butelli describes the process through which purple, anthocyanin-accumulating tomatoes were brought to the US market, from idea to business plan to regulatory status review and finally direct-to-consumer sales. Although these tomatoes have demonstrated…

Inositol pyrophosphates (PP-InsP) are plant signaling molecules that regulate phosphate homeostasis and related metabolic processes. But a global phosphate crisis, due to resource depletion and environmental pollution from excess phosphate, has raised the need for phosphate management. Freed et al. investigated…

This article poses the interesting question of whether we can use our knowledge of plant cell wall-modifying, carbohydrate-active enzymes to produce biobased materials. Specifically, the authors point out that much of the hemicellulose contained in agricultural and wood fiber could provide a starting…

The development of genetically modified (GM) crops aims to improve agricultural yields in the field. However, their incorporation into agricultural systems is complex, as regulations and acceptance vary globally. While some countries embrace GM crops with herbicide and insect resistance traits, others…

An efficient method of gene downregulation, where gene expression is reduced but not completely knocked out, is useful for crop improvement. Here, Shen et al. have developed a system to achieve this, by using CRISPR/Cas9 to insert an element containing a Kozak sequence and an ATG start codon just before…

Panomics, an approach integrating multiple ‘omics’ datasets such as genomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics, and phenomics, has seen rapid advancement in recent years due to technological improvements, particularly in genomics. This review focuses on the recent developments in panomics-driven gene…

Because much of the genetic diversity of our crops plants was lost during domestication, many breeding efforts endeavor to cross in resilience genes from wild relatives. An alternative approach is to rapidly domesticate those wild relatives themselves, for example by editing genes that affect flowering…

Plant oils, composed of fatty acids, provide humans and animals with food, essential nutrients, chemicals, and biofuels. Plants accumulate over 450 “unusual” fatty acids, which could hold significant value if they achieve optimal production. Hydroxylated fatty acids (HFA) are unusual fatty acids…