Tag: Applied Plant Biology

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…

Grape (Vitis vinifera) is a globally cultivated fruit for fresh or processed consumption, and seedless grapes are highly preferred for consumer convenience. In seedless grapes, fertilization occurs but the embryo subsequently aborts, although the molecular basis for this abortion is not understood. Zhang…

New technologies, like personal computers or smart phones, often have limited adoption due to their high cost or requirement for advanced technological skills. Greater affordability and ease of use leads to greater adoption. Here, Yu, Sussman et al. describe the development of an affordable, portable…

As one of the most traded commodities in the world, coffee has cultural and economic impact that spans continents. The main source of coffee beans, Coffea arabica (Arabica), is a polyploid species that resulted from the hybridization between diploid C. canephora (Robusta) and C. eugenioides (Eugenioides).…

The domestication of cultivated strawberry (Fragaria × ananassa) traces back approximately 300 years, providing us with a relatively comprehensive genealogy of this artificial hybrid species. Strawberry yield in the US has increased by 2,755% since the 1960’s, largely owing to the California strawberry…

Cannabis sativa, also known as hemp or marijuana, is a widely cultivated plant for a variety of reasons. It is perhaps best known as a producer of an intoxicating chemical, THC, produced by glandular trichomes on female flowers, but low-THC producers (hemp) are cultivated for fibers. Flowering time affects…

The introduction of CRISPR-Cas technology in 2012 marked a significant advancement in global genome editing, yet its potential remains largely untapped in Africa, where it could address crucial challenges in agriculture, public health, and medicine. However, several obstacles hinder its full realization,…

As a writer and an editor, I am horrified by the idea that thinking can be replaced by artificial intelligence. But I do recognize that deep learning / machine learning / artificial intelligence can provide major opportunities for data analysis, as eloquently described in this review article by Murphy…

This is an excellent introduction to how synthetic biology can be used to program plants for climate resilience by engineering them to respond predictably and in ways beyond those that evolution has explored, through the use of controllable synthetic gene circuits. Ragland et al. describe how precise…

This outstanding Tansley review by Martin and van der Heijden spans the scale of research on mycorrhizal symbiosis from molecules to ecosystems, and spans time from the earliest encroachment of plants and fungi onto land to the future applications of our understanding. This very comprehensive review…

Grafting is a way to combine the desirable properties of two plants by joining the scions and rootstocks from different plants. While frequently practiced, little is known about how grafting within and between coniferous species works. Most pertinently, grafting success relies on how efficiently connected…

From food and energy to paper and timber, many industries rely on clonal propagation of tree species. Successful propagation of cuttings depends on adventitious rooting ability, which is known to decline with tree age and to be naturally low in many species of interest. Propagators therefore employ naturally…

Plants shape ecosystems and sustain human life. Only a small portion of plant diversity is currently known to be in use, even though most plants may be useful to humans. Over time, certain species become widespread, but others are native to specific geographical regions. Thus, to manage plant resources…

Plants, like animals, have small populations of stem cells capable of differentiating into other tissues, but in plants these stem cell populations are even more long-lived and versatile. Stem cells in plants include the meristems (shoot and root apical meristems, inflorescence and axillary meristems)…

Agricultural Biotechnology has the potential to significantly increase production, alleviate hunger, and improve global food security. However, its adoption in Africa lags behind other regions, facing challenges rooted in strict and varying policies, inadequate infrastructure, and insufficient economic…

Some people cannot eat wheat because they are sensitive to gluten, which is a proteinaceous network of glutenins and gliadins. Gliadins are divided into four classes, ω, γ, α, and β, with ω- and γ-gliadins being the most toxic to gluten sensitive individuals. Hence, there is interest in reducing…

Insect pests pose a significant threat to global crop production, with lepidopteran species like corn earworm and armyworms causing substantial losses. The widespread use of insecticidal proteins from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) in crops has been a key strategy to combat these pests. However, the emergence…

July brings delicious fruit harvests in the Northern Hemisphere, and a very special focus issue of Plant Physiology. I particularly like this issue because of the wide variety of species covered, starting with apple, banana, blueberry, cherry, citrus, and so on. It’s a nice departure from our usual…

Different breeding programs worldwide have developed various cultivars that can cope with changing and increasingly unpredictable environments while meeting market needs. These developments have brought a new challenge: creating tools to distinguish such varieties and trace their genetic purity. Using…

As the effects of climate change become increasingly severe and evident, there is growing concern about the future of food production. However, unlike its impact on crop yields, there is little clarity on the effects of climate change on the foundation of most agricultural systems: seed production and…

The pressing need to restore degraded areas has led to an unprecedented demand for native seeds. However, seeds are not always available in sufficient quantity and quality in nature, so some restoration practitioners might opt to source their seeds from wild plants grown on farms, just like any crop.…

Few topics are as inherently interesting from both fundamental and applied perspectives as salt tolerance in crop plants. From the basic science side, cells have several strategies that they use to keep Na+ levels low in their cytosol in spite of what can be a very steep concentration gradient from out…

Self-burying seeds are high on the list of “aren’t plants amazing”. Seeds of several species carry appendages that change shape when exposed to moisture and that are oriented in such a way so that their shape changes push the seed underground (don’t take our word for it – see https://youtu.be/TOJG5mF6OLs).…

Microalgae are small, photosynthetic algae that have emerged as important contributors to food and nutrient production. This review describes the many ways they can be grown (e.g., autotrophic, with sunlight or artificial light; heterotrophic, with sugar inputs; or mixotrophic, a combination of both)…

Modern rice is descended from a perennial grass, which through millennia of selection evolved into an annual “one-sow, one-harvest” crop. However, it has become apparent that perennial grains have the potential to decrease soil erosion and competition, as well as lower the labor required to produce…

To improve the profitability and sustainability of agriculture, there has been an extensive quest to identify regulators that boost nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) without compromising yield. Wei et al. identified a DREB family transcription factor based on RNAseq analysis of rice plants exposed to low…

Gene manipulation in most plant species faces two major hurdles, transformation efficiency of tissue and regeneration of callus. Agrobacterium-mediated transformation is the most common method of plant transformation. Transformation efficiency can range from more than half  the  tissue to less than…

Vitamin D deficiency in humans is correlated with malfunction of the immune system and inflammation together with cancer, Parkinson disease, depression, neurocognitive decline, dementia, and severe COVID-19 infection. In humans, exposure of the skin to UV light promotes the production of Vitamin D from…

Assessing the viability of ungerminated seeds at the end of a trial is a common practice in seed germination experiments. By doing this, researchers aim to establish the number of viable seeds that were sown in an experiment and estimate germination parameters accordingly. Still, can we be sure that…

“Food, fuel, and fiber” sometimes is used to describe our utter dependence on plants, but often, other than cotton, the “fiber” part is under appreciated. However, there is a growing interest in bio-based materials, both for their greater recyclability and as an alternative to petroleum-derived…

Plants People Planet is a relatively young journal that launched in 2019. It’s aim is to explore aspects of plant science directly relevant to our daily lives, and how plant science is communicated to the public. The Sept 2021 issue has a focus on mychorrhizas, which it explores through several opinion,…

Beer is a simple beverage, basically fermented barley sugars. But recently, it’s been all about the hops. Hops are buds of Humulus lupulus, a member of the Cannabaceae family, and from humble origins they have been carefully bred and selected, resulting in many varieties with different aroma and flavor…

Recently, the UN Environment Programme identified excessive reactive nitrogen (N) resulting from anthropogenic activity as one of the five emerging threats facing our planet. Much of this derives from agricultural practices in which N fertilizers are inefficiently applied to crops, a significant proportion…

Small RNAs have big effects and can serve to shut down or silence gene expression. Recently, studies have found that small RNAs can contribute to plant defense beyond the boundary of the plant, by being packed into extracellular vesicles (EVs) and delivered to a pathogen. Cai et al. review our current…

Humans have derived inspiration from innumerable corners of the natural world. Plants of diverse forms have inspired many “biomimetics,” or technical products derived from biological models. Speck and Speck review how plant-based biomimetics have developed over time and elaborate on their current…

The gaseous environment is thought to play a fundamental role in seed longevity in storage conditions, given the role of oxygen and other volatile compounds in seed viability loss. However, formal tests of its influence are still scarce compared to other storage parameters such as temperature and humidity.…

As heterotrophs, we are what we eat. One of the UN Sustainable Development Goals is to end all forms of hunger, including the “hidden hunger” that results from nutrient deficiencies. Van Der Straeten et al. provide an overview of biofortification strategies. They review current successes from…

Bakker et al. begin their review of plant-soil microbiome concepts with a Lorentz Hiltner quote from 1904: “However, I am convinced that soil bacteriology will finally provide results that are not only of explanatory nature, but will also directly affect and determine agricultural practice… I would…

Several potential targets have been suggested to improve drought tolerance and water-use efficiency of crops, but many genes when upregulated can cause negative growth trade-offs. Stress recognition and signaling proteins are attractive targets as they may exert control over multiple downstream pathways…

When I think of vertical farms, I imagine baby lettuces and basil: small, leaf crops that benefit from growing close to the consumer. Here, Asseng et al. evaluate the potential to grow wheat, a staple seed crop, in a vertical farm system. Previous studies have demonstrated that wheat can be grown successfully…

For those of you about to start teaching again, here’s a great article to share with your plant science students, showcasing the ways that plant biologists are contributing to the international efforts to develop diagnostic reagents, vaccines, and antiviral drugs to combat the global COVID-19 pandemic.…

In an interesting evolutionary artifact, the genes encoding the small subunit of Rubisco, rbcS, reside in the nuclear genome, whilst those encoding RbcL persists in the chloroplast. The RbcS protein is translocated into the chloroplast where the holoenzyme forms. This complexity adds to the challenge…

PollenCounter is an open source, ImageJ based macro that splits RGB images of stained pollen grains into the primary channels. The program estimates pollen viability in plants through analyzing red (total number of pollen grains) and green (only viable pollen grains) images, after which the particles…

Puccinia graminis f. sp. tritici (Pgt) has a strange life strategy in that it requires two hosts to complete its sexual life cycle; wheat and barberry. In the absence of barberry, it reproduces clonally; clonal reproduction limits its ability to generate diversity and therefore its ability to evade plant…

Seed longevity (i.e., the inherent lifespan of a seed) is a polygenic feature that demands the coordination of multiple biological processes, and that shapes the persistence of seeds in the soil and the time they can be stored ex situ. Recent studies on this trait highlight the role of the antioxidant…

Plant hormones such as jasmonates (JAs) and salicylic acid (SA) are known for their role in regulating plant growth under both abiotic and biotic stresses. These hormones, which are synthesized within the plant, can modulate cellular processes in targeted cells locally and can be moved to other parts…

Parthenocarpy, or the ability to make fruit without fertilization, is desirable for many reasons including the opportunity to make seedless fruits and a greater resiliency in crop production in the face of climate change. Matsuo et al. identified a new gene involved in parthenocarpy, starting with a…

Plant strengtheners, synthetic chemical elicitors, have been shown to enhance plant resistance against various insect pests without toxic effects on the environment, but evidence is lacking for a significant increase in crop growth and yield after using these elicitors. To address this, Wang et al. studied…

Biofuels can be obtained from bioenergy crops such as sorghum, maize and sugarcane. However, the production of bioethanol is still more expensive than that of petroleum. Given the importance of replacing conventional fossil fuels with renewable liquid fuels, the biorefinery system should be improved…

Flower development has always been a fascinating field of research in plant biology. While molecular studies in the past focused on regulatory genes involved in the formation of floral organs in model species, current investigations are addressing the genetic determinants underlying the huge variety…

Desiccation tolerance (i.e., the capacity of surviving with very low water content) is widespread in seeds and pollen, but quite rare in vegetative organs. Most authors agree that in angiosperms it originated multiple independent times from rewiring seed desiccation tolerance pathways. Here, Pardo et…

Grapevines (Vitis vinifera L.) are clonally propagated by stem cuttings, which depends on the formation of adventitious (stem-borne) roots. In this paper Chen at al., showed the function of microRNA encoded peptides (miPEPs) in adventitious root formation of cultured grape plantlets. MicroRNA biogenesis…

Maize has provided some fascinating mutants and developmental insights, but its genomic complexity has made it more difficult (for example as compared to rice) to identify agronomically important genes. Liu et al. describe a new high-throughput method to integrate forward- and reverse-genetics to identify…

The trait of herbicide tolerance allows farmers to use chemical means to eliminate weed competitors. Acetolactate synthase (ALS) is an enzyme targeted by more than 50 different herbicides. In order to generate novel herbicide tolerance traits, Kuang et al. used a base-editing artificial evolution approach,…

Trees will help us ensure our future, but they are also a valuable record of our past. This fascinating review article by Caetano-Andrade et al. describes how anthropologists are taking advantage of data recorded in trees to understand more about not only the atmospheric and geological events of the…

Many trees emit isoprene (C5H8, a small volatile carbon compound) during hot weather, and isoprenes have been shown to help trees tolerate short bursts of high temperatures (heat flecks). Isoprenes are not themselves harmful, but are reactive and can lead to the production of high levels of ground-level…

Banana streak virus (BSV) is a plant pathogenic pararetrovirus that has integrated into the genome of banana Musa spp., reducing crop production. When BSV-infected banana plants become stressed, BSV reactivates to create functional infectious viruses that can cause lethal tissue necrosis. Tripathi et…

For the past 100 million years, flowering plants have been the main producers of land biomass. They also are indirectly responsible for the origin of agriculture, setting the ball rolling for the onset of the Anthropocene. Negrutiu et al. argue that the accompanying rapid global changes require a reconsideration…

Urban gardens are a great way to introduce people to plant science, to bring fresh food into areas underserved by grocery stores (“food deserts”), and can promote a sense of community. But as Cooper et al. observe, many potential sites can be contaminated with heavy metals (lead, cadmium) and metalloids…

Since most of us will have a few days off this coming week as we welcome in 2020, I’d like to highlight some of the engrossing reviews in this special issue of Current Opinion in Biotechnology, edited by Ralf Reski, Gary Foster & Ed Rybicki.  Several of the articles focus on Molecular Pharming,…

Numerous genes have been identified that modify shoot architecture, which has allowed breeding of varieties for specific purposes and environments. Here, Kwon et al. describe how they have used gene editing to modify several of these genes to produce tomatoes and groundcherries that are compact and rapid…

A fast method of gene editing using Agrobacterium was developed to deliver combinations of the developmental regulators including WUSCHEL and SHOOT MERISTEMLESS along with gene-editing reagents. The expression of specific developmental regulators led to the induction of meristems and expression of the…

Crop yields are vulnerable to rising temperatures and changes in precipitation. Here, Gaupp et al. model the projected crop yields at 1.5 versus 2.0 degrees of additional warming, as part of the HAPPI experiment (perhaps a misnomer: Half a degree Additional warming, Prognosis and Projected Impacts).…

Bacteriophages are viruses that infect bacteria. As agents that weaken or destroy pathogens, they have shown therapeutic promise in human and plant disease treatment. Wang et al. studied the effect on pathogenic Ralstonia solanacearum of different phages individually and in combinations in the rhizosphere…

In a new Perspective by Wurtzel et al., the authors lay out SynBio’s tremendous potential to transform agriculture. Consider how we might leverage the “vast design space that plants have not occupied.” As an example, plants employ two pathways to fix carbon, and prokaryotes another six, but scientists…

For those of you celebrating Thanksgiving next weekend, here’s an article full of fun facts to share over the salad. Gullino et al. describe the history of salad (mentioned by Virgil and Pliny) and the rapid growth in the prepared salad industry. They describe the challenge of growing and getting these…

Simply put, as food demand increases due to population growth and increased affluence, crop yields are likely to decrease due to the changing climate. Plant scientists will be familiar with many research avenues that aim to address this disconnect, ranging from increasing crop resilience to abiotic stresses,…

Plant biotechnology often refers to crops and, more recently, algae, but biotechnology also applies to mosses. As Decker and Reski summarize, mosses have some of the same desirable features as algae, including a largely haploid lifecycle that facilitates genetic studies (including homologous recombination…

Many discussions about organic food production are dominated by dogma rather than pragmatism. Nevertheless, here’s a useful report that examines the impact of organic farming methods in England and Wales on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Are the well-documented lower yields offset by differences in…

ABA is synthesized in response to water stress and promotes stomatal closure, thus decreasing transpiration. Crop yields can be increased by controlling transpiration early in the growing season, ensuring that soil water resources persist through the seed-set period. Building upon earlier studies, Vaidya,…

If you’ve ever spoken publicly about GM crops, you’ve probably heard people express concern about how eating GM crops might affect their health. Smyth lays out a positive case for the human health benefits of GM crops, which will be a useful resource for science communicators. Here he focuses on…

Esca is a leaf scorch (necrosis) disease of grapevine that causes tremendous yield losses. Bortolami et al. have investigated the etiology of this condition, which is known to be a consequence of fungal pathogen infection. But how exactly does the fungal infection contribute to the observed symptoms?…

One promising use of nanomaterials is the delivery of biomolecules into cells. Demirer et al. report a detailed protocol for Carbon Nano Tube-mediated DNA delivery into intact plants, allowing transformation without transgene integration, that can be used in both model and crop species. In brief, carboxylated…

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…

A few traits are associated with domestication across many species. Eshed and Lippman provide an overview of the changes to plant stature and flowering time that have been repeatedly selected by our ancestors. By comparing the molecular underpinnings of these traits across crops, it becomes clear that…

The therapeutic and recreational applications of Cannabis sativa (Cs) attract public and clinical interest thanks to its secondary metabolites (cannabinoids and terpenes) synthesized and stored in glandular trichomes, hair-like epidermal protrusion densely concentrated in the flowers. Little is known…

Plants’ internal circadian clocks regulate the timing of many physiological and developmental processes. This circadian clock also controls plant sensitivity to the herbicide glyphosate, which is maximally effective at dawn. Here, Belbin et al. showed that the minimum effective dose varies with time…

Plant fibres from crops such as flax and hemp have diverse uses from rope to clothing, and are increasingly being incorporated into eco-friendly biocomposite materials.  These long, flexible, useful fibres, called “bast” fibres, are not derived from the xylem, but instead are derived from specialized…

In Southeast Asian countries, rice accounts for two-thirds of the caloric intake for many people. This narrow dietary base is often correlated with vitamin A deficiency, which can cause blindness, anemia and weakened immunity. In an effort to enhance vitamin A consumption, rice has been engineered to…

Criticism of transgenic plants and GMOs motivates research into effective GMO-free RNA delivery methods. In this review, Dalakouras et al. discuss different strategies for exogenous application of RNA molecules (dsRNAs, siRNAs) into plants to trigger RNA interference (RNAi) against various targets, such…

Male sterility in seed production could be used to increase crop yields, eliminate pollen allergies or avoid gene flow between genetically modified plants and other species. Here, Roque et al. developed a system to produce engineered nuclear male sterile plants using the pea Pisum sativum ENDOTHECIUM…

Opium poppies produce opiates including morphine and thebaine. Derivatives of these compounds can also have diverse beneficial properties. One of these, naloxone, is a competitive opioid receptor antagonist that can be administered to counteract the effects of opioid overdose. Because of the rise in…

Tea quality depends on the product's taste and aroma, which are provided by phenolic and volatile compounds respectively.  Here, Shi et al. analyzed changes of volatile and amino acid (AA) profiles in fresh tea leaves (Camellia sinensis L.) and during the processing of three tea products (green, oolong…

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…

Most synthetic pesticides do not stick well on plants especially during raining season and can be washed off during irrigation shorty after application. Therefore, the farmer may need to apply several times or hope for dry days to spray. Swinges et al. developed a synthetic peptide with two separate…

Wheat is of course a hugely important food for humans, and has been selectively bred across the globe for millennia. Modern bread wheats are hexaploid and contain three distinct subgenomes (AABBDD). As with other crops, there is a need to understand wheat’s ancestry and explore the greater genetic…

CRISPR/Cas9 is a promising gene editing tool that has already been successfully used to modify many plant genes. In these applications, the gene editing machinery is transiently employed to make a stable genomic change which is then passed on to the progeny. A different application is to use CRISPR/Cas9…

Nowadays, weeds represents a major problem to agriculture due to the limited availability and expense of tools to manage them. Using new technologies to create herbicide-tolerant, non-transgenic varieties could improve weed control. Here, Li et al. analyzed multiallelic editing of the wheat TaALS (encoding…

Plant synthetic biology is heating up, as ideas and methods initially developed for single-celled organisms are moving into the more interesting and complicated space of multicellular organisms; this leads to greater potentials as well as greater challenges. Why plants? One important reason is that they…

Transient expression platforms allow short-term expression of candidate genes in the host plant, without the integration of DNA into the host genome. The expression cassettes are delivered to the host cells either by Agrobacterium- or microprojectile-mediated approaches. Agrobacterium-mediated transformation…

Cyber-agriculture is a computer-controlled plant growing environment which regulates climatic conditions through machine learning, finding optimized variables (“recipes”) to maximize a specific plant trait. Here, Johnson et al. applied cyber-agriculture to chemotype optimization for flavor in basil…

There is an ever-growing need for novel herbicides as more weeds are becoming resistant to commonly used herbicides. In a recent report from Hu et al., the authors identified that a previously described cellulose biosynthesis-inhibiting chemical, C17, possesses an herbicidal quality. The authors showed…

Crop yield is largely determined by the size of seeds, and studies are being conducted to understand the complex molecular network controlling the seed size. Li et al. review the possible molecular mechanisms and regulatory networks underlying seed size control and growth, including the factors originating…

Key to success of crop improvement is the development of easier, faster and safer biomolecules-delivery systems. Here, the main limitation is the cell wall, which compromises the yield of exogenic material transfer to plant cells. In this study, Demirer et al demonstrate the advantages of infiltrated…

Current research is focused on developing better crop varieties that could withstand the adversities posed by climate change; however, these varieties might perform worse than the locally-grown varieties in field conditions. This could be due to the release of varieties to farmers without performing…

Pinus pinaster Aiton, commonly known as maritime pine, is a coniferous tree, native to the Mediterranean region, and presently used as a model plant when studying coniferous trees due to the interest in its environmental adaptability. Maritime pine breeding programs use somatic embryogenesis, a biotechnological…

The shikimate pathway synthesizes aromatic amino acids in microorganisms and plants, and its absence in animals makes the shikimate pathway a common target for the development of herbicides. Brilisauer et al. 2019 isolated a novel compound from the cyanobacterium Synechococcus elongatus—7-deoxy-sedoheptulose…

Lignin, polymerized from aromatic monolignols, provides strength to cell walls but its resistance to enzymatic degradation thwarts efforts to isolate cellulosic carbohydrates from cell walls for biofuels and other applications. It has been shown that lignin’s properties can be altered by the incorporation…

I feel guilty about using plastics but it’s hard to break free; they are so integral to a modern lifestyle. However, the problem of plastic pollution is frightening. About 80% of manufactured plastic ends up in landfills or the natural environment. It's appalling to learn that the "Great Pacific Garbage…

As photosynthetic organisms, plants are desirable and potentially cost-effective chassis for the production of novel compounds, but they are also inherently metabolically complex. Synthetic metabolic pathways can also improve upon nature by making plants more metabolically efficient. Küken and Nikoloski…

Synechococcus elongates UTEX 2973 (also known as Synechococcus 2973) has the fastest doubling time of known cyanobacteria, completely replicating itself in just over two hours. This fast growth rate makes it an interesting platform for industrial applications. Hendry et al set out to understand what…

Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) fruits undergo pronounced softening during ripening. Softening is important for flavor development and overall palatability, but also impacts fruit storage, transportability, and shelf life. Shelf life is a particularly important quality trait of tomato fruits affected by…

You probably saw this article being discussed in your favorite news channel (in the UK, coverage spanned from the Daily Mail to the Guardian). In an Opinion article, Naves et al. discuss the genetics, biochemistry, ecology and health-benefits of capsaicinoids (the “heat” in chili pepper), and consider…

Anthocyanins are common plant pigments that provide dietary benefits, leading to an increase in their use as food coloring agents. However, purifying anthocyanins from current plant sources (such as waste grape skins, red cabbage, and berries) is expensive and creates a variable product. Modifying biosynthetic…

Zu et al., have successfully harnessed the power of synthetic biology to increase the nutritional content of rice by overexpressing only four synthetic genes in rice endosperm. Here, the authors have created a colorful gradient of carotenoid-enriched rice by expressing two, three, and then four genes…

Plants provide us with food, fiber, shelter, medicine, and fuel. In the process, they also release the oxygen that we breathe. Now, they can also help remove carcinogens from our homes. Zhang et al., have developed a genetically modified a common houseplant, Epipremnum aureum, pothos ivy, that can remove…

Striga hermonthica (Striga) parasitizes a wide range of crops including sorghum and rice, mainly  in sub-Saharan Africa. This parasite decreases crop yields and results in billions of dollars in economic damage. Striga seeds are numerous and remain dormant in the soil until prompted to germinate by…

A forthcoming issue of Current Opinion in Biotechnology features a set of reviews on the topic of lignin, particularly its chemistry and applications. Lignin is a complex set of polymers that provide structural support to vascular plants (See Renault et al. for insights into lignin's evolutionary origins).…

This paper is kind of fun because it explores plant leaf and petal shape from an engineering perspective, identifying “fundamental mechanistic insights into how nature invokes mechanics in the evolution of commonly found shapes in plant organs by differential growth.” For each organ, the authors…

Grafting is an ancient technology and still extremely important in horticulture and food production, including grapes for wine. Although much is known about what scion/shoot combinations work, less is known at the molecular and cellular level about successful grafts. How do two genetically different…

Irmisch et al. investigate enzymes of the ornamental plant montbretia involved in a complex flavonoid biosynthetic system relevant to human health. https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.18.00406   Background: Type-2 diabetes is a major health challenge of the 21st century requiring new treatments. Plants produce…

The exploration of space is one of the most inspiring areas of scientific research and a major driver of technological innovation. One of the major factors limiting human expansion trough space is the immensely high cost of resupplying resources from Earth. Mars is the closest neighbor to Earth and although…

Introducing DNA or RNA into plant cells remains a challenge. Demirer et al. describe a new method for transient expression studies through delivery of DNA or RNA via carbon nanotubes (CNTs); the size of the nanoparticles is smaller than the exclusion limit for plant cell walls. The authors show that…

Plant Cell Editor Zach Lippman and his work are featured in this National Geographic article, "Why Gene Editing Is the Next Food Revolution" Tucked into a suburban Long Island neighborhood, a 12-acre plot may be growing the future. Under a blistering July sun, Zachary Lippman bends over…

The two classic approaches to introducing DNA into a plant’s genome are by harnessing Agrobacterium tumefaciens’ fascinating gene-transfer skill, or by shooting the new DNA into the cell using a “biolistic” (gun) approach. Because of Agrobacterium’s restricted choice of hosts, the biolistic…

Multicellular organisms have different tissues that carry out diverse and specialized functions, and tissue-specific expression is the feature that gives each tissue its specific protein content. Despite its importance, the mechanisms that control spatial patterning is poorly understood. In this work,…

The MYB transcription factors, specifically the R2R3 family of MYBs, are closely associated with the regulation of anthocyanin biosynthesis. This easy-to-score trait made MYBs some of the earliest characterized plant transcription factors. Allan and Espley summarize the contributions of MYBs to pigmentation…

Anthocyanins are common plant pigments that provide dietary benefits, causing an increase in their use as a food coloring agents. However, purifying anthocyanins from current plant sources (such as waste grape skins, red cabbage and berries) is expensive and creates a variable product. Modifying biosynthetic…

In this review Stewart et al. address the potential use of houseplants as biosensors for harmful agents in the home environment, taking advantage of phytosensor technology already in use in agricultural settings. The authors propose the design of genetically modified plants that carry a synthetic promoter…

Arjen Dijkgraaf | Wednesday, July 4, 2018 (Originally published in C2W Boeken. Translation by Google Translate) In poplars a protein appears to have a bizarre double function: it makes building blocks for amino acids but also regulates the production of lignin. It could be a new way to create…

Discovery of the biosynthetic pathway of a plant metabolite lays the groundwork for its use as an anti-diabetes drug Roughly half of the western medicines used today were derived from naturally occurring plant metabolites. Plants produce over 200,000 of these specialized metabolites, but identifying…

Algae undergo a complete metabolic transformation under stress by arresting cell growth, inducing autophagy, and hyper-accumulating biofuel precursors such as triacylglycerols and starch. However, the regulatory mechanisms behind this stress-induced transformation are still unclear. Understanding the signaling…

As more people move to cities, urban agriculture will make larger contributions to food security. There has been little investigation on the role of plant biodiversity in urban agricultural systems. Wan and colleagues use monitoring data collected from community farms in Shanghai, China, to investigate…

Like all plant hormones, ABA controls diverse processes, including stomatal aperture and seed dormancy, and growth rate. Miao et al. have used CRISPR/Cas9 technology in rice to selectively mutant subsets of the 13-member PYL family of ABA receptors.  They found notable differences when mutating group…

Genome modification is a powerful tool, yet precise genome engineering in plants remains challenging. Miki et al. report on the sequential transformation method for gene targeting in Arabidopsis. The parental plants expressing CRISPR/Cas9 under the egg cell- and early embryo-specific DD45 promoter were…

Wiedemann et al. show that RecQ6 in Physcomitrella enhances homologous recombination and gene targeting https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.17.00632.  Background: All living cells have mechanisms to protect their DNA against breaks during duplication and against damage by UV-light or chemicals. RecQ helicases…

By Matthew J. Paul, Asier Gonzalez-Uriarte, Cara A. Griffiths, and Keywan Hassani-Pak Significant increases in global food security require improving crop yields in favourable and poor conditions alike. However, it is challenging to increase both the crop yield potential and yield resilience simultaneously,…

To generate new plant varieties with desirable traits, plant geneticists cross existing varieties that contain the characters they want to combine. The genetic variability is obtained thanks to events called crossovers, in which segments of homologous chromosomes are swapped during meiosis. The frequency…

Small cyclic peptides are produced in many organisms; some are produced by ribosomes and others not. Fisher et al. explore a class of small cyclic peptides known as orbitides, which have been identified in plants of Asteroideae subfamily of the plant family Asteraceae. The fact that these are abundant…

The question of the relative risks and benefits of genetically engineered (GE) maize is still in the middle of a heated debate, despite the widespread cultivation of GE crops (12% of the global crop-land) and long standing commercialization (since 1996).  Pellegrino et al. report a meta-analysis of…

Apple  (Malus spp.) is an economically important tree that faces, like other crops cultured in temperate regions, remarkable challenges due to climate change such as abiotic (drought and salinity) and biotic (fungi, bacteria and aphids) stresses. For that, there is increasing need to preserve Malus…

The global demand for cocoa (from Theobroma cacao) has been increasing, but production has not kept up with demand due to global climate change, pest and disease issues, and low productivity due to old cocoa trees. Currently, grafting and seeds (produced by cross-pollination) are used to propagate cocoa,…

Yang et al. discover conservation of genomic imprinting between closely related Triticum and Aegilops species. https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.17.00837 By Guanghui Yang and Mingming Xin Background: Genomic imprinting causes genes to be differentially expressed depending on their parent-of-origin, which…

Plant Physiol. Herbicide resistance is a serious problem in contemporary agriculture. One of the most widely used herbicides, glyphosate, interferes with the activity of EPSPS (5-enolpyruvylshikimate-3-phosphate synthase). Koo et al. previously showed that glyphosate-resistant waterhemp (Amaranthus tuberculatus,…

Nat. Plants. Soybean is the world’s sixth most produced crop and is economically important as a source of protein and oil in animal and human food, as well as having industrial applications.  Domestication of soybean has resulted in the absence of seed coat bloom, a powdery coating containing hazardous…

Nat. Plants. The current rate of crop plant breeding, limited by the long generation time of crop plants, is insufficient to address the needs caused by the enormous increase in the human population accompanied by climate change. Watson et al. have recently presented a method called ‘Speed breeding’…

Humans have been domesticating plants for 10,000 years, having an impact on the gene pools of multiple species chiefly through selective breeding approaches. Although plant domestication ensured food availability to early civilizations, plants were, and still are, mainly selected based on their morphology…

“If the current trend continues, there could be more plastic than fish by weight in the oceans by 2050” writes MacArthur in her Editorial, “Beyond plastic waste” (10.1126/science.aao6749). In three Perspective articles, challenges and opportunities to reduce plastic waste and improve its production…

Previously, the authors identified an Arabidopsis mutant that shows resistance to a widespread oomycete pathogen. In this new work, Wang et al. identified the Phytophthora sojae susceptible gene locus, PSS1, which encodes a plasma-membrane localized glycine-rich protein. When introduced into soybean…

The ability to generate transgenic plants has revolutionised plant science research.  However, many species and genotypes remain challenging and time-consuming to transform.  Zhao et al. provide a novel and potentially ground-breaking method of transgene delivery.  In the presence of a magnetic field,…

Assessing the function of genes active in zygotes and egg cells is difficult due to the inaccessibility of the target tissues.  Koiso et al. isolated rice egg cells and maize zygotes using a method similar to that for extracting leaf protoplasts.  They then optimized a PEG-Ca2+ transfection protocol…

Reading books by the light of nanobionic plants sounds like something out of a scifi book. However, scientists have been working for many years on engineering light-emitting plants based on the luciferase enzyme. This work has been limited largely by the need to overcome the toxicity of adding to much…

CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing has rapidly become a powerful tool in modern plant science research.  However, issues of low editing efficiencies and off-target mutations remain.  LeBlanc et al. hypothesised that subjecting plants to high temperature stress, mimicking the optimal operating temperature of…

Lignified cell walls constitute an important renewable and sustainable feedstock for the production of fermentable sugars, biochemicals, and biomaterials.  In biorefineries, plant cell wall polysaccharides are depolymerized into simple monomeric sugars, a process called saccharification. These sugars…

Using solar irradiation effectively for steam generation is a promising renewable energy source for a wide variety of applications, including large-scale power generation, desalination, water purification and sterilization, which is particularly important in remote areas where solar power is often the…

Banana, the common breakfast component, is also a staple food in some regions of the world. More than 99% of the bananas exported world-wide are the clonally-propagated Cavendish variety, which have very little genetic variation and so are prone to disease outbreaks. Recent years have witnessed the emergence…

The lack of acceptance of GM-breeding calls for alternative strategies to develop new crop varieties to feed the world's growing population. Moreover, the regulation of novel approaches for genome editing (CRISPR, TALEN) is still unclear and will potentially remain so for the near future (or will likely…

The trade-off between grain size and number has been traditionally hard to break.  Bai et al established that differences in panicle architecture between two rice cultivars resulted from duplication of a long-distance silencer of the FRIZZY PANICLE (FZP) gene in one cultivar (Chuan 7).  Increased silencing…

Many journal articles in the plant sciences – including some of mine – finish with statements like “these findings can potentially contribute to solving the challenge of feeding the world’s growing population whilst saving the planet’s limited resources”. That is a noble ambition. Sadly,…

“Over 200 million humans are at risk of arsenic poisoning,” due to arsenic in groundwater and its uptake into crops. Our understanding of the transporters through which arsenic enters the plant, moves through the plant, and enters the seed has increased substantially in recent years, opening the…

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…

The C4 Rice project aims to transition rice from a C3 crop to one that performs C4 photosynthesis, in order to realize a predicted 50% increase in yield.  Here, Wang et al. expressed a positive regulator of chloroplast development, the maize GOLDEN2-LIKE transcription factor, in rice.  The resulting…

New genome editing technology, such as zinc-finger nucleases and CRISPR/Cas9, are revolutionizing reverse genetics studies because they allow fast and precise genetic modifications in many species. However, they require efficient transformation and selection methods. This is notably a problem for algae…

Polished white rice is a major food source for much of the world but is not a good source of the essential micronutrients iron and zinc. Like microbes, plants enhance their uptake of iron from the environment by synthesizing small “iron carrying” molecules called respectively siderophores or phytosiderophores…

Botanical gardens are sanctuaries where plant diversity is celebrated, conserved, studied, and shared. As more species are put under pressure from anthropogenic activities, the importance of botanical gardens in preserving and protecting threatened species is increasing. A recent study on the role of…

Boxall et al. investigate CAM photosynthesis in Kalanchoë fedtschenkoi The Plant Cell (2017). https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.17.00301 Background: During photosynthesis, most plants use the enzyme Rubisco to capture CO2 during the day. Crassulacean acid metabolism (CAM) plants such as prickly pears,…

Kloth et al. probe aphid feeding behavior. The Plant Cell 2017  doi: 10.1105/tpc.16.00424 By Karen Kloth Background: Aphids are phloem-feeding insects. They penetrate plants with a piercing-sucking mouth. Once they reach a tube where the plant transports its sugar-rich phloem sap, they can take…

Introducing new desirable traits in domesticated crops takes time and is limited by the need for existing trait variation in members of the same species or closely related species. Rodríguez-Leal et al. propose a system by which variation in a quantitative trait can be generated by editing the promoter…

Celiac disease is a debilitating autoimmune disease in which antigens in plant gliadins (one type of gluten protein) stimulate production of antibodies that inflame the lining of the small intestine. In wheat, α-gliadin (the main cause of the sensitivity) is encoded by more than 100 genes, thwarting…

Aflatoxins are small molecules that are extremely damaging to human health that are produced by the fungal species Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus parasiticus.  Peanut pods form underground and so are particularly vulnerable to infection by the fungus. Sharma et al. used a two-pronged approach to…

Vitamin E (alpha-tocopherol and related tocochromanol compounds) is a lipid-soluble antioxidant that contributes to numerous cellular activities and confers protection against many diseases, from cancer to cardiovascular disease. The main sources of vitamin E for humans are plant oils, but most crop…

Variation is the engine of evolution, and plant breeders and geneticists have long relied on induced variation to create a population from which to select. Rodríguez-Leal et al. used CRISPR/Cas9 mutagenesis to selectively introduce variability into the promoter regions of three genes involved in tomato…

Hirooka et al. examined the genome of an acid-loving green alga, Chlamydomonas eustigma, to learn how it tolerates its low pH environment. Key differences between the acidophilic species and the neutrophilic species Chlamydomonas reinhardtii include: an increase in expression of genes encoding plasma…

Natural variation in photosynthetic traits can be exploited for new targets for breeding or genetic engineering of crops. In an effort to identify traits which can lead to enhanced biomass production and therefore yield potential in rice, Qu et al. conducted a comprehensive survey of 14 photosynthetic…

This is an era of rapid acceleration of our ability to both read and write genomes. Chari and Church point to a future in which making a small number of changes in a genome (editing) is supplanted by making hundreds or thousands or more of changes, essentially whole-genome editing. Basically, the authors…

When we think about making things from plant biopolymers, we often think about cellulose, the “most common natural polymer on Earth, with an estimated annual biomass production between 1011 and 1012 tons” or ligin, with a biomass production on the order of 107 tons per year. Heredia-Guerrero et al.…

Many green algae have the ability to concentrate CO2 to enhance their photosynthetic performance. Mackinder reviews these algal CO2-concentrating mechanisms (CCMs) and what steps would be required to introduce them into higher plants. He also compares progress and pitfalls towards introducing algal CCMs…

Nuclear accidents in recent years such as the Fukushima incident during the tsunami in 2011 revealed the detrimental effects of leaked radioactive cesium (Cs) in environmental soil and water. Due to Cs's chemical similarity with potassium, an essential macronutrient for plants, cesium is taken up by…

A diet consisting of a wide range of plant matter is optimal for human heath, but due to various historical and social factors (including the relatively high cost of fresh fruit and vegetables), many people don’t get the nutrients they need. Biofortification of staple foods like rice through breeding…

Here’s a great collection of articles that consider various approaches to increase crop productivity through enhancements to photosynthesis. The authors of the papers in this collection include many of  the leading photosynthesis researchers, and the topics include structural and architectural improvements…

Insects compete directly with people for the energy and nutrients contained in plant matter, so it’s crucial for future food security to develop safe, effective and inexpensive means to control insect pests on crop plants. Zhang et al. review progress in using plant-mediated RNA interference (RNAi)…

One of the challenges of future food security is to feed a growing population without further impinging on undisturbed ecosystems, which is a primary goal of efforts to increase yields. At the other end of the equation, Tripathi et al. address opportunities to recover degraded lands for sustainable development.…

De la Parra and Quave describe the fascinating intersection of ethnobotany and biotechnology, which they define as ethnophytotechnology: “the use of plant biotechnology to improve or enhance the inherent economic or culturally valuable traits of plants as described and influenced by ethnobotany". They…

The plastid genome of higher plants encodes about 100 genes, the products of which assemble with approximately 3,000 nucleus-encoded proteins to form the plastid transcription and translation machinery and carry out complex metabolic functions, including photosynthesis and fatty acid and amino acid biosynthesis.…

Pigment engineering was featured in three recent papers. Anthocyanins are blue pigments valued for their antioxidant health benefits and for their beauty, but their biosynthesis and chemistry is complex. Noda et al. introduced two genes to produce blue anthocyanins in chrysanthemum petals (Sci Advances…

Flowering time is regulated by FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT), its paralog TWIN SISTER OF FT (TSF), and related proteins.  Banana (Musa spp.) is an economically-important day-neutral plant with a months-long vegetative phase prior to flowering.  The banana cultivar Grand Nain has 14 FT/TSF-like genes spread…

Rhododendron dauricum (Ericaceae), a native of northeastern Asia, produces unique secondary metabolites including daurichromenic acid (DCA). DCA has attracted considerable attention as a medicinal resource because this compound is one of the most effective natural products with anti-HIV properties in…

This week’s blog was written by Dr Craig Cormick, the Creative Director of ThinkOutsideThe. He is one of Australia’s leading science communicators, with over 30 years’ experience working with agencies such as CSIRO, Questacon and Federal Government Departments.   So what do you think…

Watson and Ghosh et al. describe protocols to accelerate the lifecycle of several crop species using "speed breeding", which essentially involves extending the daylength to 22 hours with supplemental lighting. They describe methods and results from glasshouse and growth chamber speed breeding. In spite…

Li et al. describe an important new genetic resource, a huge database of Kitaake rice mutants. Kitaake is a short-generation variety of Oryza sativa L. ssp. japonica well suited for genetic studies. The authors sequenced more than 1500 fast-neutron-induced mutants and identified more than 91,000 mutations…

Ali et al. describe a rice breeding strategy to improve abiotic stress tolerance as well as to accelerate the speed to achieving homozygosity. The researchers named this particular technique as “Green Super Rice” (GSR) breeding technology. They use a backcross (BC) breeding approach to fix breeding…

Tomatoes normally grow as multiple flowers along a single branch. Soyk et al. explored a large collection of wild and domesticated accessions to identify those with branched inflorescences, which should be able to produce more fruit per plant. They identified a few related branchy mutants which they…

The Science Show on Radio National, Australia, interviewed Robert Furbank, Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Translational Photosynthesis, Australian National University, on efforts to engineer C4 photosynthesis into rice. http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/turbo-charging-crops-to-feed-the-billions/8541396

Deriving energy from light is a bit like keeping your hands warm by juggling burning coals; doable but dangerous. Photosynthetic organisms constantly adjust their photosynthetic machinery to optimize energy production but avoid damage from excess light. Moejes et al.  describe a large-scale project,…

Yield is determined by the crop’s genetic potential and the realization of that potential as affected by agronomic practices and environmental factors. Xu et al. address how yields can be improved through enhancing genetic gain, which they define as “the amount of increase in performance that is…

An old ad stated, “Without chemicals, life itself would be impossible,” but it’s only more recently that we’ve begun to understand the importance of semiochemicals – chemicals produced for communication. Leach et al. pull together insights from chemical ecologists, soil scientists, plant pathologists…

The April issue of J. Exp. Bot is a special issue on Legumes. The Editorial introduction, by Considine et al. (10.1093/jxb/erx099) observes that grain legumes “will form a cornerstone of future food and nutritional security and a global web of biodiversity.” Issue articles span topics including genomics…

This week we spoke to Francisco Gomez and Ammani Kyanam, graduate students in the Soil and Crop Science Department at Texas A&M University, USA. They were part of the organizing committee for the recent Texas A&M Plant Breeding Symposium, a successful meeting run entirely by students at the University.   Could…

Biotic interactions are complex; any effort by the prey/host to defend against the predator/pathogen provides selective pressure towards overcoming those defenses. As new herbivore control methods are developed they quickly lose effectiveness as the pests evolve resistance; this is true whether the control…

Cell-surface localized immune receptors are one of the ways that plants detect pathogens. Traditionally, these receptors have been introgressed from resistant to susceptible varieties through classical breeding. More recently, it has become possible to use genetic engineering methods to move immune receptor…

The excellent review by Moses et al. starts by defining the oft-confused terms  metabolite engineering and systems biology. Although systems biology can contribute to the former, it is distinguished by the use of “defined ‘parts’ that are easily combined and exchanged, using standardized workflows…

Glucosinolates are sulfur-containing defense compounds produced by brassica plants. Brassica napus (canola) is an important oilseed crop because a low-glucosinolate variety has been developed. Brassica juncea is more stress tolerant, but has not been developed as a crop due to its high levels of glucosinolates.…

Most of our major food crops are annuals, started from seed each year and fully harvested to collect the seeds at the end of their short growing season. By contrast, perennial crops are longer lived, and only partially harvested, so their biomass can increase from year to year. The larger root system…

A series of letters has been published in Nature Biotechnology on the topic of the US National Academies report Genetically Engineered Crops: Experiences and Prospects. From Dec 2016, US National Academies report misses the mark. In the April 2017 issue, authors of the report and others reply to the…

“Weeds are a fact of life for farmers around the world,” writes Kniss in this analysis of herbicide-use trends. He stresses the limitation of reports that measure only the weight of herbicides used, as there is tremendous variation in the toxicity of different herbicides. He shows that although herbicide…

Most fruits form after pollination, making their production vulnerable to pollinator presence. Parthenocarpy is the development of fruit that occurs in the absence of pollination. Genes that enable parthenocarpy have been identified, including a tomato gene involved in auxin responses SlIAA9. Ueta et…

Strigolactones are both hormones that control shoot architecture and signals that promote interactions with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and promote germination of detrimental parasitic weeds such as Striga asiatica and Striga hermonthica. Gobena et al. mapped and cloned a sorghum gene, LOW GERMINATION…

Crop domestication has been accompanied by the evolution of aggressive weedy crop relatives that compete for resources and make weed management a challenge. By using whole-genome sequencing of the two most commonly found weedy rice strains in the US (SH and BHA), and comparing them with the genomes of…

Rice is a staple food for half of the world’s population, but it accumulates the toxic metalloid arsenic (As), which is present in soils and in plants in two forms, arsenate (AsV) and arsenite (AsIII). Chen et al. review the genetics and biochemistry of As uptake and sequestration into the rice grain,…

Many food-producing regions rely on the withdrawal of water from non-renewable underground sources, a condition called groundwater depletion for irrigation (GWD). Globally, GWD increased by 22% between 2000 and 2010. When food produced with GWD is exported, the exporting country is essentially exporting…

Beneficial microbes help plants take up nutrients, confer protection against pathogens, and can even affect flowering time. Busby et al. argue for a coordinated effort between researchers and farmers to study plant microbiomes with the goal of using them to enhance productivity. The authors define and…

Amazing - over 1.5 million views in less than 24 hours - this is a popular video series! Here is a list of sources from the YouTube page: SOURCES: #What is natural: GM insulin: http://bit.ly/2ncHaW5 Genetic engineering for thousands of years: http://bit.ly/2eCHKfi http://bit.ly/2mLCvPm CRISPR: http://bit.ly/2ncI2uN #…

“The benefits of organic agriculture are widely debated. Although some promote it as a solution to our sustainable food security challenges, others condemn it as a backward and romanticized version of agriculture that would lead to hunger and environmental devastation.” Seufert and Ramankutty address…

Due to its highly repetitive, polyploid genome, wheat genomics has lagged behind that of other cereals, but new tools promise to begin closing that gap.  Uauy reviews these new tools, which include access to full genomes of several wheat varieties, gene expression data from hundreds of publicly available…

Aflatoxins are toxic metabolites produced by some species of Aspergillus fungi that can occur on numerous crop plants. When ingested by animals, aflatoxins cause health problems including liver cancer and stunted growth. Thakare et al. used host-induced gene silencing (HIGS) to block aflatoxin production…

Nature journal published a special “Plant Insights” section featuring several excellent reviews.  Zipfel and Oldroyd review Plant signalling in symbiosis and immunity (10.1038/nature22009), Bevan et al. write about Genomic innovation for crop improvement (10.1038/nature22011), Scheres and van der…

Most cultivated tulips (Tulipa gesneriana) are produced in The Netherlands, which has a temperate climate resembling the Central Asian climate in which they originated. The growth cycle of cultivated tulips starts in autumn, when the bulbs are planted in the field. At that time, all organs, including…

To safeguard human health and the environment, the French government has called for a nation-wide reduction in the use of pesticides (herbicides, fungicides and insecticides). Towards this end, they have been collecting pesticide usage and yield data from French farmers. Lechenet et al. explored these…

When is a genome-edited plant a GMO (and subject to GMO-restrictions)? Wolter and Puchta summarize two important papers that show that CRISPR/Cas genome editing can be achieved in wheat and rice without the introduction of foreign DNA (making these plants “not GMO”), by delivering complexes of enzyme…

Did you know that bananas are: one of the top ten world food crops, the world’s most popular fruit, eaten in nearly every country, and an important food security crop in regions where they are grown? Did you also know that most bananas are triploid and usually sterile, making conventional breeding…

Jim speaks on the benefits science has allowed for in the advancements in growing food. He suggests that global changes will create a need for us to leave romantic visions of farming in our past. With exploding population growth and climate change, we are at an important cross roads. Jim Carrington…

The classic art of plant breeding involves carefully examining a genetically segregating population for traits of interest. Increasingly, high-throughput, automated phenotyping systems are being used; for example, robots can carry plants to imaging chambers for data collection. However, growth-chamber…

Molecular Plant Pathology has released a new series of free reviews on “Challenges in Bacterial Molecular Plant Pathology.” Topics so far: Morris et al. Frontiers for research on the ecology of plant-pathogenic bacteria: fundamentals for sustainability 1111/mpp.12508 Pfeilmeier et al. Bacterial…

Molecular Plant Pathology has released a new series of free reviews on “Challenges in Bacterial Molecular Plant Pathology.” Topics so far: Morris et al. Frontiers for research on the ecology of plant-pathogenic bacteria: fundamentals for sustainability 1111/mpp.12508 Pfeilmeier et al. Bacterial…

Familiar citrus fruits such as sweet orange, lemon, lime and grapefruit are hybrids of three species: Citrus reticulate (mandarin), C. medica (citron), and C. maxima (pummelo). Cultivated varieties are generally vegetatively propagated, with diversity arising from spontaneous or induced somatic mutations.…

2015 TED talk by Pamela Ronald. http://www.ted.com/talks/pamela_ronald_the_case_for_engineering_our_food

A healthy human diet should include phytonutrients such as carotenoids. Several approaches including classical breeding and transgenic plant production have been used to increase carotenoid abundance in plant tissues; challenges to these approaches include feedback controls, cell toxicity due to abnormally…

To meet the Sustainable Development Goal 2, Zero hunger, degraded ecosystems should be brought under cultivation with quality seeds that have good germination and produce healthy seedling for vigorous plant population establishment. Seed technologies like seed coating with inoculants, germination promoters,…

Medicinal plants, which the majority of people use to some degree for their health needs, provide a platform for engaging students in scientific inquiry. Straus & Chudler present an overview of online teaching resources focused on medicinal plants and ethnobotany. The sites highlighted provide a…

They say that “chacun à son gout” (each has his own taste), but when it comes to tomatoes there is near universal agreement that they don’t taste as good as they used to: a fact that is borne out by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and the panel of taste-testers employed by Tieman et al. in…

Jatropha curcas is a perennial woody plant with high seed oil content that has potential to be used in biofuel production.  However, there is limited knowledge about the biology of seed oil production in Jatropha spp.  Sun. et al., used a genetic approach to identify a J. curcas QTL that controls seed…

Sexual reproduction, with all that recombination and independent assortment, is an excellent way to generate genetic diversity and increase the likelihood that some progeny will survive. However, the seed industry strives to produce genetically uniform seeds. Although there are various ways to circumvent…

The cosmetic industry uses a lot of different chemicals to produce the seven or so skin care products used by the average American every day. Efforts are underway to develop renewable sources for some of these. Derikvand et al. review the chemistry and potential applications behind compounds used by…

Filmed for iBiology 2016 Talk Overview Dr. Jay Keasling discusses the promise of biological systems to create carbon-neutral products for a range of applications, including fuels, chemicals and drugs. Keasling discusses the application of these principles to the development of a microbial platform…

Filmed at the 2011 Gatsby Plant Summer School Abstract: Rice is the most important food crop of the developing world and the staple food of more than half of the world’s population, many of whom are also extremely vulnerable to high rice prices. In developing countries alone, more than 3.3 billion…

Filmed at the Gatsby Summer School, University of Cambridge 2015 Western agricultural systems are reliant on the application of inorganic nitrogen fertilisers to greatly enhance yield. However, production and application of nitrogen fertilisers account for a significant proportion of fossil fuel usage…

Filmed at the Gatby Summer School, University of York, 2013 http://www.tree.leeds.ac.uk/tree.2.0/view_lecture.php?permalink=MTA2Nw Abstract: The enormous species diversity of the flowering plants has puzzled evolutionary biologists since Darwin’s day. The rapid radiation of the flowering plants…

Filmed at the Long Now Foundation, March 2016. Revolutionary rice Feeding the world (and saving nature) in this populous century, Jane Langdale began, depends entirely on agricultural efficiency—the ability to turn a given amount of land and sunlight into ever more food. And that depends on three…

Root-knot nematodes including Meloidogyne javanica are major agricultural pests. Previous studies have shown that biocontrol agents including species of the fungal genus Trichoderma interfere with root-knot nematode pathogenicity, directly through effects on the nematode, and indirectly through a stimulation…

One of the big challenges of working with wheat, as compared to rice, is that the wheat we eat is polyploid; bread wheat (Triticum aestivum) is hexaploid (six copies of each gene) and pasta wheat (Triticum turgidum) is tetraploid (four copies each). Polyploidy makes forward genetics difficult; knocking…

Cultivation of Tulipa gesneriana (tulip), an economically important species due to its ornamental value, can be affected by warming winters, leading to low quality flowers produced out of season. Leeggangers et al. have sequenced RNA and used top-down and bottom-up approaches in tulips grown in two contrasting…

Powdery mildew disease is a broad term that encompasses more than 650 species of powdery mildew fungi that affect about 10,000 plant species, with serious economic consequences.  In the 1930s/40s, broad-spectrum resistance to powdery mildew was found in barley with a loss-of-function of the Mildew resistance…

Our way of life depends on the chemical manufacture of thousands of products. Some of these can be produced through biomanufacturing, which may involve starting with a biological starting material, or using an enzyme or organism as catalyst. Advances in synthetic biology, metabolic engineering and genomics…

The gene-editing technology CRISPR/Cas, which introduces double-strand breaks that are repaired by non-homologous end joining (NHEJ), is best known for the promise it holds in modifying an organism’s DNA without the introduction of exogenous genes. However, as Puchta describes (Curr. Opin. Plant Biol.…

Phosphorus (P) is an important macronutrient for crop productivity.  In cereal crops like rice, about 60-85% of total plant P is allocated to grains and therefore removed from fields at harvest. Furthermore, the major form of P in the grains is phytate (C6H18O24P6), which cannot be digested by humans…

Aluminum (Al) toxicity is an important agricultural problem, limiting crop production globally. Al toxicity causes a reduction in nutrient uptake, resulting in nutritional deficiency and leading to an overall reduction in shoot biomass and crop yield. Eekhout et al. discuss Al toxicity and strategies…

The Amazon rainforest stores 30% of land-based ecosystem carbon. How are carbon stores affected by selective tree removal and subsequent regrowth? Stored carbon continues to be lost for several years after logging due to damage-associated mortality of surviving trees. Piponoit et al. use data from more…

When a plant species is introduced to a new region, it brings with it “hitchhikers” – other associated organisms. Sometimes, these hitchhikers negatively impact the environment into which they are introduced, for example by facilitating the host’s invasiveness, or through direct detrimental effects…

Orphan legumes, which include cowpea (Vigna unguiculata), Bambara groundnut (V. subterranea), grass pea (Lathyrus sativus) and marama bean (Tylosema esculentum), are important food sources for many farmers, but have largely been ignored by breeders and industry. Cullis and Kunert argue that some of these…

Coffee is a hugely popular beverage and contributes immeasurably to human productivity, but demand has risen by 50% in the past 20 years while coffee production is vulnerable to disease and climate change. Mehrabi and Lashermes observe that the popular arabica coffee comes from the plant Coffea arabica,…

Ash dieback (a fungal disease) and the beetle Agrilus planipennis (a herbivore) are crushing ash tree populations in the Northern Hemisphere. To shed light on the genetic basis of the trees' susceptibility and to understand the genetic diversity of these trees, Sollars et al. have sequenced one individual…

Homeodomain transcription factors are well-known as regulators of developmental patterning, including in leaves. Andres et al. examine the molecular basis behind leaf shape in cotton, particularly the Okra locus that was identified by breeders as a regulator of leaf shape. They show that the Okra locus…

It is widely stated that domestication has contributed to a decrease in plant resistance to herbivory, but to what extent is this true? In a contribution to a special issue on “Human influences on evolution”, Whitehead et al. describe results of their meta-analysis. Although their data show a consistent…

Trehalose-6-phosphate (T6P) is a sugar signaling molecule that regulates how plants allocate and use sucrose, which in turn affects stress resilience and yields. Griffiths et al. designed a plant-permeable, photo-activated T6P analogue that is converted to T6P in planta. Spraying this compound onto plants…

In this entertaining Opinion article written for the 150th anniversary of Mendel’s seminal work, Bernardo reviews “bandwagons” that have come and gone in plant breeding. Early bandwagons such as induced polyploidy are discussed, as well as more recent trends such as trangenics, molecular markers…

Tomatoes have an indeterminate growth pattern that arises from the balance of flower-promoting (florigen) and flower repressing activities. Suppressing this flower-repressing activity leads to greater determinacy and facilitates cultivation. Soyk et al. compared flowering times in short- and long-days…

We’ve highlighted some of the Plant Cell papers that were widely shared, liked, blogged, retweeted and otherwise garnered high-levels of attention this year. Perhaps you can use some holiday-season quiet time to catch up on those you missed. Reviews and Perspectives Creating order from chaos: epigenome…

IN BRIEF by Jennifer Lockhart [email protected] Most plants are hermaphrodites, producing perfect flowers with both male and female functions. In roughly 6% of plants, however, male (usually XY) plants produce only male flowers and female (XX) plants produce only female flowers. These dioecious plants…

We’ve highlighted some of the Plant Physiology papers that were widely shared, liked, blogged, retweeted and otherwise garnered high-levels of attention this year. Perhaps you can use some of that holiday-season quiet time to catch up on those you missed. The breakaway attention-getter from Plant…

Biofortification is the nutritional enhancement (using conventional or genetic engineering approaches) of food with vitamins or micronutrients with the goal of improving the human diet. A set of new reviews in Current Opinion in Biotechnology summarizes progress towards biofortification of plants to…

Slides from the recent CRISPR/Cas workshop held at the GARNet2016 meeting are now available to download. Organized by Vladimir Nekrasov and Amanda Hopes (The Sainsbury Laboratory/University of East Anglia, UK), the workshop title was, "Introduction to CRISPR-Cas, troubleshooting target design…

From Science, By Jon Cohen Sep. 7, 2016 http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/09/did-swedish-researcher-eat-first-crispr-meal-ever-served In what Swedish plant scientist Stefan Jansson declares “maybe” a historic event, he cultivated, grew, and ate a plant that had its genome edited with CRISPR-Cas9.…

Traditionally, the production of hybrid maize seed involved the removal of male flowers to prevent self-fertilization of the female flowers. Rice produces bisexual flowers, so mechanical emasculation is not as amenable. Therefore, hybrid rice production requires that the female parent be genetically…

November of this year marked the 50th anniversary of the official release of IR8, the “miracle rice” that changed the world. The rice, developed at IRRI (International Rice Research Institute) greatly increased yields compared to other varieties of the time, and is thought to have saved the…

The yield of a maize plant is correlated with the size, shape and number of kernels it produces. Miller et al. have developed an automated system to quantify these crucial attributes from photographs of kernels both on and off the cob. Their methods will enable researchers and breeders to record…

Smell is one of the many senses that insects use to locate the plants that they use as food sources. Plants have evolved ways to exploit insects’ sense of smell, for example by producing volatile compounds that attract pollinators. Pickett and Khan review plant volatile–mediated signals in terms…