Tag: Applied Plant Biology

Cell walls are complex mixtures of cellulose microfibrils, proteins and other materials. Their mechanical properties can be measured and modeled, but it is not always simple to translate these measurements to changes at the molecular level. Zhang et al. used atomic force microscopy to provide an unprecedented…

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…