Tag: Applied Plant Biology

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…