MISSISSIPPI STATE, MISSISSIPPI — Authors of a recent study examined an ongoing debate in the discipline of landscape architecture: exactly how much plant knowledge is required for professionals in the field? Robert Brzuszek, Richard Harkess, and Eric …
Tag Archives | plant
Landscape architecture survey: Is plant knowledge passé?
Rose torture: severe heat in Texas yields better varieties for research
At least one person admits that the extreme heat in Texas this year was beneficial. But all the same, he’d opt next time for a handmade torture chamber. “Some people will complain about the heat, but from my viewpo…
The heart of the plant
Food prices are soaring at the same time as the Earth’s population is nearing 9 billion. As a result the need for increased crop yields is extremely important. New research led by Carnegie’s Wolf Frommer into the system by which sugars…
Chicken litter provides organic alternative to synthetic fertilizers
CRYSTAL SPRINGS, MS — Recent movements aimed at managing environmental impacts of agriculture have spurred interest in the development and use of organic and natural fertilizers for commercial applications. Many organic fertilizers are byprod…
Using wastewater to enhance mint production
SOUTH VERONA, MS — When essential oils are extracted from plants through the process of steam distillation, wastewater is produced and subsequently released into rivers and streams. Finding new uses for these unused by-products could benefit …
Solving a traditional Chinese medicine mystery
Researchers at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine have discovered that a natural product isolated from a traditional Chinese medicinal plant commonly known as thunder god vine, or lei gong teng, and used for hundreds of years to treat many conditi…
New growth inhibitors more effective in plants, less toxic to people
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – A Purdue University scientist and researchers in Japan have produced a new class of improved plant growth regulators that are expected to be less toxic to humans.
Angus Murphy, a professor of horticulture, said the growth…
Flood-tolerant rice plants can also survive drought, say UC Riverside scientists
RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Rice, which is sensitive to drought due to its high water requirement, is particularly vulnerable to how global climate change is altering the frequency and magnitude of floods and droughts. If rice plants’ combined tole…
Global ISU study: Invasive species widespread, but not more than at home range
AMES, Iowa — Invasive plant species have long had a reputation as being bad for a new ecosystem when they are introduced.
Stan Harpole, assistant professor of ecology, evolution and organismal biology at Iowa State University, is founding …
Overfertilizing corn undermines ethanol
Rice University scientists and their colleagues have found that when growing corn crops for ethanol, more means less.
A new paper in today’s online edition of the American Chemical Society’s journal Environmental Science and Technology shows how …
Notre Dame research offers important clues about grasshopper population explosions
Literature and films have left us with vivid images of the grasshopper plagues that devastated the Great Plains in the 1870s. Although commonly referred to as grasshoppers, the infestations were actually by Rocky Mountain locusts.
The Rocky Mounta…
Plants that can move inspire new adaptive structures
ANN ARBOR, Mich.—The Mimosa plant, which folds its leaves when they’re touched, is inspiring a new class of adaptive structures designed to twist, bend, stiffen and even heal themselves. University of Michigan researchers are leading their developm…
Plant breeding is being transformed by advances in genomics and computing
The arrival of affordable, high throughput DNA sequencing, coupled with improved bioinformatics and statistical analyses is bringing about major advances in the field of molecular plant breeding. Multidisciplinary breeding programs on the world’s ma…
Global warming may reroute evolution
ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Rising carbon dioxide levels associated with global warming may affect interactions between plants and the insects that eat them, altering the course of plant evolution, research at the University of Michigan suggests.
The …
Sentries in the garden shed
Someday, that potted palm in your living room might go from green to white, alerting you to a variety of nasty contaminants in the air, perhaps even explosives.
The stuff of science fiction you say? Not so, says a Colorado State University bi…
2 new plants discovered in Spain
Just when everyone thought that almost every plant species on the Iberian Peninsula had been discovered, Spanish researchers have discovered Taraxacum decastroi and Taraxacum lacianense, two dandelions from the Pyrenees and the Cordillera Cant…
Roses get celery gene to help fight disease
A rose by any other name would smell
like celery?
North Carolina State University research intended to extend the “vase life” of roses inserts a gene from celery inside rose plants to help fight off botrytis, or petal blight, one of the r…
Cocaine production increases destruction of Colombia’s rainforests
Cultivating coca bushes, the source of cocaine, is speeding up destruction of rainforests in Colombia and threatening the region’s “hotspots” of plant and animal diversity, scientists are reporting in a new study. The findings, which they say unders…
Shoo fly: Catnip oil repels bloodsucking flies
Catnip, the plant that attracts domestic cats like an irresistible force, has proven 99 percent effective in repelling the blood-sucking flies that attack horses and cows, causing $2 billion in annual loses to the cattle industry. That’s the word fr…
Secrets of plant warfare underpin quest for safer, more secure global food supply
Like espionage agents probing an enemy’s fortifications, scientists are snooping out the innermost secrets of the amazing defense mechanisms that plants use to protect themselves from diseases. The effort — intended to discover ways of bolstering…
Home and away: Are invasive plant species really that special?
Invasive plant species are a serious environmental, economic and social problem worldwide. Their abundance can lead to lost native biodiversity and ecosystem functions, such as nutrient cycling.
Despite substantial research, however, little is…
Wealth of orchid varieties is down to busy bees and helpful fungi, says study
Scientists have discovered why orchids are one of the most successful groups of flowering plants – it is all down to their relationships with the bees that pollinate them and the fungi that nourish them. The study, published tomorrow in the Americ…
How spring-loaded filaree seeds self launch
Even by invading plants’ standards, the filaree, or common stork’s bill, has been remarkably successful. Introduced into North America in the eighteenth century, it is now endemic in south-western states such as California, and the plant’s intriguin…
Nailing down a crucial plant signaling system
Stanford, CA — Plant biologists have discovered the last major element of the series of chemical signals that one class of plant hormones, called brassinosteroids, send from a protein on the surface of a plant cell to the cell’s nucleus. Although …
2 bacterial enzymes confer resistanceto common herbicide, say MU researchers
COLUMBIA, Mo. — In an article in the Nov. 23 issue of the journal The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, researchers with Dow AgroSciences and the University of Missouri report on two bacterial enzymes that, when transformed into corn…
Islands in the sky: How isolated are mountain top plant populations?
Do mountain tops act as sky islands for species that live at high elevations? Are plant populations on these mountain tops isolated from one another because the valleys between them act as barriers, or can pollinators act as bridges allowing gen…
New Anglo-Swiss research questions impact of GM wheat on insects
An Anglo-Swiss research project has found that the impact of disease-resistant genetically-modified wheat plants on insects may be negligible.
Many studies have looked at the effects of genetically-modified (GM) plants on single non-target insects…
Identity theft by aphids
Collaborative research at the University of Guam has people asking: “What IS a species” and entomologists wondering about the relationship between an insect species and the host plant or plants it feeds on.
Western Pacific Tropical Research …
Gene helps plants use less water without biomass loss
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Purdue University researchers have found a genetic mutation that allows a plant to better endure drought without losing biomass, a discovery that could reduce the amount of water required for growing plants and help plants s…
First strawberry genome sequence promises better berries
DURHAM, N.H. — An international team of researchers, including several from the University of New Hampshire, have completed the first DNA sequence of any strawberry plant, giving breeders much-needed tools to create tastier, healthier strawberries…