We know that maize roots chase after phosphorus, but how? Xin Wang and colleagues have been investigating what purpose the hormone auxin has in controlling root proliferation. Their work could help better understand how...
Category - Growth & Development
Fi Gennu
Plant economics spectrum theory holds true within ferns
Plants usually have limited resources in one way or another. There is only so much nutrient in the soil. How best to use it? The plant economics spectrum theory integrates the coordination of plant functional traits...
Wave forces decrease seedling establishment in tidal marshes
Waves lead to greater root biomass and stem flexibility, but lower stress resistance overall.
Erin Zimmerman
Does Viagra really help preserve flowers?
It is said that sildenafil citrate can help preserve flowers. Here's an experiment that you could do at home, but probably shouldn't, to find out.
Alun Salt
Sodium chloride solutions not a good experimental substitute for sea water
Simulating seawater in the lab is more complicated than just getting the salt concentration right.
Expression of aquaporin subtypes in cotton under salt stress
Three aquaporins are reliable tools to identify cotton genotypes tolerant to salt stress, based on expression of qPCR-transcripts
William Salter
Early Lateral Root Development Is Driven by Thirst
Roots are critical for plants to find water and nutrients. They can also be expensive to grow, so a plant needs to send them in the right direction. How do they do this? A new paper by Daniel von Wangenheim and...
Dale Maylea
Arabidopsis halleri: a model system for studying population differentiation and local adaptation
Whilst studies on Arabidopsis thaliana have generally been highly molecular and/or genetic in nature, most studies using A. halleri have addressed adaptation and variation in adaptive traits in the species’ natural...
tealeaves: an R package for modelling leaf temperature using energy budgets
Plants are able to grow, survive and reproduce under a wide range of temperatures. Examples of plants that thrive in temperature extremes include cushion plants in alpine ecosystems that grow close to the ground to stay...
Resprouting potential of rhizome fragments in an invasive aquatic plant
Non-native aquatic Ludwigia species from a polyploid complex are among the world’s most problematic invasive plants. A new paper in AoBP finds out why.
A new whole-plant framework simulates realistic water and carbon flow
CPlantBox generates a variety of 3D full plant architectures and accurately simulates water and carbon flow in the full plant.
Rachel Shekar
From stable rules to complex shapes in plant modelling
How can models capture the complexity and variation of plant phenotypes? Vidal and Andrieu have taken a look at maize.
Palms show huge variation in their resistance to drought-induced embolism
This study represents the first estimate of drought-induced xylem embolism in palms across biomes and provides the first step towards understanding hydraulic adaptations in long-lived arborescent monocots.
Spine type and resource availability affect when saplings grow their defences
For young woody plants, being eaten by large mammals is a major threat and source of sapling mortality. Some species produce spines as a form of defence. How early these spines emerge may be a strong predictor of...
