How can models capture the complexity and variation of plant phenotypes? Vidal and Andrieu have taken a look at maize.
Category - Growth & Development
Alun Salt
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.
Erin Zimmerman
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...
Impact of sodic soils on wheat coleoptile length and root angle
How do plants emerge from the ground in tough sodium-rich soils?
Fi Gennu
Thermal acclimation of plant respiration is tissue type specific
Carbon released from the land surface is one of the largest fluxes of carbon dioxide (CO2) between the atmosphere and the Earth’s surface, with plant respiration accounting for about half of this flux. As a result...
William Salter
Maize is better when it’s hairy
Root hairs help maize take up phosphorus from the soil.
Wild relatives of beans retain useful drought resistance
A new study of wild crop relatives of common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) finds they retain useful adaptations to drought stress.
Root growth and plant height connected to an auxin-related gene
What makes a plant tall? Scientists think it may be connected to a gene involved in responding to the hormone Auxin.
Stem and leaf growth rates define the leaf size vs. number trade-off
In trees, the trade-off between leaf number and individual leaf size on current year shoots (twigs) is crucial to light interception. This relationship has consequences on leaf energy balance as well as carbon uptake at...
The bzh root system reacts highly economically when N is scarce
In oilseed rape (Brassica napus) bzh dwarf plants have improved nitrogen (N) uptake, N-utilization and N-use efficiency compared to normal types. Is this due to their shoots, or do roots play a role?
Drought tolerance strategies of conifer species in the northwestern US
As trees photosynthesize, using carbon from the atmosphere to grow and store energy, they also lose water to the air (transpire). During a drought, continuing to photosynthesize and transpire puts trees at risk of...
A new molecular mechanism reveals how plants keep their cool
How do plants adjust their body plan to cope with high-temperature stress?
Ovule and seed production patterns in relation to flower size and floral symmetry
Animal pollinated flowers show two types of floral symmetry, actinomorphy (radial symmetry) with several planes of symmetry or zygomorphy (bilateral symmetry) with just one symmetry plane. Although these floral types...
Strigolactones interact with other plant hormones in many situations
Strigolactones are interesting phytohormones in their own right, but Luke Omoarelojie and colleagues say we should be looking at cross-talk with other hormones too.
