Poison ivy ranks among the most medically problematic plants. Up to 50 million people worldwide suffer annually from rashes caused by contact with the plant, a climbing, woody vine native to the United States, Canada, Mexico, Bermuda, the Western Bahamas and several areas in Asia. It’s found on farms, in woods, landscapes, fields, hiking trails and other open spaces. So, if you go to those places, you’re susceptible to irritation caused by poison ivy, which can lead to reactions that…
An international research team including a Bayreuth scientist and her research group has investigated the links between extreme drought, biodiversity and production losses on a global scale. With the help of a worldwide experiment at 100 locations on six continents, they have identified Biodiversity in grassland is an effective protection against crop failure during droughts. The study has now been published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Grassland and open land cover more than 40% of the Earth’s…
Barley seedlings grow on average 50% more when their root system is stimulated electrically through a new cultivation substrate. In a study published in the journal PNAS, researchers from Linköping University have developed an electrically conductive “soil” for soilless cultivation, known as hydroponics. “The world population is increasing, and we also have climate change. So it’s clear that we won’t be able to cover the food demands of the planet with only the already existing agricultural methods. But with hydroponics…
‘CountShoots’ unveils advanced UAV and AI techniques for precise slash pine shoot counting. In southern China, the genetically improved slash pine (Pinus elliottii) plays a crucial role in timber and resin production, with new shoot density being a key growth trait. Current manual counting methods are inefficient and inaccurate. Emerging technologies such as UAV-based RGB imaging and deep learning (DL) offer promising solutions. However, DL methods face challenges in global feature capture, necessitating additional mechanisms. Innovations like the Vision Transformer and its derivatives (e.g., TransCrowd,…
Until now, reliably tracing logs to their origin has been difficult to achieve. Researchers at Fraunhofer IPM and their partners have now shown that logs and trunk sections can be identified based on the structure of the cut surfaces. The recent research project developed a marker-free and tamper-proof method. The optical method allows up to 100 percent recognition – even under the rough environment conditions of the timber industry. Hochaufgelöst aufgenommen wird die spezifische Mikrostruktur von Sägeflächen erkennbar. Die Kamera-Aufnahmen…
Plants in which an ion channel of the vacuole is hyperactive are extremely stressed and grow poorly. But the broad bean is an exception, as Würzburg researchers have discovered. Like the human body, plants also use electrical signals to process and pass on information. In addition to the cell membrane, the membrane of the central vacuole plays an important role in this process. Vacuoles are typical for plant cells. They are fluid-filled bladders that act as a reservoir for minerals…
At low temperatures, the nutritional value and taste of kale change – in different ways depending on the variety. In a recently published study, a team of researchers from Oldenburg and Bremen report that the concentration of glucosinolates, which are responsible for the typical taste of kale, increases in some varieties when it gets cold, but decreases in others. Kale is considered particularly healthy due, among other things, to its high secondary plant compound content, including the glucosinolates that give…
Whilst a blueberry with a fungal infection might end up in most people’s compost bin, for a team of researchers in the US, it has provided a key to tackling the unsustainable use of insecticides. In a new study published in the SCI journal Pest Management Science, the team explored how blueberries infected with a specific fungus, Colletotrichum fioriniae, emit odours which repel spotted-wing drosophila – a fruit fly that is a destructive pest of berries and cherries. By recreating…
Today, fruit and vegetables are transported thousands of kilometers to Germany. A team at Fraunhofer IKTS now wants to bring horticulture to the cities with efficient and compact water, energy and gas management – and thereby strengthen regional self-sufficiency. Fresh peppers, crisp salads and juicy tomatoes – German consumers take all this for granted. Supermarket shelves are full of them. But most of these vegetables come from far away. According to the German Federal Statistical Office, a good quarter of…
How tomato plants defend themselves against a devastating ‘young’ Southern African virus has now been investigated at a molecular genetics level for the first time by researchers at the University of Johannesburg (UJ). The Ty-1 gene is known to confer resistance to the well-known tomato yellow leaf curl virus (TYLCV). UJ researchers investigated what happens when tomato plants that harbour the Ty-1 gene are infected with the relatively unknown tomato curly stunt virus (ToCSV). They found a link between tolerance…
Conservation of arable soils through targeted erosion management. Arable soils are a valuable resource for our food and biodiversity – and are at risk from drought, storms and heavy rainfall. To help farmers better protect their fields from erosion, the Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), in cooperation with the Bavarian State Research Centre for Agriculture (LfL), has produced erosion maps that identify areas particularly at risk of erosion and thus help to target protective measures where they will…
– resistant to a bacterial disease outbreak in Africa. The “Healthy Crops” international research consortium led by Professor Dr Wolf B. Frommer from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) is developing disease-resistant rice varieties. In the scientific journal eLife, the authors now report on the discovery of a recent bacterial outbreak in Tanzania – and describe how they modified an African rice variety to make it resistant to the pathogen. Bacterial blight of rice, which is caused by the bacterium Xanthomonas…
Researchers find natural gene variant that allows barley to flower earlier. A tiny mutation in the genetic material of barley ensures that those plants develop faster and thus flower earlier than established barley varieties. At the same time, plant yields remain the same, a team from Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) reports in the “Journal of Experimental Botany”. According to the researchers, this is advantageous as the plants could potentially adapt better to the effects of climate change and continue…
Comparing single-cell sequencing across cereal crops provides clues about agricultural traits critical for adapting plants to climate change. Comparing individual cells across corn, sorghum, and millet reveals evolutionary differences among these important cereal crops, according to a new study led by New York University researchers. The findings, published in Nature, bring researchers closer to pinpointing which genes control important agricultural traits such as drought tolerance, which will help scientists faced with a changing climate adapt crops to drier environments. Corn,…
For the first time, the effects of silicon fertilization on wheat yields were investigated for a study led by the Leibniz Center for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) and published in the journal Science of the Total Environment. In a field trial in Brandenburg, the plants formed significantly more biomass: Yields increased by 80 percent compared to conventionally farmed areas. The sequestration of carbon in the soil and the availability of water also improved significantly as a result of fertilization. In…
In Nature, Eva Stukenbrock from Kiel University and Sarah Gurr from University of Exeter warn of the devastating consequences of fungal diseases. Worldwide, growers lose between 10 and 23 per cent of their crops to fungal infection each year, despite widespread use of antifungals. An additional 10-20 per cent post harvest. In a commentary in Nature, academics predict those figures are projected to worsen as global warming means fungal infections are steadily moving polewards, meaning more countries are likely to…
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