Scientists in Russia have grown plants from fruit stored away in permafrost by squirrels over 30,000 years ago. The fruit was found in the banks of the Kolyma River in Siberia, a top site for people looking for mammoth bones. The Institute of Cell Biophysics team raised plants of Silene stenophylla - of the campion family - from the fruit.
Biologists at Rice University have discovered that while plants might look fairly inactive in the day, they are surreptitiously preparing for battle with hungry insects.
We exploit regional variation in suitability for cultivating potatoes, together with time variation arising from their introduction to the Old World from the Americas, to estimate the impact of potatoes on Old World population and urbanization. Our results show that the introduction of the potato was responsible for a significant portion of the increase in population and urbanization observed during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. According to our most conservative estimates, the introduction of the potato accounts for approximately one-quarter of the growth in Old World population and urbanization between 1700 and 1900. Additional evidence from within-country comparisons of city populations and adult heights also confirms the cross-country findings.
The Millennium Seed Bank Partnership-Botanic Gardens Conservation International Fieldwork Fund aims to tackle the continuing loss of plant species by enabling organisations to undertake fieldwork resulting in high quality seed collections. Via Luigi Guarino
Despite it being the middle of winter in the UK, there is an explosion of summer colour in one of the big greenhouses at the Royal Botanic Garden at Kew in west London. Visitors are being invited to dive into a sea of exotic orchids and other tropical plants.
Earth's flora is responsible for the glaciers and rivers that have created this planet's distinctive landscape...
More astrobotany in SciAm
"SCIENCE is a subject for the inquisitive. It is an exploration of all avenues of human intrigue, seeking answers by experimentation to every question, from the silly, through the mundane to the mind-bending. From ‘why is the sky blue’ to ‘which crabs are the fightiest’ through, of course, to the applied sciences, looking for solutions to disease and issues that affect us and our planet, science seeks truth in the most fascinating of questions and challenges. We are enriched by the knowledge it unveils.
Recently, the University of Birmingham announced plans to close its teaching programmes in Biological Recording, ..."
Career progression and promotion require that you tick all the right boxes when panels scrutinise your CV. If you are trying to optimise your chances of advancing up the greasy pole, this requires that you know what the boxes are and the relative weightings of the different categories of activities that may be under consideration ... These issues came up when I visited Leicester University last week ... systematically across the country, women still feel they are less aware than men about promotion criteria, less likely to be invited to apply for the next level up and less likely to be appraised, a time when they might learn about how promotion works or ask if the time is right to put in an application. But it isn’t just a question of making sure that women (and men) know the formal rules that matters; they need also to understand what that means and be given advice, over time, about what opportunities they should accept and what it might be less wise to take on. Outreach activities: women seem to do more. Is this wise? As one one attendee bluntly put it at the Leicester How many school visits equate to one Nature paper? ... The suspicion may be, taking a stereotypical view of the ‘average’ female lecturer, that without something approximating a fair workload model, women may be being disadvantaged in ways that lie beneath the surface. If there is no quantification done, if there are no appraisals when the person concerned can vent their frustration with their ever mounting workload, the playing field may be less level than intended.
New Agriculturist online at www.new-ag.info provides an update on the latest news and developments in tropical agriculture for a global audience.
Keeping track of our changing environment and humanity's impact and dependence on natural cycles is a key theme of this edition. A new year also heralds new beginnings as New Agriculturist launches two new sections, supported by the Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR).
Fungi and microscopic worms join forces in the fight against a woodland pest which can decimate newly-planted trees.
Prized for their rarity and oddity and their link to the prehistoric age, cycads have become objects of fascination for a cult of hard-core collectors around the world. But poaching by organized criminal syndicates has become so devastating that many African cycad species are threatened with extinction in the wild, forcing officials to consider a ban on their trade and prompting a scientific race to catalogue their DNA so they will be harder to smuggle.
The use of jet fuel from renewable sources is now well demonstrated, but it costs more than double what fuel made from petroleum does, according to airlines, aircraft companies and suppliers. One way to cut the cost may be to tinker with the plants that biofuel is made from. Take jatropha, for example. Lufthansa said last week that it had completed a series of more than 800 flights by an Airbus A321 that shuttled between Hamburg and Frankfurt while burning a 50 percent biofuel mix in one of its two engines. The biofuel was derived partly from jatropha, a tropical shrub with an oil-rich nut, and it cost about two and a half times what ordinary petroleum-based fuel does.
At its General Meeting in June, the European Plant Science Organisation (EPSO) announced that it is now actively preparing the Europe-wide outreach and public dialogue activity called "The Fascination of Plants Day". The ultimate goal of this campaign is to approach as many European citizens (and those leaving elsewhere) as possible to emphasize the fascination of plants and the importance of plant science for agriculture (i.e. sustaining and improving food and feed in Europe), horticulture, forestry, providing as well non-food products (e.g. pulp and paper, timber, chemicals, energy, pharmaceuticals), and for environmental conservation. The "Fascination of Plants Day" will take place on Friday, May 18, 2012.
|
UK Plant Sciences Federation Executive Officer
The Spring 2012 edition of LE1, the University of Leicester's corporate magazine, featuring our very own Professor Pat Heslop-Banana!
A strong national agricultural research system is necessary to increase and sustain food production. In Pakistan, national agricultural research system consists of the Federal Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC), as well as provincial research institutes and agricultural universities. PARC aims to conduct, support coordinate and promote agricultural research throughout Pakistan. PARC introduced National Coordinated Research Programmes (NCRP) in 1976 on various crops, such as wheat and sugar, to strengthen research capabilities. NCRPs were proven to be very effective at increasing productivity by releasing a significant number of high yielding crops and production technologies. Until the 1980s, PARC implemented 33 NCRPs on major commodities and disciplines in close collaboration with provincial institutions. But in 2009, due to lack of funding, all NCRPs were terminated.
Now pictures of carrot varieties from mediaeval illuminated manuscripts have been brought together: Illustrations of Carrot, Daucus, Pastinaca and Staphylinos...Herbals are a particularly interesting group in the history of written communication in that they have always been in circulation since the antiquities and were not 'rediscovered' during the renaissance. Despite the faithful transcription of the manuscript text by monastic scribes, distortions inevitably crept in as the work passed from one hand to the next. Greater variation exists among the illustrations which were often painted without reference to the living world.
Harry S. Paris, Marie-Christine Daunay and Jules Janick have had several beautifully illustrated papers in Annals of Botany over recent years with rigorous analysis of the cucumbers (Cucumis) and Solanaceae species : Occidental diffusion of cucumber (Cucumis sativus) 500-1300 CE: two routes to Europe. Ann Bot (2012) 109(1): 117-126 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/aob/mcr28
Medieval herbal iconography and lexicography of Cucumis (cucumber and melon, Cucurbitaceae) in the Occident, 1300-1458. Ann Bot (2011) 108(3): 471-484 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/aob/mcr182
The Cucurbitaceae and Solanaceae illustrated in medieval manuscripts known as the Tacuinum Sanitatis
Primitive moss-like plants could have triggered the cooling of the Earth some 470 million years ago, say researchers. A study published in Nature Geoscience may help explain why temperatures gradually began to fall, culminating in a series of "mini ice ages". Until now it had been thought that the process of global cooling began 100 million years later, when larger plants and trees emerged. The simple plants' interactions with rocks are believed to be the cause.
A new blog on Landscapes for People, Food and Nature is launched today. Fortunately, its just in time for a new University of Leicester undergraduate module Biodiversity and Sustainability. The blog is asking "How can we manage our farms and farming landscapes not just to supply food for 9 billion people over the next few decades, but do so in ways that also secure our water needs, conserve biodiversity, manage climate change, and sustain rural livelihoods?" The blog goes on to say "many of the most important habitats for wild biodiversity, watersheds, forest products, bio-energy, and stores of carbon were located in agricultural lands—not just those “marginal lands” but in the world’s main breadbaskets and rice bowls." which happens to be one of the points I was preparing to include in my first lecture, although one before this that I would have found hard to reference.
When it comes to conserving the world's orchids, not all forests are equal. In a paper to be published Jan. 25 in the journal Molecular Ecology, Smithsonian ecologists revealed that an orchid's fate hinges on two factors: a forest's age and its fungi. Roughly 10 percent of all plant species are orchids, making them the largest plant family on Earth. But habitat loss has rendered many threatened or endangered. This is partly due to their intimate relationship with the soil. Orchids depend entirely on microscopic fungi in the early stages of their lives. Without the nutrients orchids obtain by digesting these host fungi, their seeds often will not germinate and baby orchids will not grow. While researchers have known about the orchid-fungus relationship for years, very little is known about what the fungi need to survive. Melissa K. Mccormick, D. Lee Taylor, Katarina Juhaszova, Robert K. Burnett, Dennis F. Whigham, John P. O’Neill. Limitations on orchid recruitment: not a simple picture. Molecular Ecology, 2012; DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-294X.2012.05468.x
Do plants smell? Question and answer with an interested grandmother
A while back we got this question from a grandmother, and wanted to share her insightful question and our reply. Feel free to comment or pass along.
"I am Hailey (9) and Jessica (7) grandmother.. After watching the news about “bomb sniffing plants” (http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_17210850), the Grandgirls would like to know “Do Plants Smell?” Do Plants Smell? Is there an olfactory-like response in the detection of explosives… like a “bomb sniffing “ dog.. or akin to a fish detecting an odor (‘sharks smell blood”) Now I’m beginning to wonder… is the question “Do Plants Smell” also the experiment??? If so, how would little kids demonstrate the experiment???
Here's our reply:
Hiya Grandmother, What a great question! The answer of course, Yes, and No. The sense of smell is fundamentally the ability of a cell to perceive a chemical compound. All cells can do this – from bacteria to human to plant. Cells perceive chemicals in most cases by specific receptor proteins. The types of receptor proteins varies from cell to cell, so bacteria have a different range of chemicals they can perceive than humans or plants do. One way to think of receptors and the chemicals they perceive is like a lock and key – the receptors are similarly structured proteins that are activated only by a very narrow range of chemicals – the key. (In the case of June Medford’s work, she modified a plant chemical receptor so it would detect a different compound than it normally would – kind of like when a locksmith changes the lock on your door so that it fits a new key).
When we smell a chemical (when the chemical binds to its receptor) the receptor sends an electrical impulse through a nerve, which sends a signal to our brain. Like a giant computer, our brain receives that information and evaluates it – some smells (e.g. blood, sour milk) elicit strong negative reactions, whereas others are ignored or trigger positive reactions (baking bread, grandma’s perfume). Our brains are constantly analyzing millions of bits of information at a time. Luckily we’re unaware of most of this activity.
Humans and other mammals have concentrated most of our senses into our head, near our brain (eyes, ears, nose, mouth). We’ve also concentrated our smell receptors into a more complicated structure, with thousands of them packed together into an olfactory system.
Plants (and many animals) on the other hand distribute their sensory systems more broadly. In fact, we are learning that nearly every cell in a plant is capable of perceiving information about light, chemical environment, temperature, wind etc. The receptors that perceive information about chemicals tend to be more abundant in the roots though, because root have the job of taking up nutrients from the soil. The root system constantly explores the soil environment by changing its growth direction, and when it finds a rich source of nutrients concentrates its growth in this region. Plants don’t have nerve cells, which is one of the reasons we think they have a distributed sensory system. Each cell participates in sensing its own environment, and responding appropriately. The cells do communicate with each other though, through a slower hormonal system.
Here's a link to an experiment that illustrates the principle of how plants “smell”. (http://my.aspb.org/resource/group/a9372bf4-9ae4-4d0b-ad0c-595c9dfc3543/12labs/09_defense.pdf) It’s written up as an experiment to look at chemicals in the soil, but particularly chemicals produced by other plants. Many plants secrete chemicals from their roots that inhibit the growth of other plants. Basically they’re trying to drive away any competition for resources. It’s a simple experiment but illustrates the principle that plants monitor their chemical environment through the same process that we do – or, if you like, that plants “smell”.
Hope this helps. It’s great that you are encouraging your granddaughters interest in plants and experiments! They are lucky! Via Mary Williams
Solar power stations take up a lot of room. They need either vast arrays of photovoltaic panels, which convert sunlight directly into electricity, or of mirrors, which direct it towards a boiler, in order to raise steam and drive a generator. The space these arrays occupy could often be used for other purposes. Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have now devised a better and more compact way of laying out arrays of mirrors. Slightly to their chagrin, however, and somehow appropriately, they found when they had done the calculations that sunflowers had got there first.
Can a plant send tweets for water? It is possible, using a "do your own biology" approach....
This could be a social nightmare if you have a passive-aggressive plant. You could go for a night out and end up with tweets like: "Glad @alun bought you a drink @suzy. It's nice to know at least one thing near him isn't thirsty."
hat-tip @arsBiotechnica on Twitter
A blog reviewing Dorian Fuller's archaeobotanical highlights of 2011. Africa, as a continent, remains one of the archaeobotanically least known and so it worth noting a number of contributions over the past year. One of the best itegrated studies (from anywhere, not just Africa) of wood charcoal alongside seeds, pollen and other lines of evidence for the study of changing cultivation practices, including shifting cultivation in Burkino Faso by Hohn and Neumann, which is in press but on-line. A important book released in 2011 was Marijke van der Veen's Consumption, Trade and Innovation, ...
I was recently in Wales, back from Madagascar for a short visit. It was a time for reflection. My father died suddenly in August and I started sorting out some of my old belongings in my parents’ house. It made me wonder: “what made a boy from Llanelli commit himself to biodiversity conservation?”
Richard Jenkins on conserving the Madagascan rainforest.
|
| Previous |
|
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |  |
7 |
|
Next |
