Plant Science

Scientists unlock key parts of the complex genetic code of wheat, one of the world's most important crops, which could help improve food security.

Scientists unlock key parts of the complex genetic code of wheat, one of the world's most important crops, which could help improve food security.

A new global wheat initiative has been launched to raise yields and develop new varieties better able to cope with disease, drought and other stresses.

LBD29, an important molecule downstream of auxin response factors ARF7 & ARF19, has a role in lateral root formation in Arabidopsis thaliana.

Why is NASA conducting plant research aboard the International Space Station?

This is timely, as I was ranting yesterday about the otherwise worthwhile series "BBC Science Club", which managed to spend an entire hour talking about the human colonization of space and extra-terrestrial life, without once mentioning the words "plant" or "photosynthesis". The previous episode looked at extinction, also without reference to plants, as elegantly summarized by Eoin Lettice (http://www.communicatescience.eu/2012/11/bbc-science-club-and-plant-blindness.html).

If it wasn't an otherwise pretty good effort at presenting science in a fun and entertaining way it wouldn't matter, but it is, and it does. So, spread the word, if humans decide to set up permanent colonies in space, the will be bringing along their life-supporting plants.

Here's the link to the show's site:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00zxmqd

Sir David Baulcombe is one of the world's top scientists whose work identified small RNAs, and he's a nice person as well. He will be a Keynote Speaker at the upcoming UK Plant Sciences Federation meeting in Dundee, Scotland, April 2013, which is sure to be a stimulating meeting http://www.plantsci2013.org.uk/programme/

Horticulturalists provide food to feed the world, beautify our
neighbourhoods, decorate our gardens and give ambience
and wellbeing by combining the energy of the sun with soil,
seeds, water, and ingenuity. Their enterprises range in
size from the subsistence micro gardens of villages to
huge commercial enterprises with large holdings
of greenhouse and field crops and extensive orchards. Horticulture is also parks, public gardens and reserves,
sports fields and golf courses, trees, vegetables
and flowers in urban and peri-urban communities, home gardens for food and beauty. Such facilities have aesthetic, sociological and psychological benefits for human kind.

You never know what will turn up when you move house - the University of Cambridge recently moved its extensive Herbarium to the new Sainsbury lab, and found some forgotten treasures (video).

They've also got a very nice interactive exhbition of plants collected by Charles Darwin on his Beagle voyage  (http://www.darwinsbeagleplants.org/Darwin/Home.aspx). You can send your students on a digital field trip!