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Climate change will not only challenge current crop modeling techniques, but require new types of models that can account for and operate at multiple scales to measure adaptation and resilience.
Each plant organ or tissue senses a different type of environmental signal as input to the circadian clock and shares that information in some way. The small protein EARLY FLOWERING 4 (ELF4) functions as a shoot-to-root mobile signal, thereby allowing regulation of the root clock’s pace depending on ambient temperature.
Pollen apertures are the manifestation of distinct plasma membrane domains on the pollen surface. A new study discovered two proteins in rice that are localized specifically to the aperture domains in the membrane of developing pollen and are involved in aperture formation.
Potassium (K+) is taken up by roots and redistributed within organs and organelles by a large number of channels and transporters. Export of K+ stored in vacuoles, required to support growth under limiting conditions, is mediated by the interaction of K+ channels with a calcium-dependent signalling network.
Genetically modified cotton has been used in India for 20 years, but while yield increases have received vast attention, this Perspective provides a comprehensive overview of both the inputs and outputs that correspond with those yields.
Plants adjust the balance between growth and defence using photoreceptors and jasmonates. Levels of active jasmonates are reduced in a phytochrome B-dependent manner by upregulation of a 12-hydroxyjasmonate sulfotransferase, leading to increase in shade avoidance and decrease in defence.
The demonstration of highly efficient water conduction in the moss Polytrichum, closely paralleling that in vascular plants, has major implications for the evolution of stomatal function across land plants.
New genome sequences for early-branching, aquatic flowering plants provide fresh insights into angiosperm phylogeny as well as key resources for deciphering their genome adaptive landscapes.
Plants have developed a variety of molecular ways to express self-incompatibility (SI) that promote outcrossing by preventing self-fertilization. A new study reveals that Citrus uses the S-RNase as the key molecule for expressing SI, giving us further evidence that the S-RNase system is widespread and evolved in an early branch of angiosperms.
A major question in plant reproduction is how pollen tubes perceive and decode female cues from the ovule for directional delivery of sperm cells. MILDEW RESISTANCE LOCUS-O proteins regulate pollen tube guidance by decoding ovular signals.
Many adaptive responses to changing environmental and developmental conditions can limit crop plant growth. Crop yield increases could result from coupling current metabolic concepts and the molecular processes determining sink development.
Three genomes must cooperate in plants — those in the nucleus, mitochondria and chloroplasts. Biparental inheritance of the nucleus and maternal inheritance of the organelles has made studying these interactions difficult. A new method allows the nucleus to be inherited paternally so the ‘black box’ of interactions can be studied.
Two genomes of the closest algal sisters to land plants were sequenced, providing potential evidence that bacterial genes were key in adapting to terrestrial stresses.
