Heat affected crop during a green drought

Drought Tolerance: Recent Efforts in Biotechnology

Drought continues to be a primary driver of famine and crop loss around the world, with the accompanied water shortages not only affecting food production, but also drinking water availability. It is predicted that, by 2025, over two and a half billion people will be facing those sort of water shortages, especially as the effects […]

Проводящий пучок Pteridium aquilinum

Plants Fight Flooding From Climate Change With Root Bending

Recent events shed a light on what we possibly face in the future, as hurricanes and other weather events become more severe due to the increased energy capacity of the atmosphere from greenhouse gas influx. The colloquial term for this process is climate change. And scientists are hard at work on finding ways to mitigate […]

Brown rice

Golden Rice 3.0 Offers Iron and Zinc In Addition To Vitamin A

Nutrition and a sufficiently rounded diet of vitamins and minerals is key to remaining healthy. This is true for every person in the world. Unfortunately, there are many, billions even, that lack critical nutrients in their diets. This is often due to a combination of poverty, location, climate, and a societal and cultural focus on […]

Root cyst nematode infection

Parasites Hijack Plant Stem Cells For Gall Tumor Growth

The horrors of nematodes may never cease, but they can teach us some surprising things, including a method of plant control that may completely alter our approach in dealing with the nematodes themselves. Infestation and Takeover The first step to explaining this new insight is to break down how the nematodes infect plants in the […]

Golden Rice

Vitamin Biofortification: Using Biotechnology To Improve Nutrition

Vitamin deficiencies plague practically every civilization in the world. Even in countries that are well-off, members of the population still have to watch their food intake and ensure that they are consuming an array of foods in order to meet their needs. Governments and food producers often supplement this by adding necessary vitamins into most […]

Mycena inclinata, Clustered Bonnet, UK

Fungi Parasitism: The Ins And Outs Of Biotechnology and Biocontrol

The modern world has a multitude of issues it is facing, most of which filter through and incorporate agriculture in some fashion. Whether speaking of climate change, overpopulation, deforestation, or any number of other topics, the food supply and how we produce it is involved. For a significant chunk of the countries in the world, […]

Utricularia gibba3

Carnivorous, Flowering Bladderwort Reveals Depths of Gene Duplication

Genetics can get weird. Especially so in plants, which are more conducive to hybridization and duplications of their entire genome. Polyploidy, as such a duplication is called, is often rampant across ancestral lineages of plants and makes species classification taxing, to say the least. The Flowers and the Carnivores The flowering plants, also known as […]

Soybean fields at Applethorpe Farm

Temperature Tolerance: Recent Efforts In Biotechnology

Temperature is something we worry about in our lives all the time. What temperature is it outside so you know what to wear and what are the conditions going to be in coming days or weeks. Farmers have to worry about this as well, as excessive periods of heat or cold snaps can prove damaging […]

A juvenile root-knot nematode (Meloidogyne incognita) penetrates a tomato root - USDA-ARS

Genetic Protection For Plants Against Parasitic Worm Attack

Parasitic worms aren’t only a threat to animal or insects, plants have to deal with them as well. The Worms Attack While these sorts of worms may not outright kill their target plants, they can significantly damage them by causing root and nutrient pathways, like the xylem and phloem, to become deformed from the worms […]