Welcome to the Plant Biology (SC/BIOL 2010.04) course website (from 1998 through 2015). This is your central source for announcements, lab and lecture information, handouts, past tests, useful links etcetera.

Announcements

11 July 2018: From time to time, additions will be made to the Plants in the News section.

Plants in the News

20 November 2024 Plants in the News: Chloroplast Contraction by Light

Light drives photosynthesis through the absorption of photon energies by a complex light-harvesting apparatus. But, too much light is dangerous because it causes photo-oxidation --damaging the membranes and proteins of the chloroplasts, irreversibly. To survive, photosynthesizing organisms must avoid excessive light. One way to do so is to shrink.

Physicists at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands studied light avoidance at high light intensities in the bioluminescent dinoflagellate Pyrocystis lunula. Its single chloroplast shrinks, decreasing the light absorbing cross-section, thus protecting the photosynthetic apparatus from photo-oxidation.

The sciency article was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS): Light-regulated chloroplast morphodynamics in a single-celled dinoflagellate. A newsy explanation is provided by the University of Amsterdam Institute of Physics: A single cell's siesta. UvA researchers show how non-moving single-celled organisms manage to avoid bright light.

Movies of high light avoidance in another algae can be found at: Movies from the Lew Lab. Eremosphaera viridis imaging.

19 October 2024 Plants in the News: Diatom Carbon Fixation

Diatoms account for about 20% of global photosynthesis --a very large contribution by a very small silica-enclosed unicellular eukaryote clade (see 22 April 2019 Plants in the News: Terraforming Mars and 7 December 2022 Plants in the News: Diatomic Lensing). Diatoms don't garner a lot of scientific interest, that may change with the publication of two papers in the prestigious journal Cell.

Diatoms fix carbon dioxide using the enzyme RuBisCO (Ribulose 1,5-Bisphosphate Carboxylase Oxygenase) --as do most photosynthesizing organisms. Similar to most algae, the RuBisCO is found in pyrenoids --specialized compartments that accumulate carbon dioxide for fixation. The Cell articles reveal the molecular genetics of a protein sheath surrounding the pyrenoid that is required for carbon dioxide accumulation.

A protein blueprint of the diatom CO₂-fixing organelle.

Diatom pyrenoids are encased in a protein shell that enables efficient CO₂ fixation.

A newsy report is provided by ScienceDaily: New discovery reveals how diatoms capture carbon dioxide so effectively.

13 October 2024 Plants in the News: AI Fungi Foraging

Wild mushroom hunting has a long history (see Agaricales (gilled mushrooms) in Ars Plantarium (The Art of Plants)). The results of a mushroom forage can be delicious fried in butter. Or, they can be deadly --and there is no cure. So, it is good to go on a forage with an experienced mushroom hunter.

With the advent of AI (artificial intelligence), it may not be a good idea to rely on the online purchase of a mushroom guide. Amazon removed a guide to Manitoba mushrooms after doubts were raised about its authenticity --for a variety of reasons, most notably failing to mention Amanitas and Lepiotas, which are deadly muushrooms that should be known to a novice forager.

Be sure the mushroom guide you use is reputable.

The newsy article was published on CBC News (by Gavin Boutroy and Arturo Chang): A handbook to Manitoba mushrooms sparks concerns about AI. But for technology, there's no field guide.

18 September 2024 Plants in the News: Wild Peanut Genealogy

Peanuts are grown globally --the major growing regions are southern North America, Africa, India, and East Asia. Few are probably aware peanuts originate from and were first domesticated in South America. As a major crop, there is considerable interest in identifying the genetic sources that contributed to the modern allotetraploid crop species Arachis hypogaea. Related wild species could provide genetic diversity to support new heat and drought resistent cultivars etcetera. Many of the wild species are sexually compatible with the domesticated species, making breeding crosses easier.

American Journal of Botany published a detailed and sciency genotyping of known accessions of diploid taxonomically related wild species: Relationships of the wild peanut species, section Arachis: A resource for botanical classification, crop improvement, and germplasm management. The data included careful curation of where the accessions were collected, as well as detailed phylogenetic analyses. A newsy explanation of the research strategy is provided by UGA TODAY: New peanut has a wild past and domesticated present.

20 July 2024 Plants in the News: Ground Cherries Redux

Ground cherry is a member of the Solanaceae family (which includes tomato, potato and pepper). It has potential as a domesticated crop (see 2 October 2018 Plants in the News: Orphan Ground Cherries). There is a continuing interest in developing crop cultivars using CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing. Traits of especial interest include delayed fruit abscission (for more efficient harvest) and withanolide biosynthesis (for resistance to insect feeding). Using the well-known tomato genome as a templete for working hypotheses speeds the process of domesticating the ground cherry.

A sciency update on recent progress was published in Plants People Planet: Engineering the future of Physalis grisea: A focus on agricultural challenges, model species status, and applied improvements.

A newsy summary is available at ScienceDaily: Groundcherry gets genetic upgrades: Turning a garden curiosity into an agricultural powerhouse.

11 July 2024 Plants in the News: Purple is the New Green

Purple bacteria have an unusual presence in photosynthesis research. They are primordial --based on their anaerobic photosynthetic apparatus and survival in harsh environments-- and are considered a relict of a very ancient geological epoch --before the appearance of oxygen in the Great Oxidation Event.

Similar photosynthesizing organisms could have appeared on other planets. It may be possible to image them with new telescopes orbiting in space (such as the planned Habitable World Observatory).

SAGANet highlights the research of one interdisciplinary scientist --a "microbiologist turned astrophysicist Lígia Fonseca Coelho": Astrobiology Revealed #14: Lígia Fonseca Coelho on why purple is the new green when searching for extraterrestrial life. Her research involves measuring reflectance spectra of the bacteriochlorophylls of the purple bacteria. These spectra can then be used for diagnostics as exoplanets are imaged, especially in the near-infrared region of the electromagnetic spectra.

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society published the sciency article: Purple is the new green: biopigments and spectra of Earth-like purple worlds.

4 June 2024 Plants in the News: Fern Nectaries

We often think of floral nectaries as an attractant for pollinators of angiosperms, but there is a more strategic use of non-floral nectaries. They provide a food source for ant-guards --who then attack other herbivores that dare to invade their territory. Ferns and plant lineages diverged 400 million years ago --both evolved non-floral nectaries for the same defensive purpose during the Cretaceous period (circa 135 million years ago). It is a fascinating example of convergent evolution, dependent on the coevolution of plants and animals.

Nature Communications published the science: Convergent evolution of fern nectaries facilitated independent recruitment of ant-bodyguards from flowering plants.

More general summaries are available at the Boyce Thompson Instutute (Tracing the evolution of ferns' surprisingly sweet defense strategy) and the University of Tennessee --Knoxville (Suissa study has high hopes for plant-ant partnerships).

9 May 2024 Plants in the News: Woodlice Disperse Ingested Seeds

Seed dispersal occurs in many ways. Often, fruits have been designed to encourage feeding by animals, so that the seeds pass through the digestive tract and are then defecated. This method of seed dispersal is usually associated with birds, and mammals (from mice to bears). But it is not just megafauna: Even crickets and woodlice disperse seeds by ingestion/defecation.

Plants, People, Planet published the science (from Kobe University): Earwigs and woodlice as some of the world's smallest internal seed dispersal agents: Insights from the ecology of Monotropastrum humile (Ericaceae). Monotropastrum is itself an unusual genus. The species have no chlorophyll and do not photosynthesize. Instead they are mycoheterotrophs (see 6 March 2024 Plants in the News: Fairy Lanterns).

Even Science (AAAS) found woodlice seed dispersers newsy: Meet the smallest animal known to spread seeds with its poop.

16 April 2024 Plants in the News: Bottle Gourd Origins

Bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria (Molina) Standl.) is one of the first examples of a crop plant domesticated by humans. Originating in south Africa, it became globally distributed 12,500 years ago --very pre-Columbian. Scientists performed an extensive genomic analysis of 197 accessions from widespread locations to unravel genetic similarities and differences, and reconstruct a bottle gourd pangenome. While bottle gourds likely arrived in South America 10,000 years ago by drifting across the ocean from Africa, their distribution through Asia was likely by early Holocene farmers 8,000 years ago.

New Phytologist published the science: Genomic and pangenomic analyses provide insights into the population history and genomic diversification of bottle gourd. ScienceDaily published a more general summary: Across oceans and millennia: decoding the origin and history of the bottle gourd.

5 April 2024 Plants in the News: Hanami (flower viewing)

Phenology is the study of biological transformations --things like time of flowering, leaf bud break, leaf unfolding, fruit development et cetera. Because of global warming, there is popular interest in whether time of flowering is happening earlier. The answer so far: No. Why? Too much variation in temperature from year to year means that the noise is stronger than the signal. Japanese cherry blossom viewing (AP News: Crowds picnic to see Tokyo's cherry blossoms at full bloom) has been happening for centuries. Time of flowering has been obtained from diaries and old accounts in Japan. One paper in Journal of Geography: Climatic changes estimated from the records of Kansakura in Kyoto shows data collected as of 1956. It gives a good idea of the variability that exists, over hundreds of years. A more general discussion of phenology (and citizen science) was published in the International Journal of Biometereology: Ten best practices for effective phenological research.

31 March 2024 Plants in the News: Activating Stomatal Opening

For photosynthesis, carbon dioxide enters the leaf through stomatal pores. Because water escapes through the pores, regulation of stomatal opening is studied intensely --after all, water loss will damage the plant. Balancing the two processes is crucial for plant survival.

Two key elements of pore opening are a proton ATPase, and potassium uptake that generates turgor that opens the pores. In this latest discovery, Nagoya scientists have identified phosphorylation of a threonine residue that activates the proton ATPase. Nature Communications published the science: Phosphorylation of plasma membrane H⁺-ATPase Thr881 participates in light-induced stomatal opening. Nagoya University published a more general summary: Discovery of amino acid unveils how light makes plants open.

8 March 2024 Plants in the News: xkcd: Brassica

Randall Monroe of xkcd.com may be onto something. Brassica oleracea cultivars include: cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts, collard greens, Savoy cabbage, kohlrabi, and gai lan (source: Wikipedia --Brassica oleracea). So it is no wonder that botanists are tempted to include giant redwood trees as yet another cultivar of Brassica oleracea to see if they can get away with it (source: xkcd: Brassica).

Another plant biology related comic by Randall Monroe is xkcd: Mycology --regarding zombie fungi (abcNEWS: The science behind the zombie fungus from 'The Last of Us').

It is very funny in a disturbing way...

6 March 2024 Plants in the News: Fairy Lanterns

Non-photosynthetic plants are unusual in the plant kingdom. They survive by extracting photosynthate from photosynthesing plants, or obtain their carbohydrate indirectly from shared mycorrhizal networks --as in Thismiaceae (fairy lanterns). Thus, Thismiaceae have lost their autotrophic capability, and survive solely as mycoheterotrophs.

An amateur botanist discovered a novel Thismiaceae specimen in Kagoshima (Kyushu Island, Japan). Other specimens were found, and eventually assigned to a new genus Relictithismia (relict of Thismiaceae).

The Journal of Plant Research published the science: Relictithismia kimotsukiensis, a new genus and species of Thismiaceae from southern Japan with discussions on its phylogenetic relationship. EurekAlert! (AAAS) provides a more general report: A new plant's name that tells a story.

27 February 2024 Plants in the News: Will Lady Gaga's Ferns Become Homeless?

In 2012, Lady Gaga made news for having a fern genus named after her --partially because the taxonomists who discovered the new genus liked her. I reported on it in the Plants in the News at the time:

27 October 2012: Plants in the News Going Gaga over Ferns.

Update. Now, in a sad follow-up, the herbarium housing the Gaga fern specimens may be closed, its future unknown. Atmos (Climate and Culture) provides a detailed report (by Hannah Seo): The Lady Gaga Ferns Are Losing Their Home. It's Surprisingly Tragic for Science and Society.

14 February 2024 Plants in the News: Toxic Lilies

Lilies are very toxic to cats. The toxin has not been identified, but causes fatal kidney damage.

US Food and Drug Administration published a sciency warning: Lovely lilies and curious cats: A dangerous combination.

If you have cats, please make sure your house (and garden) are cat-safe, especially in the coming spring, and during holidays that favor lilies.

Pet Poison Helpline provides a more general warning: No lilies for kitties.

24 January 2024 Plants in the News: Lycophyte Genomic Stability

420 million years ago, lycopods dominated the landscape --tree-like in stature. Now, only diminutive relicts remain, looking like miniature conifers on the forest floor. How have they survived so long? How have they retained their genomic DNA integrity? Amongst the homosporous lycopods (Lycopodium, synonym Diphasiastrum), it is a consequence of very slow genome evolution. Species that diverged circa 350 Mya retain many of their genes in highly preserved syntenic (collinear) blocks.

The newsy description was published in ScienceDaily: A window into plant evolution: The unusual genetic journey of lycophytes.
The sciency report was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS): Extraordinary preservation of gene collinearity over three hundred million years revealed in homosporous lycophytes.

31 December 2023 Plants in the News: Diversity Increases Productivity

Plant (and crop) production is higher when pathogens are kept at bay. Crop rotations are one way to discourage the proliferation of pathogens in agriculture. An alternative is to increase the number of plant species. The higher the species diversity, the less pathogens can gain a foothold.

Nature Communications published a sciency report: Dilution of specialist pathogens drives productivity benefits from diversity in plant mixtures.

ScienceDaily provides the newsy context: Research offers a reason why diversity in plant species causes higher farming yield, solving 'a bit of a mystery'.

Diverse plant communities are consistently more productive. Pathogen dilution has now been documented scientifically as one of the causes.

21 November 2023 Plants in the News: Fern Insecticides

A common strategy to stop insects (Lepidoptera in particular) from feeding on crops is to transform the crop to produce Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) toxin. Caterpillars of moths and butterflies die after ingesting the protein from the GMO crop. Over time, the insects also acquire resistance, sending GMO engineers back to the drawing board.

It turns out that ferns produce a protein similar to Bt toxin to ward off herbivorous insects. This may provide a fresh design for GMO engineering, although selective pressure will inexorably confer resistance in the insects.
Newsy reports comes from ScienceDaily (Discovery finds ferns produce crop-saving insecticide) and Science (Fern proteins fight crop pests, could usher in potent new insecticides).
The sciency report comes from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS): Novel insecticidal proteins from ferns resemble insecticidal proteins from Bacillus thuringiensis.

5 November 2023 Plants in the News: Heliotropism

It is not astonishing that plants respond to light in so many bewildering ways --light is central to their survival. Positive and negative phototropisms can be tailored to high intensity light or controlled by photoreceptors that count single photons.

PLOS Biology published a sciency report on solar tracking by sunflowers: Multiple light signaling pathways control solar tracking in sunflowers that emphasizes how many different photoreceptors can play a role in heliotropism.

ScienceDaily provides the newsy context: How sunflowers see the sun.

A synthesis of the diversity of plant photobiology is provided in the Journal of Experimental Botany: Don't ignore the green light: exploring diverse roles in plant processes.

6 October 2023 Plants in the News: Xylem Feeders --Spittlebugs

Meadow spittlebugs are a common insect that is usually identified by the spittle that surrounds the nymphs on stems of meadow plants as they feed on xylem. The xylem fluid contains very little nutrients, so the nymphs must ingest quantities well above their own body weight and secrete most of the water, forming the characteristic 'spittle' around their bodies (Crews et al., 1998). When the nymphs insert their mouthparts into the plant xylem, they can spread diseases, similarly to mosquitoes. The bacterium Xylella fastidiosa is one example of a worrisome crop pathogen spread by spittlebugs. Citizen scientists were recruited to determine how many species the spittlebug could feed on. It turns out they are very promiscuous.
The newsy report comes from ScienceDaily: Meadow Spittlebug's record-breaking diet also makes it top disease carrier for plants.
The sciency report comes from PLOS ONE: The most polyphagous insect herbivore? Host plant associations of the Meadow spittlebug, Philaenus spumarius (L.).

2 September 2023 Plants in the News: Biological Recycling of Plastic

Plastics degrade slowly. The carbon linkages are unusual, so biological enzymes don't cleave them very well. Non-biological alternatives --such as natural ultraviolet radiation-- are slow. When looking for biological organisms that can decompose plastic, fungi that breakdown wood are prime candidates because the carbon-carbon bonds in lignin (a major constituent of wood) share similarities with carbon-carbon bonds in plastic.

Ars Technica published a newsy report (by Elizabeth Rayne): Fungi could be the answer to breaking down plastic junk. Enzymes that break down a polymer in wood can also handle polyethylene.

Plos One provides the science: Wood decay fungi show enhanced biodeterioration of low-density polyethylene in the absence of wood in culture media.

14 August 2023 Plants in the News: Plant a Billion Trees?

Commitments to reforestation are coming from both conservancy groups and national governments, including Canada (2 Billion Trees Commitment).
The idea that planting trees will lower carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is dubious, per commentary in Science: Comment on "The global tree restoration potential". The authors conclude that the "The claim that global tree restoration is our most effective climate change solution is simply incorrect scientifically and dangerously misleading."
Planting trees is all well and good, decreasing human reliance on fossil fuels is imperative. Similarly, artificial removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere will not solve the serious problem of anthropogenic carbon dioxide production.

26 June 2023 Plants in the News: Eukaryote Origins

The fossil record for early eukaryotes is marginal at best, single-celled eukaryotes --especially primitive ones-- don't leave a clearly identifiable record of their presence more than a billion years ago! There may be biochemical remnants that are absent in prokaryotes and could be used as a marker: sterols are an example specific to eukaryotes. Intermediates in the cholesterol biosynthesis pathway were artificially 'aged' to determine likely forms that would exist after 1.5 billions years. Gas chromatography / mass spectrometry revealed their presence in ancient rocks, evidence for early eukaryote dominance.

Science News published a newsy report (by Soumya Sagar): 1.6-billion-year-old steroid fossils hint at a lost world of microbial life.

Nature provides the science: Lost world of complex life and the late rise of the eukaryotic crown.

28 May 2023 Plants in the News: the mother of all root symbioses

It is well known that root symbioses with fungi are common and ubiquitous. The symbiotic nature of the fungal-plant interactions are not always clear. That is, who benefits and how?. It has generated a mystique of interconnected nature (woodlands and forests), a mystical interconnection that is not well-supported by scientific evidence.
Some self-criticism by mycorrhiza researchers was published in UNDARK: Opinion: Where the 'Wood-Wide Web' narrative went wrong.
A more scientific mea culpa was published in Nature Ecology & Evolution: Positive citation bias and overinterpreted results lead to misinformation on common mycorrhizal networks in forests.
The truth is, it remains a most extraordinary and fascinating example of symbiosis (Plant and Soil): Arbuscular mycorrhiza: advances and retreats in our understanding of the ecological functioning of the mother of all root symbioses.

15 May 2023 Plants in the News: Ocean-Surfing Prochlorococcus

Prochlorococcus is a marine cyanobacteria that contributes to global photosynthesis prodigiously --up to 10 to 15%. It is usually considered to be free-floating in the ocean (planktonic). It turns out that some Prochlorococcus groups supplement their photosynthetic ability by feeding on chitin from the exoskeletons of marine arthropods. This is based upon the presence of chitinase in those Prochlorococcus groups, and that they can be found attached to exoskeleton fragments --chitin rafts. Arthopods first appeared 525 million years ago, Prochlorococcus may have been surfing on their exoskeleton fragments ever since!

ScienceDaily provides newsy coverage: Like ancient mariners, ancestors of Prochlorococcus microbes rode out to sea on exoskeleton particles.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) provides the science: Chitin utilization by marine picocyanobacteria and the evolution of a planktonic lifestyle.

20 March 2023 Plants in the News: Plant Questions

The DOE/Los Alamos National Laboratory queried the international plant community about research in the plant sciences --given that plants provide the oxygen we breathe, are central to global water cycles, feed us, etcetera. Quoting from the report, here are the major research questions:

Climate change: How will climate change impact plant abundance, productivity, bioregions and ecosystems?
Science in the community: How can we ensure that the varied goals and needs of our diverse societies are understood and fulfilled by plant scientists?
Food security: How do we leverage existing genetic diversity to create climate-resilient crops?
Biodiversity: How does species diversity develop in novel ecosystems such as restored agricultural land, forests, grasslands and gardens?
Sustainability: Could plant-defense priming be a platform for a new green revolution?
Plant-plant interactions: How are interactions between plant species regulated?
Plant disease: How should we prepare for novel pathogens of trees, crops and the natural environment?
Plant-microbiome interactions: How does the plant microbiome affect stress tolerance?
Plant adaption: What is the plasticity of the epigenome of plants?
Plant stress responses: How do plants cope with combined stressors?
Ecosystem services: What natural materials could be invested in for a more sustainable future of manufacturing or residential development?

The full report was published in the New Phytologist: One hundred important questions facing plant science: an international perspective.

3 March 2023 Plants in the News: Environmental DNA

eDNA (environmental DNA) is DNA that is from an organism and present in the environment and bulk environmental samples. Examples of botanical eDNA are pollen, leaf fragments, flower fragments that can be collected from bulk samples of air, water, soil, and from pollinators. With sophisticated pcr sequencing and bar coding techniques, the species can be identified. Ancient eDNA can be used to survey the make-up of past plant communities. Even modern communities can be surveyed using metagenomic approaches --identifying fungal members of soil ecosystems is an example. The methodologies and experimental objectives are still being developed. Most of the literature on eDNA techniques has only appeared in the past 10--15 years, and continues to grow.
A current state of knowledge was reviewed in the American Journal of Botany: Environmental DNA as an emerging tool in botanical research. The authors concluded that "botanical eDNA will help to revolutionize the field of biological monitoring in global botanical systems."

20 February 2023 Plants in the News: Dendrochronological Apocalypse

I guess the translation of dendrochronology would be tree-time --or growth history of a tree. Many factors can affect the amount of annual growth; often water availability is a major factor. Thus, patterns of climate variability can be revealed in the relative width of growth rings --including multi-year droughts. That is what is being reported for ancient climate during the Bronze Age, coincident with the fall of civilizations. This is not a new concept for people who study soils and irrigation practices, but is novel for many. Is our current climate change a harbinger of rough times? Based on past experience, yes.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists provides newsy coverage (by Kristoffer Tigue): Did climate change help cause the Bronze Age to collapse?.

Nature provides the science: Severe multi-year drought coincident with Hittite collapse around 1198-1196 BC and a News and Views: Signs of ancient climate crisis as the Hittite empire unravelled.

30 January 2023 Plants in the News: Paternal Chloroplasts

Organelles with their own genomes --mitochondria and chloroplasts-- are usually inherited from the maternal parent (cytoplasmic inheritance). But that is not always the case. For example, there is evidence for paternal inheritance of the mitochondrial genome in humans, although it is very rare. In plants, it turns out that maternal inheritance is controlled in part by enzymatic exclusion of paternal organelles. Surprisingly, mild chilling stress (10 degrees C) increases the rate of paternal inheritance.

The newsy report is from ScienceDaily: Botany: Chloroplast from the father. Under cold conditions, not only the mother plant but also the father plant can pass on its chloroplasts to the offspring.
The science was published in nature plants: Control of plastid inheritance by environmental and genetic factors.

24 January 2023 Plants in the News: Doomsday Clock

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has been monitoring nuclear weapons proliferation for many decades, and have highlighted other global hazards --such as global warming and biological warfare. Today, they changed the time on the Doomsday Clock from 100 seconds before midnight to 90 seconds before midnight --"the closest to global catastrophe it has ever been". The major reason is the war in Ukraine, which could easily devolve into Russian use of tactical nuclear weapons, leading to the unleashing of strategic weapons.

Here is a link to their announcement: A time of unprecedented danger: It is 90 seconds to midnight.

14 January 2023 Plants in the News: Rice Apomixis

Rice breeding has been very successful, yields are very high, but there remains the possibility of yield improvements. A common technique for improving yields is hybrid vigour. Basically, when two inbred (homozygous) lines are crossed, the resulting hybrid exhibits high vigour --and thus higher crop yields. Rice normally self-fertilizes, so the hybrid vigour is lost in the next generation. Furthermore, it is very difficult to produce hybrids in the first place (emasculation by hand is very time-consuming and male sterility systems are complex and expensive).

Recently, a novel approach has been implemented through the creation of rice lines that are capable of apomixis --self-cloning. This allows vigorous hybrids to be maintained over a number of crop generations.

A newsy explanation is provided by ScienceDaily: Rice breeding breakthrough to feed billions.
The science was published in nature communications: High-frequency synthetic apomixis in hybrid rice.

24 December 2022 Plants in the News: Genome Level Discovery

When it comes to taxonomy, new discoveries are transforming the science. Why? Because genome-level sequencing is revealing new information about cryptic clades that lacked clear phylogenetic relationships. The discoveries are very novel and surprising.

To explain the kinds of surprises scientists are seeing, here are verbatim quotes from the highlights for a recent paper in Current Biology (Genome-level analyses resolve an ancient lineage of symbiotic ascomycetes):

Sampling gaps in uncultured non-model fungi are filled using metagenomics.

Numerous putative early-diverging Ascomycota lineages resolve in a novel clade.

The clade includes lichen and insect symbionts, endophytes, and mycorrhizae.

Fungi in this clade possess small genomes with reduced metabolic arsenals.

ScienceDaily provides newsy coverage (from the University of Alberta): Genome studies uncover a new branch in fungal evolution. New research helps to resolve evolutionary origins of the 'platypus of fungi'.

7 December 2022 Plants in the News: Diatomic Lensing

Diatoms are ubiquitous, and very unusual because of their siliceous (glass-like) walls. Their ubiquity underscores the enormous role they have played (and continue to play) as oxygenic photosynthesizers --creating our present-day atmosphere with its elevated oxygen levels. Their glass-like walls do impede their ability to expand in size, so why silica? Researchers at McGill University in Montreal suggest it may provide them with an advantage under low-light conditions. The glass-like wall functions to capture, redistribute and retain photosynthetically active wavelengths of light (somewhat like a Fresnel lense). By maximizing the exposure of the cell to ambient light, it increases photosynthetic activity.

A general explanation is provided by ScienceDaily: Glass-like shells of diatoms help turn light into energy in dim conditions.
The science was published in Optical Materials Express: Solar energy harvesting mechanisms of the frustules of Nitzschia filiformis diatoms.

26 October 2022 Plants in the News: Red Hot Algal Sex

Biotechnology started millennia ago as fungal and bacterial fermentations --resulting in beer, wine and bread amongst other foods and drinks. Scientists have been very interested in extending the range of biotechnological processes. Using extremophiles allows a greater diversity of conditions for industrial production. The red alga Galdiera is an example of an extremophile suitable for biotechnology. But, its sexual cycle was unknown, until now.

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences provides in-depth background and commentary (by Ursula Goodenough) (Discovery of sex in an extremophilic red alga) and the science (Life cycle and functional genomics of the unicellular red alga Galdieria for elucidating algal and plant evolution and industrial use).

The National Science Foundation provides some historical background: How to thrive in battery acid and among toxic metals --Genome of "extremophile" red alga offers insights.

15 September 2022 Plants in the News: Root Architecture

It is a profound truth that most plant growth and development is invisible because it happens underground. Careful soil dissections have been performed in the field, but usually in monocultures, because it is difficult to identify different species from root anatomy alone. With quantitative pcr (polymerase chain reaction), the presence of species-specific DNA makes it possible to indirectly identify the root species and estimate its density. Do the roots of plant species occupy specific soil depths or do they forage everywhere?

Gordon G. McNickle provides a commentary in the New Phytologist: Vertical root segregation theory put to the test.
The science was also published in New Phytologist: The shape of root systems in a mountain meadow: plastic responses or species-specific architectural blueprints? (via a Scholars Portal link).

8 September 2022 Plants in the News: Pumping Water

Water evapotranspiration by plants (especially trees) is an important part of water cycles on land. The ascent of water in plants is remarkably complex. Evaporation in leaves pulls strands of water through conductive xylem elements from the soil. The water exits the plant leaves through stomates (stomates also allow carbon dioxide to enter the plant to be fixed into carbohydrate by photosynthesis). So, how much energy is required to drive the ascent of sap? A lot.

Science News provides the news angle (by Sid Perkins): The worldwide water-lifting power of plants is enormous. Sucking sap uses 9.4 quadrillion watt-hours of power annually.

The science angle was published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences: Quantifying the global power needed for sap ascent in plants. Preview figures can be found at ResearchGate, along with the first page of the article and references.

The global amount of energy required to lift water to the top of the tree is about 9.4 PWh/yr (9.4 quadrillion watt-hours per year) --equivalent to global hydropower usage and a vast contribution to terrestrial water cycles.

25 August 2022 Plants in the News: Making a Future

There is a growing social movement that transcends national borders. The United Nations is spearheading an initiative to promote prosperity while protecting the planet. It is a call to action for everyone!

The New York Times provides a newsy take (unfortunately behind a subscription firewall): Why Is This Colorful Little Wheel Suddenly Everywhere in Japan? --it's the logo of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals. And Japan is all in.
The United Nations published the nuts and bolts: Sustainable Development Goals. It is worth exploring, since active engagement starts with individuals and grows to national and international initiatives, and Making a Future is worth it.

24 July 2022 Plants in the News: Hot Pollen

Global warming has many consequences. For farmers, extended growing seasons and more Crop Heat Units (accumulated heat during the growing season) are advantages. A disadvantage is lower fertilization due to male sterility. High temperatures during microgametogenesis can decrease the viable pollen population, causing less fertilization.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists published a newsy article (by Carolyn Beans) --Helping pollen beat the heat to save global agriculture-- that describes how this can affect a variety of different crops and provides examples of strategies to overcome the problem.

An example of the sciency angle is from Plant Physiology: Male sterility in maize after transient heat stress during the tetrad stage of pollen development.

15 July 2022 Plants in the News: Carnivory Underground

Botanical discovery is still happening! New species --and odd twists on traditional feeding habits-- are still there to be discovered. Amongst the plant carnivores, the latest is underground trapping of unsuspecting animals by a new species of Nepenthes.

Science News provides the newsy report (by Meghan Rosen): This pitcher plant species sets its deathtraps underground.
PhytoKeys) published the science: First record of functional underground traps in a pitcher plant: Nepenthes pudica (Nepenthaceae), a new species from North Kalimantan, Borneo and provides an informative blog (Pensoft): Underground carnivore: the first species of pitcher plant to dine on subterranean prey.

30 June 2022 Plants in the News: Lake Erie Blooms...

Algal blooms in the Great Lakes are a topic that has come up before (29 July 2018 Plants in the News: Cyanobacterial Blooms and 1 August 2014 Plants in the News: Algal Blooms). There is a big impact on humans due to toxins in drinking water. And, the blooms reveal the intensity of human impacts on the ecology of the Great Lakes.

Courthouse News published a newsy article (by Andy Olesko): Forecasters predict mild algae bloom in Lake Erie this summer.

NCCOS (National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science) provides forecasts and current status: Lake Erie harmful algal bloom forecast.

Ohio Sea Grant at The Ohio State University hosted a live web event for NOAA's annual HABs Forecast for western Lake Erie: NOAA harmful algal bloom forecast (zoom).

4 June 2022 Plants in the News: Pumping Up the CO₂

Atmospheric carbon dioxide keeps getting higher --now exceeding 420 ppm. In a sense, increasing levels of carbon dioxide is old news (see Carbon dioxide (photosynthesis) --2016), but Courthouse News Service thinks it is still newsworthy: Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are highest in history (by Matthew Renda). So does AP News: Sky high: Carbon dioxide levels in air spike past milestone (by Seth Borenstein).
NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) provides a sciency perspective: Carbon dioxide now more than 50% higher than pre-industrial levels.

23 May 2022 Plants in the News: Genomic Oats

Oat is one of the top ten cultivated grain crops. It is an allohexaploid (AACCDD, 2n=6x=42), probably domesticated about 3,000 years ago when it was growing as a weed in wheat, emmer and barley fields in Anatolia. Because of its gemonic complexity, it was no easy task to sequence, assemble and annotate the genome, but that task is now successfully completed.

Nature published the science: The mosaic oat genome gives insights into a uniquely healthy cereal crop.

A newsy summary was published in ScienceDaily: Oat reference genome: Insights into a uniquely healthy cereal crop.

15 April 2022 Plants in the News: Fungal Action Potentials

In the mid-1990's, I was asked to assess a report on action potentials in Basidiomycota by a colleague. The paper was a short note in Naturwissenschaften:
Action potential-like activity found in fungal mycelia is sensitive to stimulation.
It was very credible. The caveat is that plants and fungi can exhibit action potentials (and movements --Venus flytraps are a good example), but they are neither common or a universal trait. There is a growing belief in electrical communication in fungi, epitomized by Andrew Adamatzky (Professor in Unconventional Computing)(Royal Society Open Science):
Language of fungi derived from their electrical spiking activity.
But please maintain suitable scepticism. The Conversation provides a recent commentary (by Katie Field):
Do mushrooms really use language to talk to each other? A fungi expert investigates.

26 March 2022 Plants in the News: Photoaerogens

Taxonomic phylogenies are dependent on genetics: Relatedness and DNA sequence similarities. But organisms are often functionally similar even though they are only distantly related. For example, hyphal organisms (Mycota and Oomycetes) are totally unrelated saprobes with similar growth patterns. Similarly, oxygenic photosynthesizers are found in three major kingdoms. In fact, they are related through their chloroplast (or equivalent) genomes. William Sanders suggests it is time to reunite the oxygenic photosynthesizers conceptually, as Photoaerogens.

The American Journal of Botany provided the sounding board (On the Nature of Things: Essays): The photoaerogens: algae and plants reunited conceptually.

It makes sense. After all, oxygenic photosynthesizers were the ultimate terraformers, and deserve the recognition.

8 March 2022 Plants in the News: Green Plant Genomes

Over the course of 40 years, technological advances have led to accelerated DNA sequencing that allows a whole genome to be sequenced in days (very fast compared to the decades it took in the last millennium). As a consequence, scientists are engaged in a project to sequence every eukaryotic genome. The international and multi-institutional endeavour is called the Earth BioGenome Project (EBP): EPB Website.

Plants comprise a large part of the genome sequencing effort. The progress is described in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (USA): Green plant genomes: What we know in an era of rapidly expanding opportunities.

5 March 2022 Plants in the News: Plants Rule!

The data described here are from 2018, but they are worth a reminder. Biotic impacts are measured --in part-- by biomass. Based on this metric alone,

Plants Rule!.

By a lot. The basic issue is improvements in our ability to measure global biomass. With better estimates in hand, the scientists confirmed more accurately the large magnitude of plant dominance.

Vox provides a newsy report with fancy graphics: All life on Earth, in one staggering chart.

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) provides the science: The biomass distribution on Earth.

Needless to say, human impacts far outweigh their biomass.

17 February 2022 Plants in the News: Botany and Culture

Art and sciences interplay in many ways. From a scientist's perspective, a good visualization can tell a scientific story, or illustrate a scientific concept, in a manner accessible to a broad audience. But it is also important to visualize biological organisms accurately. This is a real challenge for illustrators of paleobotanical material of fragmented fossil remains

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (USA) provides insight into the interplay of botany and culture in a recent Science and Culture article by Carolyn Beans: Science and Culture: Artists join paleobotanists to bring ancient plants to life--and pique viewer interest.

13 February 2022 Plants in the News: Seeds into the Cold

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault --located north of Norway's mainland-- has been in operation about 14 years. Its primary purpose is to store seed stocks at a cold temperature to ensure longevity. No one stays there, and it is only opened a few days every year to store more seeds. Seven years ago, seed stocks were withdrawn due to the destruction of seed stocks in Aleppo (Al Jazeera: Syria war spurs opening of 'doomsday' Arctic seed vault. Now, the stocks are being replenished and new seed stocks are being deposited (Reuters (by Gwladys Fouche)): Arctic seed vault to receive rare deposits.

Storing seed stocks in a remote place seems the responsible thing to do --given war and climate change. Here is the official website by the Norwegian government: Svalbard Global Seed Vault

2 February 2022 Plants in the News: Oxygen Appearance and Complex Life

Geologists are the go to scientists for exploring the long time scales in the evolution of life. Here, an international consortia of geologists examined oxidized iron in sedimentary rocks to extrapolate the timeline of oxygen appearance during the Proterozoic.

Oxygenic photosynthesis was the cause of elevated oxygen. For atmospheric oxygen to reach current levels took billions of years. Was it important? Yes! Elevated atmospheric oxygen created an ozone shield, and provided oxygen for metabolism in complex eukaryotes.

McGill University provides a newsy presentation: What the rise of oxygen on early Earth tells us about life on other planets. The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (USA) published the science: Strong evidence for a weakly oxygenated oceanatmosphere system during the Proterozoic.

10 January 2022 Plants in the News: A New Tree Species Honours Leonardo DiCaprio

Famous people do get plants named after them. Lady Gaga got a fern named after her (27 October 2012: Plants in the News Going Gaga over Ferns). Now, Leonardo DiCaprio has been botanically honoured --in recognition of his role in conservation of natural areas in Cameroon. It is a new tree species Uvariopsis dicaprio (Annonaceae) discovered in the Ebo Forest.

The newsy report is from CTV News: Scientists name new tropical tree species after Leonardo DiCaprio.

The sciency report was published in PeerJ (life & environment): Uvariopsis dicaprio (Annonaceae) a new tree species with notes on its pollination biology, and the Critically Endangered narrowly endemic plant species of the Ebo Forest, Cameroon.

7 January 2022 Plants in the News: Conifer Leaf Microtomography

Water Use Efficiency (WUE) is a classic eco-physiological and crop physiology term that metrics how effectively a plant produces and store photosynthate while minimizing water loss through stomates --since carbon dioxide enters through the stomates and water vapour departs the same way. To understand the causes of varying Water Use Efficiency, Trueba et alia imaged conifer leaf structures using X-ray synchrotron microtomography. The results suggest that more than just stomata are important, intercellular air space volumes also play a crucial role.

The Phytologist published the science: The three-dimensional construction of leaves is coordinated with water use efficiency in conifers. It is also available on BioRxiv.

While much is made of the relevance of this kind of research in the context of global warming, in fact it is important in an evolutionary context: Water Use Efficiency made the full-scale invasion of land by plants possible.

2 December 2021 Plants in the News: Networking Fungi

There is a notion among some eccentric biologists that fungi are from another planet. Their sexual cycle includes dikaryons, and they synthesize a multitude of lethal or psychoactive compounds. Both are rare in other biological clades --hence fungi are other-worldly. A little more down to earth, a group of mycologists are touting a new large-scale research project to map the nature of fungal networks by sampling soils using DNA sequencing.

The newsy report is from Associated Press (by Frank Jordans): Scientists to map fungal networks, determine climate role.

The project website can be found at: SPUN --Society for the Protection of Underground Networks.

22 November 2021 Plants in the News: Hormone Activated Pump

Because plant cells have outer rigid walls, it is puzzling how the cells can enlarge. The idea emerged that during growth --exemplified by cell enlargement caused by the plant hormone auxin-- the cell wall becomes acidic. The acidic cell wall matrix changes its mechanical properties and becomes more plastic (and able to enlarge). After many decades, researchers have identified how this happens. Auxin activates two kinases that phosphorylate the plasma membrane proton ATPase, which then pumps protons into the cell wall matrix, acidifying it.

Phys.org provides the newsy coverage (from UC-Riverside): Scientists solve 50-year-old mystery behind plant growth

Nature journal published the science: TMK-based cell-surface auxin signalling activates cell-wall acidification.

25 October 2021 Plants in the News: Biogenic Rubies?

Well, sort of biogenic. Graphite (carbon) inclusions in 2500 million-year-old rubies exhibited a ¹³C to ¹²C isotopic discrimination ratio (δ¹³C) from -13.3 to -17.2‰. Non-biotic discrimination should be about 0‰. Biotic (photosynthesis) δ¹³C is usually about -18 to -49‰. So, it could be biotic --entrapped cyanobacteria compressed to graphite?-- but it is very old and the samples are small, so a bit equivocal.

The newsy headline is from SciTechDaily: Ancient traces of life discovered encased in a 2.5 billion-year-old ruby, describing the research in Greenland led by Professor Chris Yakymchuk in Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Waterloo.

The sciency report can be found in the Ore Geology Reviews: Corundum (ruby) growth during the final assembly of the Archean North Atlantic Craton, southern West Greenland.

25 August 2021 Plants in the News: Ginkgo Stomata and Ancient Climates

The background is that stomata densities on leaves are --in part-- correlated with atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. The problem is developing a data-dependent model that accurately predicts the quantitative relation between stomata densities (using the ratio of the number of epidermal cells to the number of stomata in a given area of a leaf, times 100 --stomatal index) and carbon dioxide. Why Ginkgos? They have a long fossil record going back 200 million years. So, researchers are exploring the geologic record, and creating data by growing ginkgo trees at various carbon dioxide levels and measuring the resultant stomatal indices. All to refine our understanding of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and climate.

Associated Press provides newsy coverage (by Christina Larson): Fossil leaves may reveal climate in last era of dinosaurs

The Smithsonian Institution is one of the coordinators of the Fossil Atmospheres project, a consortium of groups including citizen scientists.

9 August 2021 Plants in the News: A New Plant Carnivore

Western false asphodel (Trianthus occidentalis) --a bog plant-- was being studied as part of a plant genetics research project. The researchers noticed a genetic deletion that is found in some carnivorous plants. That led them to test whether the plant ingests nutrients from insects trapped on its sticky flower stalk (using isotopic nitrogen tracer) and secretes enzymes to digest the insect. Voila! A new carnivorous plant had been discovered.

A newsy take is available from NPR News (by Nell Greenfieldboyce): After 142 years, scientists just learned this west coast flower is carnivorous.

The sciency report can be found in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (USA): A new carnivorous plant lineage (Triantha) with a unique sticky-inflorescence trap.

11 July 2021 Plants in the News: Cell Selfies

The cell growth cycle in eukaryotes is controlled by numerous control points. Central is the ability of the cell to measure how large it is. This is closely related to the ratio of DNA to cytoplasm. As cytoplasm volume increases, DNA synthesis and nucleus division will be triggered. A DNA-binding protein KRP4 delays the start of DNA replication until the cytoplasm has reached the 'right amount'. Because it is only found in the nucleus, it is invariant as the rest of the cell grows.

Science provides the sciency context: Cell size controlled in plants using DNA content as an internal scale.

SciTechDaily provides the newsy context: Solving a long-standing biological mystery: How cells measure themselves

22 May 2021 Plants in the News: Dandelion Summer

Dandelions (Taraxacum officinale) go in and out of fashion. For decades, they were weeds, to be rooted out of lawns everywhere. Now, they seem to be making a comeback, at least according to CBC News: Lawns gone wild: Why you might just have to learn to love dandelions. Un-Weeding is one theme from the article.

Dandelions are not native in North America. Originally from Europe, they have traveled with humans globally. The greens (and flowers) are edible. Rabbits love them, as do humans in the know. It might be preferable to conserve native species and native ecosystems --which a lawn is definitely not. Still, dandelions are an enjoyable dash of color in spring and late summer. More information is available: Taraxacum (dandelion).

21 April 2021 Plants in the News: Old Seed Banks

"William Beal started a long-term study on seed germination in 1879. He buried 20 bottles with seeds in them for later researchers to unearth and plant." How long could the seeds remain dormant, then germinate? The scientists are still unearthing them to find out. The results are ecologically very important because they are central to the concept of a soil seed bank --a reservoir of seeds available for growth. The inset photo (right) shows seed bank data for wooded ecosystems in the northeast (from a seminal work by Bormann and Likens (1979) Pattern and Process in a Forested Ecosystem).

National Public Radio (NPR) provides the newsy context: The secret mission to unearth part of a 142-year-old experiment (by Nell Greenfieldboyce). The photo of William Beal and students in the article is notable for the posters above the group --showing the devious and aberrant sexual behaviour of fungal rust (still a devastating pathogen of cereal crops).

Update (14 December 2023): From the American Journal of Botany: The 141-year period for Dr. Beal's seed viability experiment: A hybrid surprise. After 141 years in the soil the Verbascum (mullein) seeds germinated! Some of the seedlings turned out to be hybrids of two Verbascum species.

12 April 2021 Plants in the News: Phenology

Phenology is all about seasonal timing of biological changes. Dormancy break (leaf unfolding and flower appearance) is occurring now. Annual timing varies with weather (especially temperature) and also climatic changes (over the long-term). There are citizen networks in North America that document changes on a yearly basis. A Canadian phenology network is: naturewatch. engaging citizens in science. A USA network is: USA-NPN. National Phenology Network.

16 March 2021 Plants in the News: Glacier Meltdown

Climate change is a big issue in the news media. Scientists often get their best insight into climate change by looking at past climate shifts recorded in geological and fossil records. In recent news, glacier core borings from the 1960s were rediscovered in a freezer. They had been extracted at a military installation (Camp Century) in Greenland, then forgotten. What was of interest to the scientists were soil cores at the bottom of the borehole. They revealed fossil vegetation that was about 1 million years old. Twigs and mosses were readily identifiable, including Polytrichum juniperinum (right). What does this mean? That the overlying glacier --1400 meters deep-- had melted away in a relatively recent --and major-- climate warming event!

ScienceDaily provides a newsy context: Scientists stunned to discover plants beneath mile-deep Greenland ice.

The science was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA): A multimillion-year-old record of Greenland vegetation and glacial history preserved in sediment beneath 1.4 km of ice at Camp Century.

21 February 2021 Plants in the News: Root Circumnutation

Plant shoot apices often move circularly as they grow up, as do tendrils searching for something to grasp to anchor the shoot. The same kind of circumnutation (circular movement) is performed by roots when they search for the path of least mechanical resistance as they grow down into the soil. This has been known for centuries. Darwin devoted a book to The Power of Movements in Plants (1880). Now, the genetic and functional underpinnings are becoming very clear.

The sciency article was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA): Mechanism and function of root circumnutation. The article includes some very cool time lapse movies.

A review of root circumnutations was published in the American Journal of Botany: Circumnutation as an autonomous root movement in plants.

29 January 2021 Plants in the News: Lichen Sex: Who Knew?

Reindeer mosses (Cladonia spp.) are a common ground cover in lichen woodland ecosystems north of 55 degrees. Black spruce or jack pine trees are sparse with a dense cover of the fruticose lichens underneath. Lichen woodlands are prone to sporadic fires, a succession of lichens spread after the fires, Cladonia stellaris is a climax species. So what about sex? Well, lichens can sexually reproduce, but they mostly propagate asexually. In fire ecosystems, asexual propagation of Cladonia stellaris was expected. So when scientists collected and sequenced DNA samples in longitudinal transects, they expected genetic uniformity consistent with asexual propagation. Instead, they discovered surprising diversity indicative of lots of sex!

Courthouse News provides a newsy perspective: Reindeer lichens are having more sex than imagined.

The American Journal of Botany published the science: Population genomics of a reindeer lichen species from North American lichen woodlands.

31 December 2020 Plants in the News: Human Weeds

Because of human population growth, our earth is under pressure. The satirist Ambrose Bierce described the problem in his definition of "Man" more than 100 years ago:
"MAN, n. An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His chief occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species, which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earth and Canada." [Ambrose Bierce: The Devil's Dictionary. 1911]

The similar ecologies of weeds and humans

Are humans an 'infestation' (a population so large as to cause damage or disease)? Biologists and ecologists believe that excess human populations are difficult to sustain long term because of the finite carrying capacity of the earth, so 'infestation' might be a realistic viewpoint. Certainly, the heavy impact of human pressure on the global biota is real (7 May 2019 Plants in the News: Human Extinction). The crop scientist Jack Harlan saw it in a different light, tempered by the nature of weed infestations:
"Homo sapiens is perhaps the weediest of all species, and the more he dominates the landscape, the more he seems to thrive. If we confine the concept of weeds to species adapted to human disturbance, then man is by definition the first and primary weed under whose influence all other weeds have evolved." [Jack Harlan: Crops and Man. 1992]
Weediness is not a useful attribute for long-term survival. Per the quotation fron Harlan at right, human domestication --that is, population control-- may be the best solution:
"If man does succeed in controlling his own population size, we shall have an example of a weed becoming domesticated." [Jack Harlan: Crops and Man. 1992]
Caution is urged. Social history is replete with the tribalism of the well-off versus the poor, in which population control is considered synonymous with 'weeding the human garden', removing undesirables. Even Margaret Sanger --a pioneering birth control activist-- supported a eugenics approach:
"Birth Control does not mean contraception indiscriminately practised. It means the release and cultivation of the better elements in our society, and the gradual suppression, elimination and eventual extinction, of defective stocks--those human weeds which threaten the blooming of the finest flowers of American civilization." [Margaret Sanger: High Lights in the History of Birth Control. 1923]
A biologist might advocate a non-anthropocentric alternative view: that human weeds threaten the Garden of Life.

20 December 2020 Plants in the News: Travels with Maize

The domestication of crops went hand in hand with the appearance of civilized humanity. Some major grain crops were domesticated in central Eurasia and eastern Asia. Maize and potatoes were domesticated in the Americas. How were these crops domesticated? The genetic part of the answer is buried in the archaeological record. The most recent advances rely on genome sequencing of prehistoric crop samples. For maize, the oldest sequences date back 1,900-2,300 years ago. They point to the migration of maize varieties from Mexico (the location of the original domesticates) to South America, and back again.

ScienceDaily provides a newsy perspective: Ancient DNA continues to rewrite corn's 9,000-year society-shaping history.

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) published the science: Archaeological Central American maize genomes suggest ancient gene flow from South America.

23 November 2020 Plants in the News: ID Pollen with Deep Learning

If you ever have difficulty with pollen identification exercises, scientists have found a solution for you --supperresolution imaging and deep learning. The supperresolution refers to high resolution confocal laser microscopy using multiple photomultiplier detectors that increase the spatial resolution of 3D reconstructions. The deep learning refers to deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs), computational machine-learning models that are used for image pattern recognition.

Will it help you identify pollen? Yes...

The sciency article was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA): Improving the taxonomy of fossil pollen using convolutional neural networks and superresolution microscopy.

Commentary is provided by Alexander E. White: Deep learning in deep time.

13 November 2020 Plants in the News: Medicago vaccine

Among the many Covid-19 vaccines in development right now, some have roots in Canada. One of these is a virus-like particle (VLP) grown in a tobacco species Nicotiana benthamiana. The strategy involves expressing the spike protein of Covid-19 in a form (VLP) that can be easily purified and induces an immune response. Injecting the VLP into humans does in fact elicit antibodies against Covid-19 when it is injected with an adjuvant (which encourages the immune system to produce antibodies).

Medicago is the Quebec-based company responsible for the research on plant-based vaccine development.

Reuters provides a newsy perspective: Canada bets on imports as home-grown COVID-19 vaccine heads to large-scale trials.

Wikipedia provides an updated overview of the status of the various vaccines in development: COVID-19 vaccine.

Update (8 December 2021): A COVID vaccine grown in plants measures up. NPR News reports on high efficacy in large-scale trials for Medicago's VLP vaccine.

Update (24 February 2022): Medicago's homegrown, plant-based COVID-19 vaccine approved by Health Canada. CBC News reports breaking news on Canadian approval of Medicago's VLP vaccine for adults 18 to 64 years of age --additional testing is needed to demonstrate efficacy and safety in older and younger people.

Update (12 February 2023): How the World Health Organization helped kill a promising made-in-Canada vaccine. CTV News provides commentary on the demise of Medicago --WHO declined to endorse their plant-based vaccine because of a minority link with a tobacco company.

9 October 2020 Plants in the News: Peace Prize for Feeding Humanity

The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the United Nations's World Food Programme for for "its efforts to combat hunger, for its contribution to bettering conditions for peace in conflict-affected areas and for acting as a driving force in efforts to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict."

The formal announcement is available at: Nobel Peace Prize for 2020 is awarded to the World Food Programme WFP. The announcement highlights that "...the combination of violent conflict and the pandemic has led to a dramatic rise in the number of people living on the brink of starvation. In the face of the pandemic, the World Food Programme has demonstrated an impressive ability to intensify its efforts."

Newsy descriptions are available from most news media on the internet and elsewhere, including CBC News.

5 October 2020 Plants in the News: Canola at the Movies

In the midst of concerns about Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) in the 1990's, a Saskatchewan farmer (Percy Schmeiser) became a poster-boy for anti-GMO activism. Now, he has been replaced by Christopher Walken in a Mongrel Media movie entitled Percy. Percy Schmeiser was sued by Monsanto for growing Roundup Ready canola without paying a licensing fee. The legal issues relate to licensing of genetically-modified crops, a subject covered here in 21 February 2013: Plants in the News Patented Inventions that Self-Replicate: Roundup Ready Soybean. The canola lawsuit was eventually decided in Monsanto's favour at the Canada Supreme Court.

CBC News provides a newsy perspective (by Bonnie Allen): New movie about Sask. farmer who went up against Monsanto dredges up old fight over accuracy of his story.

Wikipedia provides a legal synopsis of the case: Monsanto Canada Inc v Schmeiser.

9 September 2020 Plants in the News: Broccoli and Dark Matter

The news is actually about a very large camera sensor that will be used for large-scale mapping of the universe. To trial the sensor, the artisans used a 150 micron pinhole, and imaged (among other things) a head of broccoli. Eventually, the sensor will be mounted on a land-based telescope (at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile) for panoramic astronomical surveys.

The sciency report was published by the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory: Sensors of world's largest digital camera snap first 3,200-megapixel images at SLAC. Here is a link to the Romanescu broccoli pinhole image.

Courthouse News Service provides a newsy description of the research (by Amanda Pampuro): World's largest camera moves from broccoli to dark matter.

28 July 2020 Plants in the News: Microbial Methuselah

Bacterial immortality is a popular news topic --highlighted here in 5 October 2018 Lithospheric Cyanobacteria. The latest is the resuscitation of bacteria from extremely old (101.5 million years) marine sediments. A variety of bacterial groups were identified on the basis of 16S rRNA sequences: including Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Firmicutes, Alphaproteobacteria et alia.

The sciency article was published in Nature Communications: Aerobic microbial life persists in oxic marine sediment as old as 101.5 million years.

Wired Magazine provides a newsy perspective (by Matt Simon): Mad scientists revive 100-million-year-old microbes.

21 July 2020 Plants in the News: Sensing Accumulated Cold

Cold sensing provides an environmental cue for seed germination and flower induction. It is not the cold alone, but how much cold has accumulated. At a threshold of accumulated cold, the winter season is nearing its end. Zhao et alia identified one of the mechanisms for sensing accumulated cold: A transcription factor NTL8. At warm temperatures, growth of the plant dilutes the amount of NTL8 present. It accumulates in the cold because of slow plant growth at low temperatures.

The sciency report was published in Nature: Temperature-dependent growth contributes to long-term cold sensing.

ScienceDaily provides a newsy description of the research: Botany: Slow growth the key to long term cold sensing.

4 July 2020 Plants in the News: Operation Pollinator

Planting flowers for pollinators is a popular activity for children at school and home. Some of the projects are targeted for broader impact: involving farmers and foresters. Soil conservationists buy into national and international endeavours, because planting wildflowers is usually synonymous with planting forage cover. Forage cover helps prevent soil loss by wind and rain erosion. Some of the seed mixes are legume-rich (various clovers). Others are wildflower-rich (milkweed, asters, goldenrods, etcetera).

A newsy take on Syngenta's commitment can be found at: Syngenta Operation Pollinator on-farm program expands its footprint in Ontario (2018).

More practical descriptions can be found at Ontario Soil and Crop Improvement Association --OSCIA (Operation Pollinator) and Soil Conservation of Canada (Operation Pollinator --a success on canadian farms.).

3 June 2020 Plants in the News: Nuclear Winter

During hot weather, it is not a relief to think about the converse of global warming --global cooling-- because the likely causes of cooling involve atmospheric dust, elevated by an asteroid strike or limited nuclear warfare (involving, say, Pakistan and India). Grim scenarios. Nevertheless, scientists get intrigued by the question: How much would global cooling diminish crop yields? The answer is 'a lot'. The decrease in crop yields would be greatest in northern temperate regions --for example, Canada.

The sciency report was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA): A regional nuclear conflict would compromise global food security.

New York Post provides a newsy article with a catchy title: Nuclear conflict anywhere would cause crop crisis everywhere.

21 May 2020 Plants in the News: Bumblebee Bites Plant --Flowering Ensues

Bumblebees are major pollinators, and are even known to shake flowers to harvest pollen (see 28 June 2013: Plants in the News The Bee's Buzz on Plant Sex). Even more surprising, when pollen is scarce, bumblebees will wound plant leaves. One of the consequences of wounding is that the plant will induce more flowering, a process that takes 30 days or so. Thereafter, the bumblebees can feast!

A newsy report can be found at Scientific American (by Jim Daley): Bumblebees bite plants to force them to flower (seriously).

The sciency research was published in Science: Bumble bees damage plant leaves and accelerate flower production when pollen is scarce.

26 April 2020 Plants in the News: Rising CO₂ and Ontario Crop Yields

How will elevated carbon dioxide (and warming) affect crop yields? The answer varies depending on the local climate, rain and temperature. In Ontario, warming and increased precipitation are expected (the growing season increased 1.45 days per decade from 1950 through 2013). Actual measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide in Ontario (Simcoe county) are available from 2005 as part of global monitoring (see graph). The ''wiggle' is due to seasonal variation in photosynthesis and is typical for northern mid-latitudes. Up to 2013, there hasn't been an increase in corn and soybean yields that can be attributed to elevated carbon dioxide, warming, or higher rainfall. Other factors (such as the cost of fertilizer, new crop varieties, diseases, insect pest outbreaks, and the timing of rain) can have significant effects on yields. Since 2013, climatic changes have been accelerating, so the next study may reveal a stronger effect.

The sciency report was published in Science Reports: A Bio-Economic Crop Yield Response (BECYR) model for corn and soybeans in Ontario, Canada for 1959-2013.

The lead author (Qin Xu) is a PhD student at the University of Guelph: A day in the life of Qin Xu, PhD student.

15 April 2020 Plants in the News: Flower Recovery after Misadventure

To ensure maximal pollination, many flowers have a well-defined orientation (including nectary location) as part of the attraction for pollinating insects. Should the flower be injured, some flowers (especially bilaterally symmetrical ones --redbud is an example shown at right) can recover their normal orientation in about 48 hours.

A newsy report can be found at Vox (by Brian Resnick): This study on flower resilience is the most beautiful thing I've read during the pandemic.

The sciency research was published in New Phytologist: Floral reorientation: the restoration of pollination accuracy after accidents.

5 April 2020 Plants in the News: Blue Beets

It will not revolutionize the dye industry, but is a promising biomimetic approach to designing dye compounds. In this case, betalains that are found in red beets were the inspiration to create an easily synthesized metal-free blue dye (BeetBlue).

The New York Times provides the newsy coverage (by JoAnna Klein): How do you make a less toxic blue dye? Start with red beets.

The sciency report was published in Science Advances: A metal-free blue chromophore derived from plant pigments. The senior author was Erick Bastos: Bastos Research Group, Instituto de Química, Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil.

A review of some of the chemistry inspired by plant pigments was published in Anais da Academia Brasileira de Ciências: Chemistry inspired by the colors of fruits, flowers and wine.

19 March 2020 Plants in the News: Plant Carnivores

Darwin's fascination with insectivorous plants is well known, especially amongst members of the numerous carnivorous plant societies around the world. Plant carnivores continue to be a rich mine for scientific research. In the latest, the analytical approach was biomechanical, using a finite element approach common to mechanical engineers. How does the plant undergo the fast morphological changes necessary to trap the insect (illustrations at right)? An assymetric cellular architecture? Probably.

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) thought it was interesting enough to deserve a cover photo: Cover Images.

The sciency research explaining it all --cool movies included: Metamaterial architecture from a self-shaping carnivorous plant.

21 February 2020 Plants in the News: Plant Music

Plants do not have human-like artistic creativity (their beauty is in the eye of the human beholder!). Even so, NPR news highlighted some commercial products that amplify the 'music of plants'. It actually sounds cool (very new age!). What is really happening is that the electrical circuit is transforming leaf surface resistance changes into musical variations, as guided by the circuit design.

NPR provides the newsy coverage (by Sophie Haigney): The lessons to be learned from forcing plants to play music, including a playable clip of the 'plant music'.

Agricultural engineers have been interested in monitoring the electrical properties of plants to assess their health in the field for many decades. The most common measurement is of the electrical capacitance of leaves and/or stems, because capacitance and water status of the plant are related. A sciency report from Penn State News highlights recent research: Leaf sensors can tell farmers when crops need to be watered.

16 February 2020 Plants in the News: Sonic Plant Growth

Mikania micrantha is known as the "mile-a-minute-weed" because of its remarkable rate of growth (about 20 cm per day). The question for scientists is why does it grow so fast? With a complete genome sequence in hand, the reasons are becoming clearer. Part of the physiological cause of fast growth is its ability to fix carbon dioxide from the air using CAM photosynthesis at night (storing carbon in malate), and C3 photosynthesis during the day. A typical CAM plant only opens its stomates at night to minimize water loss during the day. In contrast, Mikania micrantha keeps its stomates open during both night and day, providing a 2-fold increase in carbon availability. The stems alone can sustain rates of photosynthesis sufficient for growth. To provide the building blocks of protein synthesis necessary for growth, the plants recruit soil bacteria to fix atmospheric nitrogen (N2) into usable reduced forms. To inhibit growth of plant competitors, it exudes allelochemicals. The genome is highly duplicated, both the whole genome and long segments. It contains multiple transposon sequences, that may play a role in adaptive modifications for survival and growth.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) provides journal club coverage: Genome of "mile-a-minute weed" hints at the secrets to its invasive success.

The sciency research was published in Science Communications: Mikania micrantha genome provides insights into the molecular mechanism of rapid growth.

14 January 2020 Plants in the News: Plant Immortality

In the biological world, longevity is very common. Any bacteria has a genealogy that eventually traces back to the origins of life four thousand million years ago. Amongst multicellular organisms, there is a fairly clear divide between determinant and indeterminate developmental patterns. Humans are determinant, reaching a well-defined developmental size (and age). Many plants are indeterminate, continuing to develop, ad infinitum. Both developmental patterns have survival advantages. Amongst plants, Ginkgo biloba is of especial interest because --as a plant species-- it has existed for about 270 million years. The oldest trees (more than 600 years old) are found in China. What are the reason(s) for their longevity? Scientists from China and Texas took a comprehensive look at young and old Ginkgos. They did not find any immortality genes! Just a long sustainment of mature growth and function.

CNN provides newsy coverage: Some trees can live for more than 1,000 years and scientists may have figured out why.

The sciency report was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA): Multifeature analyses of vascular cambial cells reveal longevity mechanisms in old Ginkgo biloba trees.

4 January 2020 Plants in the News: Darwin's Plants Cover of a book by Ken Thompson on the botanical underpinnings of Darwin's Evolution

It is not a newsy item, but may be news to many: Much of Darwin's scientific research that enlightened his theory of evolution was botanical research. Ken Thompson has written all about it in a book published by University of Chicago Press. Many of his chapter titles incorporate the titles of the botanical books/publications that Darwin wrote:

On the movements and habits of climbing plants (1865)

The power of movement in plants (1880)

Insectivorous plants (1875)

On the various contrivances by which British and foreign orchids are fertilised by insects, and on the good effects of intercrossing (1862)

The effects of cross and self-fertilisation in the vegetable kingdom (1876)

The different forms of flowers on plants of the same species (1877)

The variation of animals and plants under domestication (1868)

Information about Ken Thompson's book can be found online at the University of Chicago Press website: Darwin's Most Wonderful Plants. a tour of his botanical legacy

21 December 2019 Plants in the News: Devonian Roots

A discovery of fossilized tree root systems has reset when trees first appeared --to about 385 million years ago. Roots are the reason why trees can exist. They provide water and inorganic nutrients for photosynthesis in above-ground foliage. They provide the structural support that allows trees to grow to remarkable heights (averaging 30 meters). The fossilized root structures were discovered in a New York quarry in the Catskills, and indicate the extreme breadth and depth that roots could achieve --much earlier than previously thought.

CNN provides newsy coverage: The world's oldest known fossil forest has been discovered in a quarry in upper New York state.

The sciency report was published in Current Biology: Mid-Devonian Archaeopteris roots signal revolutionary change in earliest fossil forests.

A general description of the research and its implications can be found in Smithsonian Magazine: The world's oldest forest has 385-million-year-old tree roots.

19 November 2019 Plants in the News: Plant Sex --Long, Long Ago

Insect pollination is a very common sexual technique amongst plants, but how old is it? Hard to say since it is difficult to catch insects and plants in the act. Now, the oldest sex act has been inferred from pollen carried on a beetle trapped in amber 99 million years ago.

The Cosmos presents a newsy report on ancient plant sex: Another tale set in amber. Ancient beetle provides evidence of pollination. More details are provided by the Daily Mail: Beetle fossilised in amber reveals earliest evidence of prehistoric pollination.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) provides the sciency information: Pollination of Cretaceous flowers, including an ecological reconstruction of the beetle Angimordella burmitina (excerpt detail shown at right) feeding on Eudicot flowers.

6 November 2019 Plants in the News: Return of the American Chestnut

American Chestnut trees (Castanea dentata) disappeared from North American forests because of the Chestnut blight more than 100 years ago. It was one of the first examples of the impact of foreign invasive species (in this case the fungal pathogen Endothia parasitica) on local forest ecosystems. Although hybrids with foreign species of Castanea can be resistant to the blight, it is not a replacement for a tree that once dominated the forest landscape. The most recent approach involves the use of a GMO (genetically modified) Chestnut. One gene (encoding oxalate oxidase) is sufficient to elicit robust resistance.

Associated Press provides newsy coverage: High-tech chestnuts: US to consider genetically altered tree. The College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY) is seeking federal approval for a restoration project that will distribute thousands of modified trees.

An example of sciency research on the GMO Chestnut is in frontiers in Plant Science: Transgenic American Chestnuts do not inhibit germination of native seeds or colonization of mycorrhizal fungi.

A general description of the research effort can be found at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry: Restoring the American Chestnut

Update (25 December 2023): The American Chestnut Foundation updated the state of bioengineering: Darling 58. Rescue and Restoration of the American Chestnut. The efficacy of incorporating the oxalate oxidase gene depends on where it is incorporated, and its promoter. Genotype mislabeling resulted in extensive propagation of the undesirable Darling 54, in which the oxidase gene was inserted into (and disrupted) a saline tolerance gene. Use of more relevant promoters (rather than a 35S constitutive promoter) should also result in more vigorous growth phenotypes.

21 October 2019 Plants in the News: Peat Bogs

Bogs are a dominant terrestrial ecosystem, covering wide swaths of northern latitudes and extending south to southern Ontario and Ireland. Many of the species found in bogs are endemic, highly specialized to grow in the acidic and nitrogen-poor conditions common to the Sphagnum-dominated peatlands. Bogs are also of great interest because of the expected impacts of global warming. The major concern is release of massive amounts of carbon dioxide as organic matter sequestered in bogs decomposes, accelerating global warming.

The New York Times presents a photogenic report on bogs: The secret world of life (and death) in Ireland's peat bogs (by Emily Toner).

The absence of decomposition can be astonishing. A man buried in a peat lake more than 2000 years ago (photograph at right) was extraordinarily well-preserved because of the bog's high acidity, low oxygen, and anti-microbials produced by the Sphagnum moss.

16 September 2019 Plants in the News: Squash Bees

Neonicotinoids are used by farmers as an insecticide, mostly as a coating on seeds to minimize insect feeding on planted seeds. However, neonicotinoids are broad spectrum insecticides, and ecologists worry that their effects on un-targeted insect populations are more severe than expected. Initial studies of neonicotinoid application were criticized since the insecticide dosages were high. Overtime, the quality of the research has improved to evaluate 'real' levels of environmental exposure in natural settings coupled with sophisticated measurements of impact on life cycles. Work on squash bees as a model system by researchers at the Universities of Guelph and Ottawa is a good example.

ScienceDaily provides newsy coverage: Wild ground-nesting bees might be exposed to lethal levels of neonics in soil. It turns out that insecticide residues accumulate in the soil, and affect ground-dwelling bees in their nests near squash fields. As noted by the researchers, it will be necessary to protect bee nesting areas from insecticide application to ensure successful pollination of squash crops.

The sciency report is in Nature --Scientific Reports: Assessment of risk to hoary squash bees (Peponapis pruinosa) and other ground-nesting bees from systemic insecticides in agricultural soil.

Beautiful macro photography of squash bees and a description of their life style can be found at Sharp-Eatman Nature Photography: Squash Bees

2 September 2019 Plants in the News: Drought Resistant Barley

Barley is already well known as a dryland (arid) crop. With global warming and increased water demand, it will become even more important as a food source for humans. Breeders have focussed on increasing tolerance to arid conditions, and have recently identified a major transcription factor that enhances drought resistance.

The Guardian presents the newsy report: Scientists isolate drought-resistant gene in barley.

The sciency article was published in Plant Physiology and Biochemistry (The barley transcription factor HvMYB1 is a positive regulator of drought tolerance).

As a transcription factor, the gene controls expression of multiple genes that play a role in drought resistance --from osmolyte (proline) production to anti-oxidant systems. So the gene's effect is multi-factorial. Whether or not commercially viable (high yield) cultivars can be produced remains to be seen. Targeting multi-gene expression systems is a promising approach for developing drought resistance in other crops besides barley.

3 July 2019 Plants in the News: Botanical Bunfight

The Guardian calls it "the biggest botanical bunfight since the Romantic era when plant biologists argued for more than a century about sex in plants", hence the heading. It's about the trendy advocacy for Plant Neurobiology, and the use of neuroscience terminology in plant research (memory, habituation, learning, sentience, consciousness), terms commonly used to describe attributes of the nervous system in animals (from sea slugs to humans). The idea that plants are sentient probably will not lead to demands for ethical guidelines for research on plants (Florianne Koechlin: The dignity of plants) --Many (if not most) scientists view the use of human-related terms like consciousness to describe plants as misleading and inappropriate. Attributing feelings to plants is a human folly. After all, insectivorous plants don't really feed on insects for revenge!

The Guardian provides newsy coverage: Group of biologists tries to bury the idea that plants are conscious.

The sciency commentary is in Trends in Plant Science: Plants neither possess nor require consciousness.

13 June 2019 Plants in the News: Sarracenia: The Salamander Eater

It is not all that surprising that pitcher plants --well known insectivorous plants of the northern bogs-- will also feast on vertebrates such as salamanders when they get a chance. What is surprising is how common it is: Canadian researchers found that 20% of surveyed pitcher plants in Algonquin Park contained one or more salamanders!

The Guardian presents the newsy report: Carnivorous plants have a taste for salamanders, scientists find.

The sciency article is being published in Ecology (Nature's pitfall trap: Salamanders as rich prey for carnivorous plants in a nutrient-poor northern bog ecosystem).

Entrapment by a pitcher plant relies on the slippery surface at the entry into the tubular leaf. Bio-mimicking the 'slippery slope' of plant carnivores is a serious research topic, per publications in Nature (Bioinspired self-repairing slippery surfaces with pressure-stable omniphobicity) and PNAS (Insect aquaplaning: Nepenthes pitcher plants capture prey with the peristome, a fully wettable water-lubricated anisotropic surface).

10 June 2019 Plants in the News: World Food Prize Laureate

Simon N. Groot is a vegetable seedsman --a breeder of vegetable crops with enhanced qualities such as disease resistance, better nutrition, and productivity-- who has provided opportunities for smallholder farmers, mostly in Southeast Asia. For his 4 decades of dedicated research and development, he has been awarded the World Food Prize (worth USD250,000). The prize was created by Norman Borlaug, a Nobel Laureate who is widely considered the key originator of the Green Revolution --providing high-yielding hybrids to farmers in under-developed countries. From the award citation: "Mr. Groot has led the transition of millions of subsistence farmers, many of them women, to horticulture entrepreneurs, thereby greatly enhancing their livelihoods and income. These farmers have invigorated both rural and urban markets for vegetable crops in their communities, making nutritious vegetables more widely available and affordable for millions of families each year."

Associated Press provides newsy coverage: Netherlands vegetable seed developer wins World Food Prize. The World Food Prize Organization provides a more detailed description: Sixth-generation Dutch seedsman wins $250,000 World Food Prize.

2 June 2019 Plants in the News: Apple Genesis

The apple genus (Malus) is a complicated one, since species readily hybridize, resulting in confusing scenarios of speciation and domestication. The domesticated apple --as we now know it-- is a tetraploid (it is a hybrid of four diploid ancestors). How did it become domesticated? An initial step was the evolution of a large fruit adapted for seed dispersal by megafauna (for example, large mammals present during the Holocene). Eventually, humans appeared, ate the wild fruits, and disseminated it throughout Eurasia. Finally, hybrids were created, leading to our modern domesticated apple.

ScienceDaily presents a newsy description of domestication: Exploring the origins of the apple. The sciency article was published in Frontiers in Plant Science: Origins of the apple: The role of megafaunal mutualism in the domestication of Malus and Rosaceous trees.

A recent Canadian bestseller by Helen Humphreys (The Ghost Orchard. The Hidden History of the Apple in North America) (published by HarperCollins) provides an agrarian and social perspective.

24 May 2019 Plants in the News: GoldFungus

The Ascomycete Fusarium oxysporum is best known for the plant pathogen strains that cause wilting (due to invasive growth into the vascular tissue, blocking water transport). It turns out that Fusarium also mines for gold! The gold accumulates due to redox interactions that transform dissolved gold into a precipitate of very small 'nano-nuggets' (colloidal gold). Perhaps even more surprising than gold deposition is the effect on fungal growth --much higher-- when gold and a rich carbon source are provided.

The Guardian provides the newsy coverage from the Australian Associated Press: Fungi that draws gold from its surroundings discovered in Western Australia.

Australia Mining highlights its potential for identifying new gold deposits: Surprising fungi-gold interaction reveals potential for new deposits. CSIRO provides a press release and animated video: Gold-coated fungi are the new gold diggers.

The sciency coverage can be found in Nature Communication: Evidence for fungi and gold redox interaction under Earth surface conditions.

14 May 2019 Plants in the News: Roundup Lawsuits

A number of lawsuits have found Monsanto to be responsible for cancer (non-Hodgkin's lymphoma) caused by exposure to Roundup (glyphosate). In the latest, a jury awarded the plaintiffs 2 billion US dollars (AP News: Jury: Monsanto to pay $2 billion in weed killer cancer case). The award is subject to appeal.

This is a difficult subject matter to encapsulate in a 'Plants in the News'. Glyphosate has been in use for more than 30 years as a broad spectrum herbicide --especially with glyphosate-resistant crop varieties. Roundup-ready soybean is a good example. Within 5 years of its introduction in the late 1990's, 95% of planted soybean was Roundup-ready. Glyphosate-resistant crops allowed a shift to no-tillage techniques that minimized soil erosion and nutrient loss from cropped land. It was a revolutionary shift in agronomic practice. Glyphosate is considered non-toxic and non-carcinogenic:

Glyphosate.(WHO 1994)

Glyphosate (Pesticide residues in food: Toxicology)

EPA takes next step in review process for herbicide glyphosate, reaffirms no risk to public health

But the use of genetically-modified crops like Roundup-ready soybean has faced public opposition (Wikipedia: Genetically modified food controversies).

Many weed species are becoming resistant to glyphosate. It has to be used in the context of "best practice" for weed management to maximize its efficacy in the field. The Weed Science Society of America pays close attention to emerging herbicide resistance (Weeds are winning the war against herbicide resistance), as well as the importance of an integrated weed management system (New herbicide technologies will fail if we don't remember past sins). All of this complexity does not fit in the typical news headlines.

7 May 2019 Plants in the News: Human Extinction

The United Nations published an update on the status of natural environments, and the news is not good. With increasing human populations (nearing 8 billion) and human-terraforming of land (for resource-stripping, farming and housing), a million species are expected to go extinct. Some of the headlines in the news media:

Newsday: Extinction of plant and animal species threatens humans, too.

USA Today: Nature in worst shape in human history with 1 million species at risk of extinction, massive UN report warns.

Nature: Humans are driving one million species to extinction.

CBC News: Startling UN biodiversity report is a reminder of the risks Canada faces.

The sustainable development blog at the United Nations provides an in-depth discussion: UN Report: Nature's Dangerous Decline 'Unprecedented'; Species Extinction Rates 'Accelerating'. The plant breeder Jack Harlan provided a blunter assessment in his 1992 book --Crops and Man-- per the quotation above left.

22 April 2019 Plants in the News: Terraforming Mars

Science is always fun! It can be even more fun when you are playing a board game like Terraforming Mars! This is one example of science-oriented games that are on the market. Other biology-related games include Cytosis: A Cell Biology Board Game and Evolution.

In the case of Terraforming Mars, the challenge is to transform Mars into a habitable planet: Raising its temperature and making the air breathable, as well as creating a water cycle. This is no easy or simple feat! In the case of Earth, 'terraforming' took billions of years. One of the causes was diatoms (right), a major biomass and oxygen producer for the past 250 million years. Diatoms are found in oceans, lakes and streams, and even in the soil.

The sciency article was published in The Guardian: The board games turning science into playtime.

30 March 2019 Plants in the News: #fungalpeeps

It is not every day that the New York Times decides to run an article about fungi. When they do, it tends to be offbeat. JoAnna Klein used the opening lead "It's science time in Candy Land" to describe such an offbeat experiment by a serious forest pathologist at West Virgina University --Matthew Kasson. Matthew inoculated peeps with various strains of fungi. Peeps contain high concentrations of sugars (marshmallow) and the preservative potassium sorbate, so the experiment will eventually provide information on which fungal strains can thrive in such a "hostile" environment. Penicillium has already started to grow.

New York Times published the sciency article: Injecting Marshmallow Peeps With Fungi, for Science. Matthew Kasson's twitter account provides more information on peeps and other aspects of plant pathology: @kasson_wvu. The photo (above left) shows another example of fun with fungi: fungal sex in the Ascomycete Neurospora crassa.

24 March 2019 Plants in the News: Library of Photosynthesis

Photosynthesis is an enlightening topic for the plant biologist! It is central to all life on earth. But we still don't understand it in its complexity: light absorption, ATP and NADPH production, carbon dioxide fixation, carbohydrate synthesis and storage and of course the regulation of all of the above. One way to reveal the full complexity of photosynthesis is the construction of gene libraries. The unicellular alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii was used because it is easily manipulated genetically so that researchers can construct strains defective in single genes. The resulting 62,000-plus mutant strains were then screened to identify the strains that could not grow in light (thus defective in photosynthesis). About 20 novel proteins functioning in photosynthesis have already been discovered.

The sciency article was published in Nature Genetics: A genome-wide algal mutant library and functional screen identifies genes required for eukaryotic photosynthesis. A ScienceDaily provides a newsy explanation: Algal library lends insights into genes for photosynthesis. The actual library of mutant strains can be found at: Chlamydomonas Library Project (CLiP)

10 March 2019 Plants in the News: Patterning Pollen Surfaces

Palynology --and pollen identification in general-- rely on the species-specific structure and size of pollen grains. The exine surfaces are very tough, and can exhibit structure that is quite intricate, but how is the structure formed? Physicists claim to know the answer. They suggest the underlying mechanism starts with a uniform extracellular polysaccharide layer that is mechanically coupled to the cell membrane. Phase separation causes a spatially modulated state. The final intricate shape depends upon the mechanical coupling and timing of the phase separation and its cessation. Very beautiful and complex, it is the basis of pollen identification to reconstruct past climates and ecosystems, and even forensics in a crime lab.

Cell published the sciency article: Pollen cell wall patterns form from modulated phases. Science News provides the newsy explanation: Physics explains how pollen gets its stunning diversity of shapes.

2 March 2019 Plants in the News: The Botanist in the Kitchen

The Botanist in the Kitchen is a fascinating blog for the botanically inclined in the kitchen. It is fun, and has been highlighted by major news media. Some topics explain the science behind the preparation and cooking of plants. There is also a botanical rant about the use of botanically incorrect illustrations of soybeans to express the 'goodness' of soybean fat/protein emulsions (soy milk --a recipe is included). A botanically correct illustration is shown (right) from Kaempfer's visit to Japan at the beginning of the 1700s. The sciency kitchen botanist can be found at: The Botanist in the Kitchen (where botany meets the cutting board). A newsy take is provided by NPR's The Salt (what's on your plate): Leave it to botanists to turn cooking into a [tasty] science lesson.

19 February 2019 Plants in the News: eDNA (environmental DNA) Unravels Pollination Mysteries

Often, pollination strategies are assumed to have a specificity. Thus, certain flower structures are best suited for specific pollinators (butterflies and composites with narrow tube flowers are one example --left). The truth is more complex than that. Researchers have spent hours sitting by flower stands and tabulating pollinating visitors to reveal that there is a higher than expected diversity of pollinators. Even greater diversity has now been revealed using eDNA --environmental DNA. These are traces of DNA left behind by flower visitors. With modern barcoding techniques, the source of the DNA can be identified. Researchers from Aarhus University (Denmark) discovered that meadow flowers were visited by at least 135 different species of butterflies, moths, bees, flies, beetles, aphids, plant bugs, spiders, etc.

Ecology and Evolution published the sciency article: Environmental DNA metabarcoding of wild flowers reveals diverse communities of terrestrial arthropods. ScienceDaily provides the newsy explanation: DNA traces on wild flowers reveal insect visitors.

12 February 2019 Plants in the News: Super Potatoes

Potatoes are highly nutritious and the fourth major crop for human consumption internationally. There is a large pool of wild potato strains in South America (where potato was first domesticated) but breeding to improve potatoes has been limited by the tetraploid genetics of cultivated varieties. Novel techniques are being brought to bear on potato breeding. Science journal provides a newsy explanation: The new potato. One approach that has garnered interest in recent years is the development of diploid inbred lines to simplify breeding and create hybrids. An overview was provided in Crop Science: Reinventing potato as a diploid inbred line-based crop. To generate potato crops with hybrid vigor requires the crossing of two severely inbred lines, but potatoes are notorious for the poor survivability of inbred lines. Now, the causes are becoming clearer. The sciency article was published in Nature Genetics: The genetic basis of inbreeding depression in potato. Potato research is a good example of how science evolves to provide for humanity!

3 February 2019 Plants in the News: Tracking Tree Growth as Carbon Dioxide Elevates

There is a sensibility that planting more trees will help alleviate the carbon dioxide increases that are causing global warming. But do trees capture more carbon dioxide as the levels have increased? This is more difficult to unravel than one might expect at first glance, because so many different factors affect biomass accumulation by trees. Old growth white cedar (Thuja occidentalis L.) in northern Quebec provide clues. It turns out that a major impact of elevated carbon dioxide has been a shift in water use efficiency. This is because carbon dioxide enters the plant through the same stomatal structures that release water into the atmosphere. But the trees have not grown faster as carbon dioxide levels have increased. PNAS published the sciency article: North Americas oldest boreal trees are more efficient water users due to increased [CO₂], but do not grow faster. Ars Technica provides the newsy explanation: Carbon dioxide's boost to trees may not offset its climate impact. Scientists at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) contributed to the research.

29 January 2019 Plants in the News: Biomimetics get a Soft Grip

Engineers at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) in Italy designed a novel soft robot that behaves like a plant tendril, and uses similar osmotic forces to curl and grip. The term soft is used to describe an intrinsic material compliance (unlike the non-deformable nature if a hard hand-like pincer). The Week provides a newsy explanation: Scientists design soft robot that creeps like plant tendrils. The sciency article was published in Nature Communications: A variable-stiffness tendril-like soft robot based on reversible osmotic actuation. Biomimetics has come a long way, and the use of hydrostatic forces --similar to those used by plants-- represents a fascinating advance, in which the biomimetic doesn't just look like a biological structure, it behaves like one too!

21 January 2019 Plants in the News: Multiple Species Symbionts

Lichens are a well known symbiotic organism comprised of a fungus and an algae (or cyanobacteria). They are hardy, able to withstand extreme cold and desiccation. They can even obtain nutrients from the air. They are often the first colonizer on bare rock, and would be a good prospect for terra-forming another planet. It turns out that the lichen symbiosis is more complicated than originally thought. DNA analysis reveals multiple fungal species occur in the well-known and common 'wolf lichens'. Current Biology journal published the sciency article: Two Basidiomycete fungi in the cortex of wolf lichens. newsy descriptions are provided by Phys.Org (Individual lichens can have up to three fungi, study shows.) and The Atlantic (The Overlooked organisms that keep challenging our assumptions about life. Scientists at the University of Alberta (Spribille Lab) contributed to the research.

15 January 2019 Plants in the News: Giant Leaf for Mankind?

The headline comes from The Guardian's report on the first farming on the moon: Giant leaf for mankind? China germinates first seed on moon. China is testing germination of cotton, canola, Arabidopsis, and potato seeds under the low gravity conditions on the surface of the moon. The Chang'e 4 lunar lander experiment also includes yeast (as a decomposer) and fruit flies (which feed on yeast) to create a very simple ecosystem on the moon. Cotton germinated first. South China Morning Post provides additional coverage: Chinese lunar lander's cotton seeds spring to life on far side of the moon

4 January 2019 Plants in the News: Bioengineering New Photosynthetic Pathways

The major carbon fixation pathway in photosynthetic organisms uses an enzyme called RuBisCO --Ribulose Bisphosphate Carboxylase Oxygenase. When RuBisCO first appeared (about 4,000 million years ago), it worked well because atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were relatively high compared to oxygen (so carboxylase was the dominant reaction). That is no longer true, so plants have to account for non-productive oxygenase activity. The 2-phosphoglycolate produced by oxygenase has to be recycled --at some metabolic cost. Scientists have been working on alternative pathways to recycle the 2-phosphoglycolate cheaply and efficiently for years. Now, some of these pathways have been bio-engineered into tobacco, and tested for photosynthetic productivity. Science journal published the sciency article: Synthetic glycolate metabolism pathways stimulate crop growth and productivity in the field. newsy descriptions are provided by Ars Technica (Fixing photosynthesis by engineering it to recycle a toxic mistake.) and Science (Improving crop yield.). This is science at its best: It took decades and many scientists in many countries to accomplish these results, to benefit all of us.

Update (11 January): NBC News ("Plant scientists have found a way to 'hack' photosynthesis. Here's why that's a big deal") is one example of a major news organization picking up on the story.

1 January 2019 Plants in the News: Heading Towards the Light

Photosynthetic organisms display phototactic movements that allow them to grow or move to regions of optimal light intensity for photosynthesis. Even the relatively simple cyanobacteria do it. An international consortia of scientists have unraveled the simplest mechanism known that causes phototactic motility in Synechococcus elongatus. It is a 6 gene operon. Light-sensing requires a bilin chromophore --phycoviolobilin. The sciency results were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS): Phototaxis in a wild isolate of the cyanobacterium Synechococcus elongatus. The science is fascinating, the paper is a fascinating read, and there are totally awesome videos of twitching motility that show how prokaryotic cells can aggregate to form multicellular structures.

25 December 2018 Plants in the News: 'Vertical' Farming

Vertically integrated farming usually refers to value-added farms that grow their own crops to provide feed for their dairy cows, pigs, chickens and the like. But the term 'vertical' is also used to describe crops grown on shelves under artificial (LED) lighting. 'Vertical' farming is used to provide fresh greens for salads, but can also be used to grow other fruit/vegetable crops (such as strawberries) out of season. There is interest in using this technology in the far North to provide fresh vegetables year-round. CBC published the newsy article: Space tech that feeds high-end diners in Toronto could help Canada's North. As far as the economics are concerned, the technology is most suitable for high value crops. But, it also provides a baseline for understanding crop growth under LED lighting anywhere, even outer space or other planets: Canadian LED research looks to grow strawberries on Mars.

14 December 2018 Plants in the News: Anthropogenic Ammonia

Besides carbon dioxide, ammonia is another greenhouse gas that is intimately associated with human activity. Some major ammonia hotspots are due to Haber-Bosch production of ammonium --the nitrogen source for commercial fertilizers. Other hotspots are due to nitrogenous waste from animal husbandry at a factory scale (including southwest Ontario). High resolution mapping has been performed using spectra imaging by satellite. The sciency results were published in Nature: Industrial and agricultural ammonia point sources exposed.

newsy results were also published in Nature: Satellite pinpoints ammonia sources globally. and by NASA: NASA satellite identifies global ammonia 'hotspots'.

28 November 2018 Plants in the News: There are Fungus Among Us

For normal folk, knowing that there are fungus among us may be sufficient, but scientists want to know how many fungus are among us?. Now, they can find out! Mycologia published the sciency article: The Protochecklist of North American Nonlichenized Fungi. So far, it is about 44,488. The checklist is available in the pdf version but be warned: it is 118 pages long, with four columns on each page!

A newsy presentation was published by ScienceDaily North American Checklist Identifies the Fungus Among Us.

The actual databases are online at the Mycology Collections Portal. Additional links are provided to Lichen and Bryophyte Herbaria.

24 November 2018 Plants in the News: CO₂ Springs

What is the effect of elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide levels on plant growth? That is a question that has been asked a lot over the past 50 years as it became clear that carbon dioxide levels were increasing. The graphic demonstrates one aspect of carbon dioxide usage: annual fluctuations due to "summer" photosynthesis in terrestrial plants. Scientists have looked at elevated carbon dioxide effects by artificially elevating it in greenhouses or even in outside plots (FACE). But there is also a natural source of plants that have grown at elevated carbon dioxide levels --near outgassing springs at various locations (often in volcanically active regions)-- for many generations. Saban, Chapman and Taylor compared the two types of elevated carbon dioxide exposures: FACE facts hold for multiple generations; Evidence from natural CO₂ springs. They found that the results from artificially elevated carbon dioxide experiments were similar to naturally elevated carbon dioxide: notably increased biomass accumulations. A newsy description of the research can be found at ScienceDaily: Back-to-the-future plants give climate change insights.

15 November 2018 Plants in the News: Time Lapse Plants

The Daily Beast highlighted a new viral trend taking advantage of our digital imaging technology: The New Must-See Millennial TV Show: Watching Plants Grow and Wilt. Basically, time lapse videos of plant growth (and death) are now in fashion! This is by no means a new phenomenon, but digital capabilities have revolutionized time lapse production, making it very accessible. Take a look at the link and enjoy!

More serious presentations can be found at Plants in Motion (A wonderful collection of time lapse movies of the growth and development of higher plants. By Roger P. Hangarter.), The Cornell Plant Pathology Photo Lab (Time lapse movies of fungi, molds, bacteria, slime molds and insects of interest to plant pathologists. By Kent Loeffler.) and Movies from the Lew Lab (A compilation of movies --mostly time lapse-- of fungi, algae and plants.)

5 November 2018 Plants in the News: Soil Water Pumps

This is unlikely to be picked up by the mainstream news media, but the concept is fascinating and it may have an impact on agriculture practice in areas of increasing drought frequency due to global warming. The basic idea is that deep rooted plant species are capable of pulling water from deep in the soil during the day. At night, some of the water is released near the soil surface and provides water for nearby shallow-rooted plants. The concept was explored by Mooney and his colleagues 40 years ago: Further observations on the water relations of Prosopis tamarugo of the northern Atacama desert. Its agricultural relevance has been demonstrated in the sub-Saharan (the Sahel transitional region) where pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum) is able to grow when it is associated with the native woody shrub, Guiera senegalensis: Hydraulic redistribution by native Sahelian shrubs: Bioirrigation to resist in-season drought. It is a novel strategy for overcoming drought to maintain crop productivity that may be useful in many regions around the world.

The diagram shows how this would work using alfalfa roots as an example, since they are known to develop deep tap roots similarly to Guiera senegalensis. A newsy description of the research can be found at ScienceDaily: How one tough shrub could help fight hunger in Africa.

Update (20 February 2022) NPR News did a Goats and Soda feature on Guiera senegalensis (by Nick Roll): Farmers in Senegal learn to respect a scruffy shrub that gets no respect.

29 October 2018 Plants in the News: Domesticating Chocolate

The domestication of wheat is probably more important, since it is considered the staff of life (along with rice and other grains), but chocolate (cacao) brings everything to a totally elevated level! The Guardian provides an update on chocolate. Long thought to have been domesticated by the Mayans in Mesoamerica, it turns out it was used much earlier by the Mayo Chinchipe culture in the upper Amazon: Origin of chocolate shifts 1,400 miles and 1,500 years. This is the region of highest genetic diversity of cacao and related species.

Nature ecology & evolution published the sciency article: The use and domestication of Theobroma cacao during the mid-Holocene in the upper Amazon --a fascinating read in archaeological ethnobotany.

18 October 2018 Plants in the News: Agricultural Bioweapons

Some plant scientists are involved in research projects funded by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The aim is to disperse genetically modified viruses that have been engineered to edit crop chromosomes directly in planta. A likley vector of the virus would be aphids (right) or leaf-cutters. This has raised concerns, since the viral sequence could be modified to create a bioweapon, and the vector does not offer structural ways to safeguard from non-specific spread of the transforming system (probably CRISPR). Science journal provides the scientific perspective: Agricultural research, or a new bioweapon system?. The newspaper The Guardian provides a more accessible overview: US plan to genetically alter crops via insects feared to be biological war plan. Normally, bioterrorism has been a source for clickbait news, but in this case, the potential ramifications are too serious to dismiss offhand.

5 October 2018 Plants in the News: Lithospheric Cyanobacteria

Astrobiologists --obsessed with the possibilities of extraterrestrial life-- look to extremophiles for inspiration. Often, their quarry are thermophiles and the like, but in the latest, they have bored deep into the earth, and come up with cyanobacteria that live more than half a kilometer deep. We usually think of cyanobacteria as photosynthesizers, using light energy to produce energy-rich carbohydrates, proteins and DNA. In this case, the cyanobacteria are using hydrogenases to trap biochemical energy. Certainly, cyanobacteria are great terra-formers, based on the earth's geological history over the past 3500 million years. This latest research reveals just how versatile they can be!

PNAS published the science: Viable cyanobacteria in the deep continental subsurface.

Update (15 June 2020): Quanta magazine provides a current overview (by Jordana Cepelewicz) (Inside deep undersea rocks, life thrives without the sun).

2 October 2018 Plants in the News: Orphan Ground Cherries

Scientists are trying to increase the diversity of crops available to feed relentlessly increasing human populations. Domesticated crops exhibit an array of traits that maximize their yield and harvestability compared to wild species. One difficult-to-domesticate species is ground cherry (Physalis pruinosa), a solanaceous orphan crop from Central and South America. It has been improved using CRISPR editing to modify genes that have a strong effect on domestication. This is not as simple as it sounds, since the genes that affect domestication will vary depending upon the crop species. In the case of ground cherries, the strategies were enlightened by the closely related domesticated species, tomato. CNN provides a general newsy report: Ground cherries, the latest modified fruit scientists want you to try. Science News provides a more nuanced description of the application of CRISPR editing for ground cherries, and its use to re-domesticate disease resistant wild species of tomato (Gene editing can speed up plant domestication). The sciency report was published in Nature Plants: Rapid improvement of domestication traits in an orphan crop by genome editing (use the Science News citation link to get the full article).

28 September 2018 Plants in the News: Arctic Plants get Taller

In a long-term (30 year study), ecologists have uncovered one effect of global warming in the high arctic: an increase in plant community height (the increase was due to immigration of taller species rather than the loss of shorter ones). The scope of the analysis was vast, encompassing 117 different locations and involving an international consortia of 128 authors. The sciency report was published in Nature (Plant functional trait change across a warming tundra biome). newsy presentations include EcoWatch (Taller arctic plants could speed dangerous warming feedback) and Newsweek (Climate change is pushing plants into arctic, disrupting tundra ecosystems). Simon Fraser University gives a dronal overview: Global study finds taller plant species taking over as the Arctic warms.

21 September 2018 Plants in the News: Hemp Harvest

Hemp has not been in the news (unlike the marijuana cultivar). Both are the same species (Cannabis sativa L.), but hemp is optimized for fiber and oil production, marijuana for the psychoactive drug THC. With the legalization of marijuana, hemp is slowly coming back as a field crop, used for diverse products from paper to animal feed.

Hemp is an old crop, domesticated about 3000 years ago in China. It was cultivated in North America from the 1700's on, with major production in Kentucky. As the legal climate has eased, Canadian production has increased to >100,000 acres. In eastern Ontario, Valley Bio Limited is the leading source for Hemp seed genetics, including Anka, a hemp variety developed for eastern Canada conditions. At some point, you may see it growing on farm lands, but don't bother inhaling, because the psychoactive THC has been bred out of industrial hemp.

15 September 2018 Plants in the News: Excitable Plants

It has been known for over a century that plants exhibit electrical excitability. Plants can even respond to red light, via calcium activated ion channels (left)(from 1990). This is similar enough to electrical signals in animal nervous systems to cause some scientists (and fringe elements) to claim that plants have feelings, or can think. Science published an article: Glutamate triggers long-distance, calcium-based plant defense signaling that describes calcium waves propagating through the plant after a leaf is wounded. Elizabeth Pennisi (Science correspondent) provides a description of the calcium signaling research: Plants communicate distress using their own kind of nervous system. Please note that plants do not have a nervous system. Because plants are immobile, they have many more signaling/response defenses than their motile relatives the animals, but nothing comparable to a neuronal cell network. Unfortunately, it is the plant "nervous system" in the title that is likely to excite the news media.

12 September 2018 Plants in the News: Secret Lives of Fungi

Every once in a while, someone reminds us of the wonderful world of fungi. This time it was BBC News who revealed The secret life of fungi: Ten fascinating facts. One of the most interesting claims highlighted in the article is that there are thousands of so-called fungal "dark taxa" in soil, known only through DNA sequences. Cryptic species represent an untapped biotechnological resource. In fact, a fungus was recently discovered that is capable of breaking down plastics in weeks rather than years. The sciency report comes from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew: State of the World's Fungi 2018.

3 September 2018 Plants in the News: Floridean Red Tides

Red tides are not all that unusual, but the magnitude and duration of the red tide on the Gulf coast of Florida this summer is way outside normality. The Weather Channel reports on one effect: Dolphin Deaths in Florida's Red Tide Disaster Prompt Federal Investigation. NBC News reports that as Florida's toxic red tide stretches on, residents report health problems. The Smithsonian Marine Station at Fort Pierce provides a species report on Karenia brevis (formerly Gymnodinium breve), the dinophyte that causes red tides. One of the major toxins it produces is brevetoxin (right), a sodium channel inhibitor that will paralyze fish and affect humans inhaling it from ocean spray.

23 August 2018 Plants in the News: Great Lakes Plastic

There is a growing concern about the scourge of plastic garbage world-wide, including the health impacts of micron-sized plastic particles. This also impacts local areas, like the Great Lakes. The Conversation published a recent article by researchers at the Rochester Institute of Technology: Tons of plastic trash enter the Great Lakes every year - where does it go? The article includes cool simulations of lake currents to show that plastic will not form a central trash zone, unlike the plastic islands in the oceans. The science article was published by Matthew Hoffman and Eric Hittinger in the Marine Pollution Bulletin: Inventory and transport of plastic debris in the Laurentian Great Lakes.

18 August 2018 Plants in the News: Genomic Wheat

Genome sequencing has gotten easier and quicker over the past 40 years. But even so, some crop species have not been easy to sequence and annotate. Wheat --a hexaploid with genetic contributions from three wild progenitor species-- is a good example of maximal complexity! The Smithsonian reports that Sequencing of Wheat Genome Could Lead to a Breadier Future. Science magazine provides the details: Shifting the limits in wheat research and breeding using a fully annotated reference genome. The work is headlined as a Road Map for Wheat on the front cover of the magazine.

In the long run, our understanding of the complex genetics of domestication will lead to the successful domestication of de novo crops capable of flourishing in inhospitable environs.

14 August 2018 Plants in the News: The Soybean Wars

Trade wars between China and the United States include tariffs on soybeans that US farmers sell to China. One result was ships loaded with soybeans anchored off the coast of China awaiting some resolution of the trade wars (or a buyer willing to pay the tariff). The international complexity of grain trade is reflected in the fact that US farmers are getting hurt, but Brazilian farmers are reaping windfall profits. Curiously, soybeans (Glycine max L.) were originally domesticated in eastern Asia (probably northeastern China) about 8000 years ago. The genetic architecture of soybean domestication and comparisons with its progenitor species (Glycine soja Sieb. & Zucc.) are intensely studied by scientists. A paper by Sedivy, Wu and Hanzawa (2017) in the New Phytologist provides a recent review.

4 August 2018 Plants in the News: Weekly Crop Updates for Ontario

Getting the news from papers or TV works for most human affairs, but agriculture requires a more specialized approach. Many factors (sowing times, temperature, pest prevalence, rainfall etcetera) affect flowering, seed set and final crop yields. Detailed average rainfall maps (right) are one example of the agriculture-focused news provided by the Field Crop News, an archive of information on Ontario field crops developed and maintained by a crop technology team with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA), University of Guelph faculty and Ontario field crop producers. For farmers, it is a helpful news source. For plant biologists, it provides insight into Ontario agriculture.

29 July 2018 Plants in the News: Cyanobacterial Blooms

There has not been a lot of news coverage of cyanobacterial blooms in the Great Lakes this early in the season, but the satellite imagery is already showing extensive algal blooms in Lac St. Clair, and especially near the city of Toledo (in Ohio at the west end of Lake Erie). The cause is cyanobacteria that tend to produce an array of toxins, of which microcystins are a major health concern. The toxins can be released from the cells, and thus may be present in drinking water without any external indicator (like odor or taste). There is a recent CBC News article by Lavaniya Rajah (What you should know about toxic blue-green algae blooms) that provides a trans-Canada perspective. NOAA provides a Lake Erie specific Bulletin, updated twice weekly during a bloom.

24 July 2018 Plants in the News: Cyanogenic Clover in Heartland Ontario

White clover is complicated. Even the New York Times has mixed feelings about it: White clover can be an annoying weed. It may also hold secrets to urban evolution. They are highlighting research on cyanogenic white clover in heartland Ontario by Marc Johnson and colleagues at University of Toronto Mississauga, Agrosup in Dijon, France and University of Canberra in Bruce, Australia. Basically, there is evidence for urban/rural ecoclines in the ability of white clover to produce hydrogen cyanide in a number of Ontario towns and cities.

The subject matter is cool. Cyanogenesis is well documented in white clover (first reported by Mirande, M (1912) Sur la présence de la acide cyanhydrique dans le trèfle rampant (Trifolium repens L.) Compt. Rend. Acad. Sci. 155:651-653). Cyanogenesis does not impact white clover's common use as a forage plant in pastures and hay fields (White clover. USDA Agriculture Handbook 314, 1966). And contrary to the New York Times(!), people often sow a mix of white clover and grass in parks and suburban lawns, especially now, when herbicide use is frowned upon (or outlawed, as in Ontario), leading many to revert to the historical bluegrass and white-clover lawns of the early 1900's: (Lawn soils and lawns. USDA Farmers' Bulletin 494, 1912) (see photo above).

18 July 2018 Plants in the News: Clothing Made of Mushrooms

The idea of using mycelia to create textiles hasn't caught on with the major news media (yet), but textile and other designers are starting to 'sprout up' in North America and Europe, with names like MycoTEX and Mycoworks, and Mogu. B. Kim Taylor at Bustle provides an overview: Clothing Made Of Mushrooms Might Just Be The Future And It's Actually Pretty Cool. A more scientific angle is published by Nature --Science Reports: Advanced Materials From Fungal Mycelium: Fabrication and Tuning of Physical Properties.

There are actually GIY (Grow It Yourself) opportunities, from the long-established Ecovative Design company, where you can buy starter kits to create your own three-dimensional mycelial art.

14 July 2018 Plants in the News: Do Slime Molds Learn?

Quanta magazine provides a fascinating update on the ability of slime molds to remember: Slime Molds Remember - but Do They Learn? It is part of a long-standing controversy (and area of research) that explores the adaptive growth of slime molds under a variety of experimental conditions --proving it can habituate. Whether it exhibits primitive cognition is controversial. Randall Munroe's xkcd provides a more amusing take on why scientists find slime mold to be so beautiful.

11 July 2018: Plants in the News: Ancient Pink Pigments

Major news organizations headlined that The Earth's Oldest Color is Bright Pink. The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reported more seriously that Australian, Japanese, American and Belgium scientists sampled and identified chlorophyll progenitors (porphyrins) from 1.1-billion-year-old black shales and used them to characterize a marine ecosystem dominated by bacterial primary producers. Cyanobacteria (oxygenic) were the major group, but anoxygenic green and purple sulfur bacteria also contributed to photosynthate. There were few eukaryotic algae. Eukaryotic and multicellular organisms were not a major presence in mid-Proterozoic oceans 1600 to 1000 million years ago. Schopf (2010) provides a review on The paleobiological record of photosynthesis.

22 April 2015: Plants in the News Air-borne Micro-organisms

From the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an international consortium (many from the University of Colorado) sampled and identified bacteria and fungi in the air. Quoting from the paper: "We inhale thousands of microbial cells when we breathe in outdoor air, and some of these airborne microbes can serve as pathogens or triggers of allergic disorders. Using settled dust samples from ca 1,200 locations, we generated the first atlas, to our knowledge, of airborne bacterial and fungal distributions across the continental United States.". The map of distributions makes it clear: bacteria and fungi are everywhere (and resistance is futile).

10 February 2015: Plants in the News plantwatch

Spring will arrive soon, and it's time to think about early flowers. Or more scientifically, their flowering time (phenology). Long-term data on flowering times are important for assessing the impact of global warming. Plantwatch has been compiling flowering times of selected species across Canada as part of NatureWatch ("a community that engages all Canadians in collecting scientific information on nature to understand our changing environment"). Check out the plantwatch FAQ to see how easy it is to participate.

2 February 2015: Plants in the News The Strange and Beautiful Fungi

From BBC Earth: Six Bizarre Things about Fungi. It includes beer brewing (some think human enjoyment of fermented drinks was the cause of civilization as we know it), and mind altering drugs that produce zombie ants. They throw in high speed projectiles. And, of course, the sexual habits of the Basidiomycete Schizophyllum commune... Read and enjoy!

7 January 2015: Plants in the News Novel Antibiotics from Soil Bacteria

Students are often interested in medical microbiology, but the fact is that the most interesting microbiology happens in the dirt. A good example is the recent discovery of a novel antibiotic from soil, as reported by the New York Times: From a Pile of Dirt, Hope for a Powerful New Antibiotic. It is not yet clinically proven, but initial studies using mice are promising. The sciency article was published in Nature: A new antibiotic kills pathogens without detectable resistance.

1 January 2015: Plants in the News International Year of Soils

BBC News asked its science editors what the big stories of 2015 would be: What science stories will be big in 2015?. Climate and space made the top ten, so did Soils. This is not a surprise to a plant scientist. On the scale of evolutionary time, soils were key, crucial to the invasion of land about 500 million years ago. Now, soils feed billions of humans (and all other heterotrophs on the land surface of the planet Earth)! The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations provides a central source on The International Year of Soils.

22 November 2014: Plants in the News Monarch Butterflies: The Long Road Back

The New York Times highlights some of the recent research on Monarch butterfly populations (Monarchs may be loved to death). Monarchs lay their eggs on Milkweed (Asclepias spp.). So, many gardeners have been planting milkweed to create a Monarch-friendly zone. The problem is that the common horticultural variety is not a native plant. Scientists are worried that gardeners may be harming the Monarch butterfly population because the timing of egg laying could be disrupted in the non-native species. No one is really sure what the impact is, just worried. But the take-home message is clear: If you want to plant milkweed for the Monarch butterflies, Go Native.

24 October 2014: Plants in the News Sex and the Single Fern

There is a lot of research on sex determination in biological organisms, including the ferns. Sometimes it catches the eye of the media. Ars Technica reported Ferns send signals to decide what sex to be. The work was done on the Japanese climbing fern, which is an invasive weed in southeast North America. During early development of the gametophyte, the female archegonium secretes a plant hormone (gibberellin) that induces formation of the male antheridia. The sciency article in the journal Science is deeply enmeshed in hormone biochemistry, but the Perspective article (Sex and the single fern) provides an accessible explanation. When you work with C-Fern in the Plant Biology Labs, you will get to see this for yourself. The image shows an hermaphrodite surrounded by male gametophytes from the lab exercise section: Fern Development Images. Does similar hormonal control of sex determination occur in C-Ferns?

17 September 2014: Plants in the News The Art of the Diatom

The New York Times highlights the Artistry of the Diatom, showing a preview of a movie by the filmmaker Matthew Killip: The Diatomist , a short documentary on the work of Klaus Kemp. One of Klaus Kemp's slides is shown in the image to the left (click for a larger version). This is a utilitarian example that is used to test the resolution of microscopes. In Victorian times, microscopists would arrange the diverse forms of diatoms in larger assemblages. It was art under the microscope, and extraordinarily beautiful due to how diatoms interact with light (they are photonic crystals). Klaus Kemp is a modern practitioner of the Art of the Diatom. Artistic examples are provided in the The Diatomist [vimeo] documentary.

21 August 2014: Plants in the News Algal Blooms

The news coverage of cyanobacterial blooms in the Great Lakes has been extensive, especially since the city of Toledo (in Ohio at the west end of Lake Erie) had to post a warning not to use city water (now lifted). The cause is cyanobacteria and their tendency to produce an array of toxins, of which microcystins are a major health concern. The toxins can be released from the cells, and thus may be present in drinking water without any external indicator (like odor or taste). Rather than provide a link to some of the news articles, here is a link to a Cyanobacteria Factsheet [pdf] that provides more detailed information about the problem, the toxins, and assay methods. Some York graduates are employed in water quality testing jobs. The Great Lakes Research Consortium is an umbrella organization connecting aquatic biologists (and others) throughout the Great Lakes region.

6 August 2014: Plants in the News The Creeping Garden

One of the heterotroph groups we explore in Plant Biology is the plasmodial slime mould (Physarum). It has often been used in scientific research, but also as a tool for exploring rudimentary 'intelligence' and even in artistic works. All of this (and the greater diversity of the slime moulds) is captured in a documentary movie, The Creeping Garden. A preview is available on Vimeo: The Creeping Garden - official trailer. You can read a review of the movie on Twitch ("enigmatic, unique and fascinating as its subject matter, almost beyond categorisation, but filled with an insatiable child-like sense of wonder.").

15 July 2014: Plants in the News Strawberries on Mars? LED lighting for growing plants

For a trip to Mars, you really have to plan ahead, and minimize the luggage you bring with you. That includes growing your own food, and ecosystem-style recycling. Mike Dixon at the University of Guelph is exploring the use of LED lamps to grow food, maybe on a trip to Mars?. LED lighting uses very little electrical power, and can be 'tuned' to provide optimal wavelengths for plant growth and food production. His research was highlighted by CBC news: Canadian LED research looks to grow strawberries on Mars. We use LED lighting in the photosynthesis teaching lab, so you will have an opportunity to check out optimal wavelengths for photosynthesis in your own experiments.

26 June 2014: Plants in the News Food of the Future?

Most of the food we eat comes from only a very few domesticated plants species. And many of these are grown commercially as monocultures --thus susceptible to newly evolved pathogens. So plant scientists have always been interested in plant species that could readily be converted into crop species. Ground nut (Apios americana) is one example. Wired magazine provides an overview: How We Can Tame Overlooked Wild Plants to Feed the World. Another common name --traveler's delight-- gives an idea of it's nature. It was used by native americans as a food stuff: Both the seeds and tubers are edible. The image is a colorized version of a scientific illustration from 1898, drawn by Sadie Price, who discovered a new species of Apios. It was named Apios priceana in her honour: A new species of Apios from Kentucky. Apios priceana is now considered endangered because of habitat loss. Its more common relative Apios americana is not endangered.

19 June 2014: Plants in the News The Deadly Mandrake

That plants inspire fantastic myths is really no surprise. After all, they often contain medicinal and psychoactive compounds that affect humans, health and minds. Wired magazine had fun with one such plant: the Mandrake. If you enjoyed the Harry Potter books, mandrakes were highlighted in the Chamber of Secrets. Wired has lots more to say about the Fantastically Wrong Murderous Plant. Mandrake is a common term used to describe a mix of plant species. The notorious mandrake is the European species Mandragora officinarum (a member of the Solanaceae --Deadly Nightshade-- family). A local species sometimes called mandrake is Podophyllum peltatum (more commonly, Mayapple). Podophyllum grows in the Boyer woodlot. A scholarly description of the notorious mandrake is provided by Anthony Carter: Myths and mandrakes, published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.

22 March 2014: Plants in the News Ferns, Back To The Future?

Fossil ferns are abundant, but not ferns that retain their cellular structure down to the level of being able to image the chromosomes inside the cell! Swedish researchers unearthed royal ferns from about 180,000,000 years ago that retained their cellular characteristics because they were pre-mineralized by calcite from a hydrothermal brine. An article in Science provides the whole story: Fossilized Nuclei and Chromosomes Reveal 180 Million Years of Genomic Stasis in Royal Ferns. The ancient ferns are very similar to their present counterparts. Apparently, not much as changed in 180 million years!
Update (24 March): Ars Technica and the Economist are two news outlets that have picked up the story.

3 February 2014: Plants in the News Fungal Highways

The whole notion of interhyphal transport in fungi has been explored in mathematical detail by Louise Glass and her colleagues, in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: Nuclear dynamics in a fungal chimera. It even got highlighted in the New York Times (Science Takes): The Fungus Highway. The research relies upon the availability of fungal strains (and mutants) for basic research. It is a good example of how model organisms like Neurospora crassa can enlighten our understanding about how other organisms function.

23 January 2014: Plants in the News The Perfect Veggie?

Ever since the molecular biology revolution took hold in the 1970's, plants have been in the forefront. The reason for this is the ease of transformation and the totipotent nature of most plant cells (from which whole plants can be regenerated). But GMOs (genetically modified organisms) have gotten a bad name amongst consumers, who worry that they will become what they eat, even though no real hazard has ever been identified with GMOs. Monsanto has a bad reputation in this regard because it is the source of well-known GMOs (especially Round Up Ready varieties of major crop plants). Now, Monsanto is turning over a new leaf, developing new varieties of vegetables and fruits using old-fashioned breeding methods. Wired magazine tells the story: Monsanto Is Going Organic in a Quest for the Perfect Veggie.

20 January 2014: Plants in the News Cyanobacterial Bubbles?

Even in the modern era (the last 2000 million years), cyanobacteria still account for much of global photosynthetic productivity (Prochlorcoccus alone --highlighted here-- accounts for 10%). Yet we still know so little. The latest was highlighted in Wired magazine --Mysterious Microscopic Bubbles Baffle Ocean Scientists-- describing work from the Chisholm lab on mysterious vesicles that form on the surface of Prochlorococcus cells and then bleb off. The vesicles contain protein and DNA, and no one really knows why this happens (feeding surrounding heterotrophic bacteria is one suggestion). The sciency article was published in Science: Bacterial vesicles in marine ecosystems.

10 December 2013: Plants in the News Green Eggs and Mayonnaise?

Plant Biology is a lot more than just smelling the flowers. It often is very directly related to Food Science. Wired Magazine covers one aspect of this --The Startup Using Peas and Algae to Make Super Eggs-- that describes the search for plant proteins that can be used to create foods like mayonnaise and eggs. In the long-term, the value-added for us is food on the table at a much lower price (plants use photosynthesis and don't have to be fed and cared for like chickens). For now, finding plant proteins that work is the major challenge.

30 November 2013: Plants in the News Jobs for Botanists?

Are there jobs for Botanists? Apparently so. The US News and World Report published an article The Academic Decline: How to Train the Next Generation of Botanists that describes the need for botanically trained biologists. The article describes the situation in the States, but similar scenarios exist in Canada. Students with a botanical background can work in a variety of jobs: From environmental assessment (and law) to science outreach. Many times, the jobs don't advertise for a 'Botanist', rather as Natural Resource Specialists, Soil Scientists, or Rangeland Management Specialists and the like. And, the job can be broader than just Botany (e.g. Field Biologist). You can get an idea about jobs for biologists from the Undergraduate Biology Careers in Biology webpage.

18 October 2013: Plants in the News Saving Us from Global Warming

Everyone knows that plants sequester atmospheric carbon dioxide because of photosynthesis. The question has always been how much of a role this plays in controlling atmospheric carbon dioxide in the short-term (centuries rather than millions of years)? Phys.org reports the answer: Without Plants: Earth Would Cook. The reason is a reversal in how humans use the land. Since the 1950s, re-forestration has been significant, significant enough to sequester about 186 billion to 192 billion tons of carbon. The sciency article was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It's a good reason to Plant a Tree!

15 July 2013: Plants in the News Microbial Dark Matter

Last year, when a student informed me that a teacher had told her that "taxonomy is dead", I was shocked. The truth is that when it comes to taxonomy, the tree of life is under constant --even surprising-- revision. The reason is sequencing. Only 15 years ago, scientists believed that plants and fungi were related. They aren't: sequencing revealed that fungi are very closely related to animals, and diverged only recently on the scale of evolutionary time. Similarly, microbial taxonomy changes daily. BBC News reported on the Genetic Secrets of Microbes based on sequencing of 201 microbe genomes from a diversity of environments. The crucial issue is that DNA sequencing has become so good that genomes can be sequenced from microbes that can't be cultured in a lab, the so-called 'cryptic biome'. The sciency report was published in Nature. The results are yet another upheaval in the revolution known as taxonomy, where 'things change faster than we can die'.

28 June 2013: Plants in the News The Bee's Buzz on Plant Sex

When the New York Times headlines Unraveling the Pollinating Secrets of a Bee's Buzz, you have to wonder how far a plant will go! It turns out that co-evolution works in very mysterious ways. Carl Zimmer writes about the scientists who explore a fairly common --if poorly understood-- pollination technique in which flowers will provide pollen as a food source for pollinating bees, but force the bee (often fairly large bumble bees) to 'shake' the flower at just the right frequency to release the pollen. Needless to say, some of the pollen won't get eaten, and may get dropped off at the next flower the bee visits, with a good chance of successful pollination. Students sometime notice that Plant Biology is all about sex, now it should be clear why: Plant Sex is Everywhere....

23 June 2013: Plants in the News Can plants do math?

No they can't. But that didn't stop BBC News from posting Plants 'do maths' on their world news website. They are reporting on recent research out of UK's John Innes Centre on regulation of starch breakdown overnight based on the quantity of starch produced the day before due to photosynthesis. The scientists claimed that plants had to be able to math: "This is pre-GCSE maths they're doing, but they're doing maths." At least BBC had the sense to quote a disinterested scientist who cautioned: "This is not evidence for plant intelligence. It simply suggests that plants have a mechanism designed to automatically regulate how fast they burn carbohydrates at night. Plants don't do maths voluntarily and with a purpose in mind like we do." It's worthwhile being careful about what you claim. Biochemical feedback loops are the norm in any organism. To claim it is "pre-GCSE math" is mis-leading.

Funaria Moss 28 May 2013: Plants in the News A Little Ice Age Moss Resurrects

Catherine La Farge and her colleagues at University of Alberta study glacier retreat in the far North. They noticed dead mosses --buried for 400 years-- looked green. It turns out they were alive, surviving under the glacer since the Little Ice Age in the 1600's. The news media has been having a real outing with this one. Someone commented that mosses could be first colonizers on Mars and it went viral after that. Highlighted in BBC News and elsewhere, the sciency article was just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

15 March 2013: Plants in the News A microbial Crypto-Ecosystem

We don't spend a lot of time on bacterial diversity, but microbes are where life began, and it turns out they are intimately associated with upwelling magma in the oceans. It turns out that they live on sulfur provided from the molten core of the earth. Sulfur-utilizing bacteria have been known for a while, but scientists are only now beginning to understand how vast this Crypto-Ecosystem is. Highlighted in Wired Magazine, the sciency article was just published in Science magazine. These are chemotrophs, quite different from the decomposer bacteria that proliferate in oceans sediments, even as deep as 11 km, also highlighted (18 March) in BBC News, with the science described in Nature Geoscience.

21 February 2013: Plants in the News Patented Inventions that Self-Replicate: Roundup Ready Soybean

We don't begin to explore the human economics of plants until the end of the course. But there is a US Supreme Court case --Bowman v. Monsanto Co.-- that raises fascinating questions of the ownership of self-replicating patent inventions. Roundup Ready soybean was first introduced in the mid 1990's and now accounts for 90% of the soybean crop in the US (it's also grown in Canada, but only in warmer regions like southern Ontario). The soybeans contain a gene conferring resistance to the herbicide Roundup, which makes weed control much easier and cheaper, hence its wide adoption by farmers. Bowman bought soybeans from a grain elevator and planted them, then sprayed with Roundup (selecting only the Roundup Ready variety); Monsanto (owner of the patent) sued. So far, the courts have ruled in favour of Monsanto; Oral arguments [pdf] happened last week at the US Supreme Court. The question is whether a patent becomes exhausted in a self-replicating invention. The legal aspects are complex, but the implications for commercial development of genetically modified organisms could be dramatic. An article in the New York Times gives a good sense of the background and the implications. Update: The Supreme Court ruled for Monsanto.

15 February 2013: Plants in the News Poisonous Chocolate?

The day after Valentine's Day, Wired Magazine runs an article about The Poisonous Chemistry of Chocolate. It's a fascinating read about the toxicology of theobromine, including LD50. The risk is greatest for dogs that eat chocolate, but it will certainly encourage you not to overindulge!

7 January 2013: Plants in the News Think you have Rabies? Genetically engineered plants could provide a cure.

EurekaAlert posted a hot off the presses article on the recent development of an antibody against rabies, produced in genetically engineered tobacco plants. Producing vaccines in plants is not a new idea. This example is slightly different. The antibody would act as a prophylaxis: Given if someone is bitten by an animal suspected to be rabid, to prevent the disease progression if indeed the animal was rabid. It could very well be helpful for those infected with Rabies by providing a relativly low cost treatment. The sciency article was published in The FASEB Journal.

19 January 2013: Plants in the News Will the Canadian government be hiring a taxonomist?

They might have to, after botanists pointed out the new 20 dollar bill features an invasive species (Norway Maple) rather than the Sugar Maple. Here's a report from BBC News. You can check the differences between the two species by clicking on the leaf image. Norway maple (Acer platanoides) has bristle tips and exudes a milky sap when cut. It's an example of a European species introduced as an ornamantal, now naturalized.

7 January 2013: Plants in the News Aquaplaning to get a meal.

One way insectivorous plants trap insects is aquaplaning --creating a surface so smooth the insect slips down into the waiting pool of digestive juices. Huffington Post describes recent scientific findings, including a video. Beside Plant Biologists who enjoy the Revenge of the Plants, bioengineers study how plants do it closely. It's part of biomimetics and the development of self-cleaning surfaces. The 'sciency' report was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society (Biological Sciences).

Square Watermelon 28 November 2012: Plants in the News Genomic Watermelon.

An international consortia recently sequenced the genome of a watermelon. Watermelons were initially domesticated by humans 4000 years ago in Egypt. The sequence may be used to develop new varieties: tastier, more beautiful and even healthier. Not surprisingly, watermelons have about the same number of genes as the human genome. Here's one news article (from Nanowerk). The science was published in Nature Genetics. The sequence is publicly available at the Cucurbit Genomics Database.

PhotoArt by Catherine Nelson 1 November 2012: Plants in the News Micro Worlds by Catherine Nelson.

Wired Magazine highlights the PhotoArt of Catherine Nelson, who uses state-of-the-art photocomposite techniques to build Micro-Planets. At least for me, they are a remarkable reminder that --as human populations increase-- our world is becoming smaller. Her landscapes are filled with botanical life. Here is coverage by Wired and Catherine Nelson's Website.

Gaga Fern 27 October 2012: Plants in the News Going Gaga over Ferns.

The New York Times covered the recent discovery of a new fern genus: Germinated This Way: The Ferns Named Gaga. The new genus does have a unique DNA repetitive sequence (GAGA), but the truth is the taxonomists who did the research just like Lady Gaga, and enshrined her in science with her own genus. Here is a link to Lady Gaga dressed as a fern [youtube link].

30 March 2012: Plants in the News The economics and politics of crop plants.

We've already explored the economic role of crop plants in human affairs --The Potato Famine of the 1800's... caused by the Oomycete Phytopthera that resulted in large-scale human migrations. Often considered the food of the poor, the potato has also become a symbol of overcoming economic challenges in Modern Times. The business media company Bloomberg published a report on how Greeks Embrace Potato as Symbol of Struggle to Survive Austerity. The news article includes commentary by York Professor Sakis Gekas.

8 March 2012: Plants in the News Phenology and Global Warming.

Phenology is the study of plant (and animal) life cycle events, of which the most dramatic is flowering in the spring. It is certainly in the news (mostly local):

Signs of the season, a phenology program

Let Nature tell you when to plant

Signs of Spring: Earlier this Year?

Many amateur scientists participate in recording bud break and flowering to create phenological maps. Are the maps changing? Maybe. With global warming, flowering will tend to occur earlier, though it is hard to separate year-by-year variation from long-term trends. The photo shows flower bud break of two native early flowerers in the Boyer Woodlot: Maple and Populus, taken yesterday (7 March 2012). The maples broke bud much later in 2009 (16 march [jpg]). The flowers should mature within two weeks, weather permitting.

Update (13 March 2012): Even earlier... The female and male flowers of the silver maple have reached maturity a week or after bud break. This is much earlier than last year (2011) when they reach maturity 3 April [png]. Populus flowers are lagging.

Update (20 March 2012): And now the Populus flowers have reached maturity. Erythronium and Trillium haven't broken out of the soil in the Boyer Woodlot yet --and may not until the danger of a late cold snap is over. Since they are insect pollinated (rather than wind-pollinated like maples and poplar), they need to time flowering in conjunction with bee emergence.

Update (25 March 2012): Now Erythronium is beginning to emerge (although it will be a few weeks before the flowers unfold). Still no Trilliums ... see Phytofile

Update (4 April 2012): The first Trilliums have appeared!

[polar bear crossing 3 March 2012: Plants in the News 'Doomsday Vault' holds seeds that could save the world.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault --located north of Norway's mainland-- was completed four years ago. No one stays there, and it is only opened a few days every year to store more seeds. The seeds are naturally kept at a cold temperature to ensure longevity. MSNBC provides an update. Here is the Seed Vault website.

19 February 2012: Plants in the News Getting friendly with bees.

Researchers at the University of Sussex (hopefully including undergraduate students!) spent a few months in the garden, figuring out which flowering plant species attract the most bee pollinators. BBC Nature provides a slide show of their results. The underlying research comes from the Laboratory of Apiculture and Social Insects.

15 February 2012: Plants in the News Solving Darwin's Abominable Mystery

Darwin's Abominable Mystery still perplexes today, with new hypotheses every once in a while. The effect of gene duplication of MADS-box genes --a family of transcription factors that are required for flower development-- is a recent proposed culprit, as described in a press release from ScienceDaily. William Friedman describes the history of Darwin's mystery in the American Journal of Botany. The research on gene duplications is described in Genome Research, although it's not an easy read.

7 February 2012: Plants in the News Humble Moss Cooled the Earth

The Invasion of Land was a big deal in more ways than one. Recent research points to the roles of mosses, the first land invaders, in lowering carbon dioxide levels and triggering mini-ice ages. The carbon dioxide 'drawdown' was caused in part by biogenic weathering of rocks to soil. BBC News highlights the recent research. The underlying science was published in Nature Geoscience.

22 January 2012: Plants in the News Mushroom-based Packaging

The idea of growing packaging material from a mix of agricultural waste with a fungus to create a strong and light-weight mycelium-based structure has been in the news quite often. Last April, Dell announced it would use the novel packaging material for shipping computers, as described in Wired Magazine. Eben Bayer describes the innovative approach in a TED Talk. The new packaging is biodegradable, and would replace a lot of styrofoam.

18 January 2012: Plants in the News Farming Seaweed for Biofuels

The Guardian (a newspaper in the UK) headlined the use of seaweed as a biofuel. The key is the engineering of a genetically modified prokaryote that can ferment alginate to ethanol. The scientific research behind the headlines was published in Science.

18 January 2012: Plants in the News Dinophyta's Toxic Hunting Habits

Recent research on Hunting with Toxins has identified the reason why the Dinophyta Karlodinium veneficum produces karlotoxins. It is to stun fish before feeding on them. The research was highlighted in a press release from Johns Hopkins University. The details of the research were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

5 January 2012: Plants in the News Biomimicking Photosynthesis

The recent research on artificial photosynthesis is growing to an ever-increasing intensity. In a paper published last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Lubner and colleagues report on an artificial nanoconstruct that mimicks natural light-driven electron transport at a very high efficiency. The product of the reaction is hydrogen fuel.

7 December 2011: Plants in the News More Evidence Found for Quantum Physics in Photosynthesis

We don't spend much lecture time on Photosynthesis (so little time, so much to explore) but it is extraordinarily important globally and intensely researched. It turns out that photosynthetic organisms discovered Quantum Physics 3500 million years ago! Quantum tunneling is used to transfer excitons duirng light harvesting, the first part of the light reactions. Wired Magazine has the latest development.

30 November 2011: Plants in the News Farming algae

There is a growing interest in farming algae to produce various products, including biofuels. Most algal farms are at the trial stages, as industry works to scale up the farms to commercially viable sizes. The state of the nascent industry was worthy of note on the BBC News website's Business Section.

4 October 2011: Plants in the News The New York Times takes notice of slime

The slime molds get into the news a lot: They are a (relatively) simple model system for studies of multicellularity and even the evolution of transport systems. The New York Times decided this was news fit to print, presenting an overview of the current state of knowledge scientists have learned from the cellular and acellular slime molds.

6 September 2011: Plants in the News Plants build a perch for birds

The explosive evolution of pollination mechanisms is really all about the co-evolution of plants and animals. A Toronto botanist and colleagues discovered a remarkable variation on this theme: The South African plant Babiana ringens has bright red flowers near the ground, and 'grows' a perch above the flower to encourage birds to land and pollinate the flower. Here is the news blurb from BBC. The research was published in the Annals of Botany.

5 April 2011: Plants in the News Plant lives inside animal: algae invade amphibian cells

Symbiosis takes a multitude of different forms (of which the lichens have always struck me as the most remarkable). This example is an Alga/Vertebrate endosymbiosis: The alga lives inside the cells of the embryo, and may be inherited from the parents. Here is a news blurb from BBC. It was discovered by researchers at Dalhousie in Halifax. The research was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

Go to Miscellanea