Strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, and… groundcherries? A little-known fruit about the size of a marble could become agriculture’s next big berry crop. To prepare the groundcherry (Physalis pruinosa) for mainstream farming, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator Zachary Lippman, Joyce Van Eck at the Boyce Thompson Institute, and colleagues combined genomics …
Scientists from State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY ESF) state their plans on asking approval from U.S. regulators about breeding transgenic chestnut trees with non-engineered trees to restore the species. These transgenic trees are highly regulated in the U.S. and would be the first …
A plant that takes metal from the ground all by itself: a natural way to mine or to clean the soil. Ph.D. student Roderick Bouman described a new plant species from Sabah, Borneo, which can be used to extract nickel. In an open access article in Botanical studies, he and …
Information about the organization and evolution of plastomes is crucial to improve crop plants and to resolve the phylogeny of photosynthetic organisms. In a recent study published in PLoS ONE researchers of the Finnish Museum of Natural History, University of Helsinki, sequenced the chloroplast genome of a weed called bittersweet …
Highly complex interactions among roots, fungi and bacteria underlie the ability of some trees to clean polluted land, according to a novel study by bioinformatics and plant-biology experts from McGill University and Université de Montréal. Fast-growing trees, such as willows, are known to tolerate and even rejuvenate soil contaminated with …
Imaginature Ltd is a company specialized in cut-flower development. Recently, the company has applied for approval from the National Biosafety Authority (NBA) in Kenya for open field trials related to growing GM Gypsophila in the country. Usually the flowers of Gypsophila or also known as “Baby’s Breath” are white in …
International consortium led by a team from Wageningen University and Research – Netherlands, sequenced the genome of the resurrecting plant Xerophyta viscosa, which is capable to survive long periods of extreme drought conditions. Resurrecting plants are a group of species representatives of different genera which are distinguished by their ability …
