Plants in the News--Spring 2012
April 25, 2012 -- Could organic crop production feed the world? -- McGill University, University of Minnesota
April 24, 2012 -- Surprise!  Pod corn is a mutant, not an ancenstral form of maize -- Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne and Friedrich Schiller University in Jena
April 23, 2012 -- Minimizing the ecological impacts of biofuel crop plant production -- Friedrich Schiller University in Jena and the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ)and the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ)
April 21, 2012 -- History is a key factor in plant disease virulence -- University of California System and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service
April 18, 2012 -- Increasing algae production for biofuel by an order of magnitude --Ben Gurion Universit of the Negrev
April 13, 2012 --  How did ancestral cyanobacteria genes get into the green plant genome? Movement of chloroplast DNA into plant cell nuclear DNA can happen by direct transfer (rather than via mRNA) -- Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology
April 12, 2012-- Using DNA sequencing to identify (worrisome) contents of some Chinese traditional medicine preparations--Murdoch University
April 12, 2012 --Scientists are hopeful a transgenic American Chestnut will return this iconic tree to the American landscape--SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) in Syracuse; American Chestnut Foundation
April 9, 2012 --Forest pests and diseases often arrive in the U.S. via imported plants -- UC Santa Barbara's National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis
April 9, 2012 -- Climate helps, then stunts plant growth --Northern Arizona University
April 6, 2012 --Predicting which plants will be most susceptible to drought --UCLA
April 6, 2012-- Several of the plants we studied at the greenhouse have featured in the news recently:  Vanilla, chocolate, and cochineal (Note:  Starbucks has said it will stop using cochineal)
April 5, 2012--Plant derivative could replace costly whale ambergris in perfumes -- University of British Columbia
April 5, 2012 --Cause of honeybee Colony Collapse Disorder may have been pinpointed -- Harvard Institute of Public Health, supported by two other studies  -- Note that honeybees are essential pollinators of many of our food plants. Also note that pesticide-contaminated high-fructose corn syrup is implicated. 
April 4, 2012 -- New corn-like sorghum could provide forage in drought-prone areas -- University of Copenhagen
April 3, 2012 -- Gene sequence for algae could lead to industrial scale production of biofuel -- Virginia Bioinformatics Institute
April 3, 2012--The stinky Amorphophallus (which we saw at the greenhouse) evolved part of its scent to mimic chemicals produced by pollinators (as opposed to co-evolution of plant and pollinator, as is usually the case) -- University of Zurich
March 29, 2012 --Scientists successfully clone elms resistant to Dutch Elm disease -- University of Guelph
March 21, 2012-- Panda poo contributes to the price of the world's most expensive tea (ca. $200/cup.) -- CNN
March 20, 2012 -- Noise levels can affect plants for good or ill by affecting pollinators and dispersers  -- National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in Durham, North Carolina  (Note that the old experiment "proving" plants respond to music or yelling has been debunked)
March 11, 2012 -- A breakthrough in the breeding of salt-tolerant wheat -- University of Adelaide, Australia.  Consider the implications for regions where soil or irrigation water is saline.
March 8, 2012 -- Foraging safely for edible plants -- Saint Joseph's University
March 7, 2012 -- Eat a berry, save your brain -- Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. This might be helpful at exam time.
March 6, 2012 -- A new method for producing vegetarian "meat" -- Fraunhofer Institute for Process Engineering and Packaging IVV  Note that one of the ingredients is lupine--a relative of our bluebonnet.
March 5, 2012 -- Seaweed may be the biofuel of the future -- Tel Aviv University, Renewable Energy Center, Israel Oceanography Institute, Bar-Ilan University, and  Ben-Gurion University
February 28, 2012 -- Plants with mutated cellulose may make better biofuels -- U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory, and  Iowa State
February 27, 2012 -- Indigenous Peoples at Forefront of Climate Change Offer Lessons On Plant Biodiversity-- William L. Brown Center of the Missouri Botanical Garden
February 23, 2012 -- Eat a pummelo or a kumquat, prevent a stroke--health benefits of Citrus -- Norwich Medical School in the University of East Anglia, United Kingdom
February 21, 2012 --  New light shed on the origins of photosynthesis in plants (support for the endosymbiosis theory ) --  Rutgers University
February 21, 2012 -- Scientists succeed in growing a plant from 30,000 year old seeds found in the Russian permafrost -- Russian Academy of Sciences.  What does this tell us about what germplasm might be lost as permafrost melts worldwide?
February 20, 2012 -- Rainforest avocado relative is a source of antibiotics effective on resistant bacteria (Persea) -- University of Copenhagen  Note that the author of the news article is confused about systematics and says that the plant is in the Persea "family" when what he means is the GENUS Persea.
February 17, 2012 -- Scientist work to create an artificial photosynthesis that would produce hydrogen for fuel, better plant growth, etc. -- various research projects
Februrary 16, 2012 -- Wait!  That "healthy" food could harm you -- Brown rice syrup may contain arsenic -- Dartmouth University
February 15, 2012 -- Temperature may change disease resistance in wheat -- Texas AgriLife, Amarillo
February 15, 2012 -- Creating plants that directly produce fuel in their tissues (rather than growing plants to compost or ferment into fuel) -- Texas A&M University
February 9, 2012 -- A smart use for old produce-- Make methane! -- Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology IGB, Stuttgart 
February 9, 2012 --  What does herbicide use get you?  Herbicide-resistant weeds! -- Penn State
February 7, 2012 -- World's smelliest plant has a new relative that is smaller--but just as stinky (Amorphophallus perrieri)  -- Univrsity of Utah
February 6, 2012 -- Would you pay more for a sustainably-produced cotton shirt?  Many would! -- University of Missouri
February 2, 2012 -- Cancer-fighting "smart bomb" derived from a poisonous member of the carrot family shows great promise in trials (Thapsia garganica) -- GenSpera, a company based in San Antonio
February 1, 2012 -- Potatoes can lower blood pressure without raising weight (so stop ragging on the spuds!) -- ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry
February 1, 2012 -- Horizontal gene transfer occurs in plants -- chloroplast DNA can be exchanged by non-related plants growing in proximity -- Max Planck Institute of Plant Physiology
February 1, 2012 --Uh oh.  The first plants caused ice ages. -- Universities of Exeter and Oxford.
February, 2012 -- All sorts of big doings at the 20th World Orchid Conference in Singapore -- Smithsonian.  Check out the features and image gallery linked from this page.
January 29, 2012 -- Well-managed grassland soils do better at holding onto carbon than intensively-farmed wheat-- Lancaster University. 
January 27, 2012 -- Engineering crop plants to make them more palatable and less toxic -- Norwegian University of Science and Technology
January 25, 2012 -- Watermelon plants grafted onto squash take up higher concentrations of pesticides -- Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry
January 25, 2012 -- The amino acid methionine proves to be effective at controlling a serious caterpillar pest of citrus  (and it breaks down into fertilizer!) -- Univ. of Florida campus at the Florida Museum of Natural History's  Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity, College of Medicine
January 25, 2012 --Barley (Hordeum vulgare) can adapt to climate change to have higher biomass and more efficient use of water -- University of the Basque Country
January 18, 2012-- Seeds of "miracle plant" (Moringa) could help provide cheap, sustainable drinking water--Penn State.  Full text of the paper is here--can be accessed from within the A&M firewall.
January 16, 2012 -- Plants that produce less carotene are less likely to be infected by the parasitic plant Striga -- Wageningen University   But what does this say about efforts to breed crops like rice with higher carotene content in order to provide more vitamin A in countries where vitamin A deficiency contributes to blindness?
January 13, 2012 -- Gene which controls transfer of nutrients from parent plant to seed has been located, with implications for food production  --Warwick University
January 10, 2012 -- Lignin, a waste product of the paper industry (among others) may be useful in improving unpaved roads -- Kansas State University
January 8, 2012 -- Scientists find evidence of global warming's effects on European mountain vegetation -- Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and others