Seeds News

April 24, 2024

Top Headlines

The Spiciness of Mustard May Depend on Soil Microbes

Apr. 22, 2024 — New study finds microbes may influence the taste of mustard ...

Making Crops Colorful for Easier Weeding

Apr. 17, 2024 — To make weeding easier, scientists suggest bioengineering crops to be colorful or to have differently shaped leaves so that they can be more easily distinguished from their wild and weedy counterparts. This could involve altering the crops' genomes ...

Seed Ferns: Plants Experimented With Complex Leaf Vein Networks 201 Million Years Ago

Apr. 16, 2024 — According to a research team led by palaeontologists, the net-like leaf veining typical for today's flowering plants developed much earlier than previously thought, but died out again several times. ...

Tropical Forests Can't Recover Naturally Without Fruit-Eating Birds

Apr. 15, 2024 — Natural forest regeneration is hailed as a cost-effective way to restore biodiversity and sequester carbon. However, the fragmentation of tropical forests has restricted the movement of large birds limiting their capacity to disperse seeds and ...

Latest Headlines

updated 10:52pm EDT

Biofortified Rice to Combat Deficiencies

Apr. 11, 2024 — Vitamin B1 is an essential micronutrient for human beings. Its deficiency is the cause of numerous diseases of the nervous and cardiovascular systems. Researchers have achieved a significant advance ...

Summer Solstice Triggers Synchronized Beech Tree Reproduction Across Europe

Mar. 13, 2024 — A new study has found that the summer solstice acts as a 'starting gun' to synchronize beech tree reproduction across vast distances in Europe, affecting ecosystem ...

Rainforest's Next Generation of Trees Threatened 30 Years After Logging

Mar. 12, 2024 — Rainforest seedlings are more likely to survive in natural forests than in places where logging has happened -- even if tree restoration projects have taken place, new research ...

Small Dietary Changes Can Cut Your Carbon Footprint by 25%

Feb. 29, 2024 — New research provides compelling evidence that partially substituting animal with plant protein foods can increase life expectancy and decrease greenhouse gas emissions. Importantly, it also suggests ...

Modeling Tree Masting

Feb. 21, 2024 — The effects of a phenomenon called tree masting on ecosystems and food webs can be better understood thanks to new theoretical models validated by real world ...

Asexual Propagation of Crop Plants Gets Closer

Feb. 15, 2024 — When the female gametes in plants become fertilized, a signal from the sperm activates cell division, leading to the formation of new plant seeds. This activation can also be deliberately triggered ...

Pesticides to Help Protect Seeds Can Adversely Affect Earthworms' Health

Feb. 14, 2024 — While pesticides protect crops from hungry animals, pesky insects, or even microbial infections, they also impact other vital organisms, including bees and earthworms. And today, research reveals ...

Nutrition Needs Drive Bee Appetites

Jan. 8, 2024 — Scientists studied the foraging habits of wild bees. Their findings can help guide seed and plant choices that support and enhance wild bee populations. In short, their research showed that different ...

Wildflowers Increasingly Doing Without Insect Pollinators

Dec. 21, 2023 — Scientists have discovered that flowering plants growing in farmland are increasingly doing without insect pollinators. As reproduction becomes more difficult for them in an environment depleted in ...

Mysterious Fruit Shown to Be the Oldest Known Fossils of the Frankincense and Myrrh Family

Dec. 19, 2023 — Early in the 1970s, paleontologists discovered strange fossilized fruits between hardened rock from one of the largest volcanic eruptions in Earth's ...

Human Activity Facilitates Invasive Plants' Colonization in Mediterranean Ecosystems

Jan. 12, 2024 — Some invasive plants can form persistent banks of seeds that remain under the soil for years, and this makes their eradication practically impossible. Over time, this invisible population of large ...

Plant Nurseries Are Exacerbating the Climate-Driven Spread of 80% of Invasive Species

Dec. 5, 2023 — Researchers have provided detailed maps of how 144 common invasive plants species will react to 2° Celsius of climate change in the eastern U.S., as well as the role that garden centers currently ...

Public Gardens Contribute to Invasives Problem

Dec. 1, 2023 — Some nonnative plants cultivated in public gardens or arboretums are escaping to become invasive in wild ...

How Far Can the Wind Can Carry a Plant's Seeds? New Model

Nov. 30, 2023 — Playing an essential foundational role in an ecosystem, plants contribute to the well-being of human health by helping create resources like food and medicine. Therefore, to better understand how ...

Microbes Could Help Reduce the Need for Chemical Fertilizers

Nov. 15, 2023 — A new metal-organic coating protects bacterial cells from damage without impeding their growth or function. The coated bacteria, which produce ammonia, could make it much easier for farmers to deploy ...

Genetic Discovery Promises High-Iron Vegetables and Cereals

Nov. 15, 2023 — A genetic breakthrough has opened new opportunities for iron-fortified vegetables and cereal crops to help address the global health issue of ...

The Fascinating Relationship Between Mice and a Plant That Flowers Once a Century in Terms of Seed Dispersal

Nov. 6, 2023 — Researchers have discovered several factors that affect field mouse behavior using seeds from dwarf bamboo plants, a plant that flowers once in a century. Their findings not only suggest the ...

Sunflower Extract Fights Fungi to Keep Blueberries Fresh

Oct. 25, 2023 — Opening a clamshell of berries and seeing them coated in fuzzy mold is a downer. And it's no small problem. Gray mold and other fungi, which cause fruit to rot, lead to significant economic ...

Soil Carried on Sea Freight Loaded With Dangerous Pests and Diseases, Research Finds

Oct. 25, 2023 — While sea freight is recognised as a pathway for the movement of exotic organisms, there is little research that has quantified the risk. Soil collected from the external surfaces of sea freight was ...

Small but Mighty: The Hidden Power of Broccoli Sprouts

Oct. 24, 2023 — A research team has found that polysulfides are abundant in broccoli sprouts. They found that the amount of polysulfides increased dramatically during growth, by an approximately 20-fold in seeds by ...

How to Help Save Plants from Extinction

Oct. 17, 2023 — Now is the time to identify the conditions that cause plants to die. Doing so will allow us to better protect plants by choosing conservation targets more strategically, botanists ...

Mummified Feces Reveals Pre-Columbian Cultures of the Caribbean Consumed a Diversity of Plants

Oct. 11, 2023 — DNA analysis of mummified feces reveals two pre-Columbian Caribbean cultures ate a wide variety of plants, like maize, sweet potato, and peanuts -- and tobacco and cotton traces were detected too, ...

Death Is Only the Beginning: Birds Disperse Eaten Insects' Eggs

Oct. 10, 2023 — Relationship patterns among flightless stick insects suggest that birds disperse the eggs after eating gravid females. Lab experiments previously suggested the possibility, but a new genetic analysis ...

New Type of Tiny Wasp Comes With Mysterious, Cloud-Like Structures at Ends of Antennae

Oct. 4, 2023 — Fossil researchers have discovered a novel genus and species of tiny wasp with a mysterious, bulbous structure at the end of each ...

Mitochondrial Genome Editing Technique Yields Useful Traits

Sep. 15, 2023 — Tweaks to the mitochondrial genome hold the potential for better hybrid seed production or to introduce seedless ...

Flowering for Naught: 120 Years With Nothing to Show

Sep. 1, 2023 — Flowering for some plants is a yearly occurrence, for others, it is a once-in-a-lifetime event. A widespread species of bamboo in Japan, Phyllostachys nigra var. henonis, takes this one-time ...

Want to Fight Climate Change? Don't Poach Gorillas (or Elephants, Hornbills, Toucans, Etc.)

Aug. 29, 2023 — A new article found that overhunting of gorillas, elephants, and other large fruit-eating seed-dispersers make tropical forests less able to store or sequester ...

Starch Discovery Reaps Benefits for Brewing, Baking and Milling Industries

Aug. 25, 2023 — Research has brought clarity to the longstanding question of how starch granules form in the seeds of Triticeae crops -- wheat, barley, and rye -- unlocking diverse potential benefits for numerous ...

Sweet Corn Yield at the Mercy of the Environment, Except for One Key Factor

Aug. 24, 2023 — A new analysis has identified the top factors accounting for yield variability in processing sweet corn (used for canned and frozen products), including one within the control of ...

Blink and You'll Miss These Plants Shooting Their Seeds

Aug. 23, 2023 — When witch hazel plants are ready to disperse their seeds, the woody seed capsules split open, pressure builds up, and eventually the seeds shoot out like a bullet fired from a rifle, hitting 30 feet ...