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+20 +4
This Rare Finger-Like Fungus Is Hanging on For Its Life on a Small Australian Island
An exceptionally rare and critically endangered fungus, known as the tea-tree fingers, is rapidly losing its grip on the Australian mainland.
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+17 +4
Wattle is an Aussie icon. So why did scientists end up in a fight over its scientific name?
The first wattles of the season are about to burst into fluffy pom-poms of resplendent gold and pale cream. But in the early 2000s, these plants were in the centre of one of the world's biggest botanical controversies.
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+15 +1
Oxford scientists discover how to alter colour and ripening rates of tomatoes
Scientists at the University of Oxford’s Department of Plant Sciences have discovered how the overall process of fruit ripening in tomato (including colour changes and softening) can be changed –speeded up or slowed down – by modifying the expression of a single protein located in subcellular organelles called the plastids. This offers a novel opportunity for crop improvement.
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+4 +1
Natures Groceries - 12 Wild Edible Plants in Disturbed Forest Soil
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+4 +1
The strange case of the trees that grow metal and how to harvest them
Agromining is a new process for extracting large quantities of metals such as cobalt and nickel from the sap and leaves of rare plants known as hyperaccumulators. Also, why do some people get sick after using Virtual Reality and is that holding back the technology? And a new approach to data storage and processing called Edge Computing.
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+10 +3
Breathing Life Into the Corpse Flower
In botanic gardens, the lineage of a famously smelly plant is threatened. Can a new collaborative program save it?
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+18 +4
What we’ve lost: the species declared extinct in 2020
Dozens of frogs, fish, orchids and other species may no longer exist due to humanity’s effects on the planet
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+18 +2
Scientists race to find ancient bananas that can save one of the world's favourite fruits
In the rainforests of Papua New Guinea, 15-metre-tall ancestors of modern-day, cultivated bananas contain the precious genetics that could save the popular fruit from climate change, pests and disease.
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+10 +2
Farming on Mars will be a lot harder than ‘The Martian’ made it seem
Lab experiments developing and testing fake Martian dirt are proving just how difficult it would be to farm on the Red Planet.
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+10 +3
Chinese flower has evolved to be less visible to pickers
For thousands of years, the dainty Fritillaria delavayi has grown slowly on the rocky slopes of the Hengduan mountains in China, producing a bright green flower after its fifth year. But the conspicuous small plant has one deadly enemy: people, who harvest the flower for traditional Chinese medicine.
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+15 +3
Plants can grow quickly or accurately, but not both
New research examines this well-known trade-off in our floral friends
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+16 +4
How Venus flytraps store short-term ‘memories’ of prey
Glowing Venus flytraps reveal how calcium buildup in the cells of leaves acts as a short-term “memory” that helps the plants identify prey.
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+3 +1
Why Scientists Made Venus Flytraps That Glow
By splicing a special gene into the carnivorous plants, scientists visualized the chemistry that helps them snap shut on prey.
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+22 +3
A Common Plant Virus Is an Unlikely Ally in the War on Cancer
Researchers have seen promising results by injecting dog and mouse tumors with the cowpea mosaic virus. Now they’re aiming for a human trial.
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+4 +1
Inside the Booming White Sage Black Market
As “smudging” has been appropriated from Native American use, the selling of sage offers a cautionary tale for the wellness economy—one where the intentions of users can be subverted by suppliers, and many sellers have no idea of their impacts.
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+20 +3
Gene manipulation using algae could grow more crops with less water
Tobacco plants have been modified with a protein found in algae to improve their photosynthesis and increase growth, while using less water, in a new advance that could point the way to higher-yielding crops in a drought-afflicted future.
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+20 +4
Cotton fields could soon be pink, black or gold, thanks to CSIRO breakthrough
A few dozen petri dishes in a high-tech greenhouse in Canberra hold the potential to transform the global textiles industry. They contain plant tissue, which within days will grow into cotton plants: not standard, everyday white cotton, but ones with a dazzling array of colours.
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+23 +3
Why are plants green?
When sunlight shining on a leaf changes rapidly, plants must protect themselves from the ensuing sudden surges of solar energy. To cope with these changes, photosynthetic organisms have developed numerous tactics. Scientists have been unable, however, to identify the underlying design principle. An international team of scientists, led by a University of California, Riverside, physicist, has now constructed a model that reproduces a general feature of photosynthetic light harvesting, observed across many photosynthetic organisms.
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+3 +1
The race is on to grow crops in the sea and feed millions of people
In December 2015, as representatives from United Nations member states were finalising what would become the Paris Agreement on climate change, Duncan Cameron stood before a crowd of delegates and warned them about an environmental catastrophe happening right beneath their feet.
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+3 +1
Critically endangered herb thriving on Macquarie Island after seven-year feral animal eradication program
A critically-endangered herb once thought extinct on sub-Antarctic Macquarie Island has been found growing at a new location as the world-heritage site continues its rabbit-free recovery. The remote island was declared free of pests in 2014, following a seven-year feral animal eradication project.
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