Indoor plant factories have high energy costs since LEDs replace the sunlight outdoor plants get for free. Scientists found a way to dial back how much light is needed by breaking it into tiny bursts.
Fruit ripening is all about plants getting animals to eat the seeds that are inside their fruits. This helps the plants get their seeds to somewhere new where they can grow into a new plant.
Scotch pines on a Christmas tree farm in northern Michigan.
Bert Cregg
Both natural and artificial Christmas trees have environmental impacts, but they’re not major. What matters most is what happens to the trees after the holidays.
Melburnians admire the first primrose to arrive in the colony, transported by a Wardian case, in Edward Hopley’s A Primrose from England, circa 1855.
Bendigo Art Gallery, Gift of Mr and Mrs Leonard Lansell 1964.
A wood and glass case invented in the early 19th-century transformed the movement of plants around the world. In Melbourne, several thousand people greeted a primrose on its arrival from England.
Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) used in medical devices and for growing plants, like potatoes seen here, are used by NASA to grow plants in space. The U.S. space agency plans to grow food on future spacecraft and on other planets as a food supplement for astronauts.
NASA
LED lights can actually improve upon the sun and help grow plants in space. A Canadian team of researchers is helping to refine and perfect LED technology.
Though not this obvious from the outside, plants are keeping time.
Hua Lu
Hua Lu, University of Maryland, Baltimore County and Linda Wiratan, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Precisely calibrated timekeepers are found in organisms from all domains of life. Biologists are studying how they influence plant/pathogen interactions – what they learn could lead to human medicines.
Cannabis plant strains in jars in MediJean’s Health Canada-licensed tissue culture development lab are kept for research as manager Abdul Ahad works in the Richmond, B.C., facility, in this 2014 file photo.
(THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck)
The legal cannabis industry will have to develop scientific research and evidence based growth methods and technology if it is to succeed against the secretive illicit industry.
Brazil has been throwing money at Amazonian cattle farmers, hoping they’ll adopt ‘greener’ crops like fruit or corn. A new study shows why loans won’t fix the environmental issue presented by ranches.
Spend many months attached to the ISS and see how well you grow.
NASA
If you want to live on Mars, you’re going to need to grow food. Seeds are naturally equipped to handle challenging Earth environments, but how well can they survive what they’ll encounter off-planet?
Plants make proteins based on whatever genetic material you give them.
Carl Davies, CSIRO
Inserting a random DNA mishmash into a plant or bacterium directs it to make a novel protein. Sifting through the resulting molecules, researchers may find ones have medical or agricultural uses.
Transgenic American chestnuts could soon take root.
Claire Dunn
William Powell, State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry
Adding a single wheat gene helps the American chestnut withstand a fungal pathogen that nearly wiped these hardwood trees out of the eastern forests they once dominated.
Astronaut Cady Coleman harvests one of our plants on Space Shuttle Columbia.
NASA
Plants on the International Space Station must figure out how to grow in a completely novel environment. Their adaptability hints at how they’ll react to changes here on Earth – or in future space outposts.
A busy bee, giving free horticultural help by collecting pollen. But a tiny mite has devastated bee populations around the world – and it’s now on Australia’s doorstep.
David McClenaghan/CSIRO
A tiny mite has been killing honey bees all around the world, and will inevitably reach Australian shores. So what is this destructive mite, and what we can do to protect Australian honey bees? The Varroa…