Volume 8 Issue 8, August 2022

Over 100 of the world’s leaders pledged to end deforestation by 2030 at the COP26 climate summit in a bid to limit global warming to 1.5 °C. The REDD+ scheme is the best hope to achieving this target.

A national survey of organic farmers shows that the use of sustainable farming practices differs with farm size. Although organic agriculture is often considered to be homogeneous, this survey suggests that a greater focus on farm size and socio-technical change is needed to improve the sustainability of food production.

Charles Darwin suggested that phylogenetic distance between introduced aliens and natives might determine invasion success, but he was inconclusive about the direction of the relationship. An analysis of alien plants introduced to Southern Africa for cultivation reveals that the relationship changes direction from one invasion stage to the other.

Grain yield in bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is largely determined by spike architecture. Mutations in DUO-B1, encoding an AP2/ERF protein, result in a spike architecture with extra spikelets that increases both grain number per spike and yield under field conditions. Genetically modifying DUO-B1 has the potential to increase cereal production.

The biological importance of centromere distribution in the nucleus, which is classified as polarized or dispersed, has been debated. Molecular and cytogenic analyses have revealed that two regulatory processes establish a dispersed distribution and that centromere distribution might be linked to the maintenance of genome integrity.

Combining very high-resolution imagery of dryland forests worldwide with climate and aquifer data from the mid-Holocene period, this paper illustrates how geological forces of the past shaped today’s forests.

Root exudates play a key role in modulating the soil microbiota. The export of bitter triterpenes (mediated by a Multidrug and Toxic Compound Extrusion protein) shapes the rhizosphere, leading to robust disease resistance.

While organic agriculture has been found to outperform conventional methods on multiple sustainability measures, this Article examines the effects of farm size on agroecological practices and finds that as organic farms get larger, they exhibit more conventional traits.

This paper examines how the relationship between native and alien plants changes the nature of an invasion, finding that the stages, and ultimate success, of an invasion are intrinsically linked to the phylogenetic relationship.

Phenology studies tend to use air temperature instead of plant tissue temperature. This study provides evidence that air and plant temperatures differ to such an extent as to make us reconsider our current interpretation of phenology.

Nitrogen fixation by legumes into the soil has long been known to benefit other plants, but this study finds a bidirectional relationship by which grasses help provide key nutrients for legumes. Grasses and clovers exploit soil nutrients better together than separately.

Using Brachypodium distachyon as a wheat proxy, Wang et al. identified DUO-B1, an AP2/ERF transcription factor, regulating spike type in wheat. duo-B1 leads to increased yield under field conditions without affecting other major agronomic traits.

In Arabidopsis cells undergoing mitosis, centromere distribution is shown to be regulated by two steps: scattering in M-phase and stabilization in interphase. This may affect the maintenance of genome integrity rather than gene regulation.

The phloem pole atlas has over 10,000 cells, with an unprecedented resolution of the transcriptional dynamics in phloem development. Despite distinct mature transcriptional states, co-expression networks show common states in protophloem-adjacent cells.

Exploring the occurrence of the level of water saturation of air within leaves uncovers a mechanism for maintaining photosynthesis and vascular flow under dry conditions.