Unlike animals and humans, plants can't run and hide when exposed to stressful environmental conditions. So how do plants survive? A new Université de Montréal study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has found a key mechanism that enables plants to keep dangerous gene alterations in check to ensure their continued existence.

A group of researchers from the Fat Institute (CSIC) and the University of Seville have confirmed that some wild plants have a high nutritional value. The scientists have found that several species of lupins from the mountains of Andalusia have a protein content similar to that of other cultivated legumes, as they publish in the online version of the Food Chemistry magazine.

The ability of plants to tell the time, a mechanism common to all living beings, enables them to survive, grow and reproduce. In a study published in the latest issue of the prestigious journal Ecology Letters, an international team has studied this circadian clock from a molecular viewpoint and has found an ecological implication: it makes climate change scenarios and CO2 level figures more accurate.

Cellulose is a fibrous molecule that makes up plant cell walls, gives plants shape and form and is a target of renewable, plant-based biofuels research. But how it forms, and thus how it can be modified to design energy-rich crops, is not well understood.

As the first plant life to emerge from the water and develop on dry earth, bryophytes offer a unique opportunity for researchers to understand the development of protections against ultraviolet radiation.

If plants could speak they will boast about being part of remedies such as the common aspirin to a leukaemia drug derived from the rosy periwinkle. Over a quarter of western medicines contain plant toxins some deriving from tropical forest species.

The greater duration of heat in a summer-prescribed burn provides more effective management of encroaching woody or cactus species on rangeland, a Texas AgriLife Research scientist said.

Greenhouses are an integral part of U.S. agriculture. Nearly $200 million of food is produced in domestic greenhouses each year, and the facilities play a vital role in producing seeds and transplantable vegetation. Understanding how to keep greenhouse plants healthy can translate to increased revenue for producers.

U.S. Forest Service Southern Research Station (SRS) Ecologist Jim Miller, Ph.D., one of the foremost authorities on nonnative plants in the South, today identified the invasive plant species he believes pose the biggest threats to southern forest ecosystems in 2009.

As a chemical for industrial processes, butanol is used in everything from brake fluid, to paint thinners, to plastics. According to a University of Illinois researcher, butanol made from plant material could displace butanol made from petroleum, just not at the fuel pump.