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Scientists have accomplished a key step in the long-term ambition to engineer nitrogen-fixation into non-legume cereal crops by demonstrating that barley can instruct soil bacteria to convert nitrogen from the air into ammonia fertiliser.This development empowers non-legume crops to communicate directly with nitrogen-fixing bacteria and takes us a …

Plant scientists at Cambridge and Oxford have come up with a clever method that can produce full three-dimensional (3D) images of plant tissues using a laser scanning confocal microscope.3D reconstruction of Marchantia using the new Flip-Flap protocol.The simple imaging method uses innovative ideas and involved designing new tools to enable imaging…

An African Yam Bean (Sphenostylis stenocarpa) crop and the pods, tubers and beans produced by the plant. Images by Ademola Aina (IITA).Dr Nadia Radzman discusses why forgotten crops should be remembered on World Pulses Day in her article for The Conversation.February 10 marks World Pulses Day. A day dedicated to celebrating beans and lentils doesn’…

A tiny region at the root tip has been found to be responsible for orchestrating the growth and development of the complex network of vascular tissues that transport sugars through plant roots.In a paper published in Science, an international team of scientists present a detailed blueprint of how plants construct phloem cells – the tissue responsib…

Scientists often spend countless hours on tedious measurements. But one such measurement just got a lot easier - counting fungal structures to quantify arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) colonisation in plant roots is now automated thanks to a new method developed at the Sainsbury Laboratory Cambridge University (SLCU).Understanding how soil fungi …

SLCU researchers have discovered that a protein involved in the early formation of root nodules in legumes also plays a key role in transforming the nodule into a nitrogen-fixing factory.The work provides an important advance in understanding the symbiotic relationship between plants and nitrogen-fixing bacteria and facilitates future engineering o…

Above image: Cryo-scanning electron microscopy of Hibiscus trionum petal fracture with false colour processing showing the cuticle has two physically distinct layers. Credit: Raymond Wightman. False color processing by Gareth Evans.Flowers are employing a materials science phenomenon typically associated with failures in structural engineering to p…

Dr Renske Vroomans has been appointed to the Sainsbury Laboratory Cambridge University (SLCU) to lead research into the evolutionary dynamics of developmental processes in plants.Dr Vroomans joins SLCU during an exciting time for evolutionary developmental biology, also known as evo-devo, with new data and modelling tools and innovative approaches …

This is the first time this vital, 400 million year old process has been visualised in real time in full root systems of living plants. Understanding the dynamics of plant colonisation by fungi could help to make food production more sustainable in the future.Almost all crop plants form associations with a particular type of fungi – called arbuscul…

Like the movie version of Spider-Man who shoots spider webs from holes in his wrists, a little alpine plant has been found to eject cobweb-like threads from tiny holes in specialised cells on its leaves. It’s these tiny holes that have taken plant scientists by surprise because puncturing the surface of a plant cell would normally cause it to explo…

To describe something as slow and boring we say it’s “like watching grass grow”, but scientists studying the early morning activity of plants have found they make a rapid start to their day – within minutes of dawn.Just as sunrise stimulates the dawn chorus of birds, so too does sunrise stimulate a dawn burst of activity in plants.Early morning is …

In some environments there is no way for a seed to know for sure when the best time to germinate is. In spring, cues like light, temperature and water may suggest to seeds that conditions are optimal for germination, but a week later an unpredictable drought or frost could kill the emerging seedlings.So how does a plant make sure that all of its of…

Professor Giles Oldroyd has been elected as an international member of the National Academy of Sciences in the USA. As Russell R Geiger Professor of Crop Science, Director of the Crop Science Centre and SLCU Group Leader, Professor Oldroyd’s research focuses on using the foundational knowledge of plants to drive transformative change in agriculture…

Can one plant produce both tasty and nutritious beans and tubers? Yes, the African yam bean can. Not only does it grow high-protein edible grains and tubers, this drought-resilient crop also replenishes the soil and is highly adaptable to varying-climates.Once prevalent across West and Central Africa, the African yam bean has been taken over by oth…

Arabidopsis thaliana shoot apical meristem with multiple flowers radiating out from centre at different stages of development (left) and the shoot apex under a scanning electron microscope where the centre area contains stem cells and is surrounded by young flower primordia (right). Images by Weibing Yang.How plant stem cells renew themselves – a c…