Planting ideas: Botanic Garden opens access with living collections portal
02 October 2020A new聽web portal to Cambridge 探花直播 Botanic Garden's聽entire living collection, 14,000 plants,聽aims to聽open access and fast-track urgent global research.
Ancient defence strategy continues to protect plants from pathogens
12 July 2019Scientists at the 探花直播 of Cambridge have uncovered striking similarities in how two distantly related plants defend themselves against pathogens despite splitting from their common ancestor more than 400 million years ago.
Enemy at the gates: the battle to save our crops
22 May 2019A gene newly-linked聽to plant聽self-defence聽may hold the key to saving聽important crops from a deadly disease, scientists at Cambridge's聽Sainsbury Laboratory now hope.
Opinion: GM crops already feed much of the world today 鈥 why not tomorrow鈥檚 generations too?
24 May 2016Professor Sir Venki聽Ramakrishnan聽(MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology) discusses how genetically modified crops could help solve the problem of food security.
鈥楽moke detector鈥 enables fungal partnership that allowed plants to first survive on land
18 December 2015A protein that detects hormones in smoke has a much wider and more ancient role in the plant kingdom 鈥 detecting microscopic soil fungi which colonise plants and feed nutrients to their cells. This ancient symbiosis with soil fungi is thought to be how plants survived on land millions of years before they evolved roots.
Fungus enhances crop roots and could be a future 'bio-fertiliser'
04 May 2015鈥淎ncient relationship鈥 between fungi and plant roots creates genetic expression that leads to more root growth. Common fungus could one day be used as 鈥榖io-fertiliser鈥, replacing mined phosphate which is now depleted to the point of impending fertiliser crisis.
