Latest News
Martha L. Orozco-Cárdenas (Co-Principal Investigator), Director of the Plant Transformation Research Center (PTRC-BPS), and Professor Feng Jiao of Washington University in St. Louis, won $250,000 as runners-up in NASA’s prestigious Deep Space Food Challenge. The team developed a novel food...
Thanks to an experiment started before the Great Depression, researchers have pinpointed the genes behind the remarkable adaptability of barley, a key ingredient in beer and whiskey. These insights could ensure the crop’s continued survival amidst rapid climate change.
Plants’ ability to sense light and temperature, and their ability to adapt to climate change, hinges on free-forming structures in their cells whose function was, until now, a mystery.
Dion Kucera and Darrel Jenerette's work on climate change and urban vegetation in the Los Angeles area was featured in an article with Fast Company.
Work from 2019 by Norman Ellstrand and Shana Welles on the Salsola ryannii tumbleweed appeared in an NPR article about a recent sighting of a giant tumbleweed.
Katayoon Dehesh, Ernst and Helen Leibacher Endowed Chair in Botany and Plant Sciences and Director of the Institute for Integrative Genome Biology participated in an interview with the Association of American Universities. The article here spotlighted both her work as...
Louis Santiago is featured in the UCR campus news for his work defining the critical limits plants can survive in response to stresses such as water loss and heat. Santiago's work has implications in identifying rare plant species that are...
Mary Lu Arpaia and Eric Focht are recognized in TIME magazine's 2023 Best Inventions for the release of their new Luna UCR avocado variety. Botany and Plant Science's Gray Martin, late David Stottlemyer and B.O. "Bob" Bergh were also credited...
Sean Cutler and Ian Wheeldon have developed a technique to make the Arabidopsis thaliana plant change color in response to the pesticide azinphos-ethyl. In an article with Wired, they explained the process of harnessing genes in the plant's stress response...
Mary Lu Arpaia and Eric Focht have bred avocado trees in association with the University of California, Riverside, for decades. In the video below, they describe their quest for a better avocado that resulted in the release this year of...