The National Academy of Sciences is governed by a 17-member Council, which includes five officers and 12 councilors elected from among the Academy membership. Its staff is headed by the NAS Executive Officer.
UC Riverside and a Riverside-based sod company have teamed up to sell a new drought-resistant bermuda grass. The grass, called Coachella, is a less thirsty, greener-longer hybrid of bermuda grass. The university’s Office of Technology Partnerships and West Coast Turf hope to initially target golf courses and sports stadiums that need large amounts of real...
With age-related conditions like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and dementia on the rise, the University of California, Riverside, is joining a major effort to develop treatments that delay aging and improve life for older adults. The National Institute on Aging, part of the National Institutes of Health, has awarded a $45 million, five-year grant to a...
This week, as pomegranate season peaks and trees all over Riverside are bowed over with heavy fruit, Seth learns about a project at UCR that aims to diversify the world of pomegranates with research into varied and delightful cultivars beyond the Wonderful.
Climate change stats are alarming. Around 3.6 billion people live in areas highly susceptible to extreme weather events. Approximately 250,000 additional deaths per year will come from undernutrition, malaria, diarrhoea and heat stress alone, according to the World Health Organisation. In an era of environmental challenges and the pressing need for sustainable solutions, the landscape...
Born in Colombia and raised in Costa Rica and San Diego, Danilo has harboured a lifelong fascination with plants. His interest in flora, particularly epiphytic plants — those that grow on the surface of other plants — inspired him to pursue a career in plant biology. This led him to choose the Department of Botany...
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 production system utilizing artificial photosynthesis described in Nature 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.
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 a researcher and her personal growth.
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 at risk from stressors caused by changing climates.
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 for the decades of work they contributed towards developing the breed.
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 system to achieve this color change and its possible applications in indicating the presence of...
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 the Luna UCR™, a new variety that is the great-grandchild of the Hass. Speaking from...
The American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB) is pleased to announce the recipients of its 2023 awards, which honor distinction in service, outreach, education, and research. ASPB Innovation Prize for Agricultural Technology Renata Bolognesi, Stanislaw Flasinski, Sergey Ivashuta, Daniel Kendrick, Curtis Scherder, Gerrit Segers Bayer, Chesterfield, Missouri Charles Albert Shull Award José Dinneny Stanford University...
Katayoon “Katie” Dehesh once had to make an impossible choice: leave her Persian homeland forever to pursue a life of science or stay near family and give up her passion for independence. She knew leaving Iran would not be easy, and she’d have to build her life again from scratch. Nevertheless, she persisted — and...
Despite recent, torrential rains, most of Southern California remains in a drought. Accordingly, many residents plant trees prized for drought tolerance, but a new UC Riverside-led study shows these trees lose this tolerance once they’re watered. One goal of the study was to understand how artificial irrigation affects the trees’ carbon and water use. To...
