Department of Botany & Plant Sciences

Scientists have modified proteins involved in plants’ natural response to stress, making them the basis of innovative tests for multiple chemicals, including banned pesticides and deadly, synthetic cannabinoids. During drought, plants produce ABA, a hormone that helps them hold on...

Plants — they’re just like us, with unique techniques for handling stress. To save one of the most important crops on Earth from extreme climate swings, scientists are mapping out plants’ own stress-busting strategies. A UC Riverside-led team has learned...

The worst fire impacts this year are predicted to hit Northern California’s higher elevation forests and Southern California’s chaparral-clad mountainous National Forest lands. To aid recovery, UC Riverside ecologists are collaborating with the US Forest Service to target these spots...

Scientists at UC Riverside have a shot at eradicating a deadly threat to vineyards posed by the glassy-winged sharpshooter, just as its resistance to insecticide has been growing. When the half-inch-long flying insect feeds on grapevines, it transmits bacteria that...

Claire Whitaker loves fresh fruit. That’s why the botany and plant sciences doctoral student has spent the last three years researching how to prevent gray, fuzzy fungus from consuming fruits such as strawberries. That same passion is what garnered her...

A new study casts doubt on drought as the driver of ancient Mayan civilization collapse. There is no dispute that a series of droughts occurred in the Yucatan Peninsula of southeastern Mexico and northern Central America at the end of...

A $1.5 million emergency grant is enabling UC Riverside scientists to find plants impervious to a disease threatening America’s citrus fruit supply. Citrus Greening Disease — also known as Huanglongbing, or HLB — results in fruit that is bitter and...

team of researchers led by UC Riverside has demonstrated for the first time one way that a small molecule turns a single cell into something as large as a tree. For half a century, scientists have known that all plants...

Picking fruit at the University of California, Riverside, is a singular experience. In the Citrus Variety Collection’s orchard, researchers walk among trees bearing oranges, lemons, and limes of all shapes and sizes, from spindly to oblong, bumpy to smooth, huge...

Scientists have figured out how plants respond to light and can flip this genetic switch to encourage food growth. The discovery could help increase food supply for an expanding population with shrinking opportunities for farming. The research on this genetic...