Category: Members

Upland rice farmers in Africa may reduce soil erosion and drudgery of soil tillage following Conservation Agriculture, combining no-till with legume cover crops. It mitigates Striga asiatica infestation and damage, but complementary technologies are required to raise crop yields. Read the Open Access publications: Mixed outcomes from conservation practices on soils and Striga-affected yields of […]

The Jianqiang Wu group (Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences; www.wu-lab.org) reported that large numbers of proteins can be transported between the dodder Cuscuta australis and its host plant. Their proteomic analyses showed that hundreds to more than 1500 proteins moved between dodder and host plants, and hundreds of foreign proteins can even […]

Recently, Jianqiang Wu Group at the Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in Kunming, China revealed that dodder can transmit salt-induced systemic signaling between different host plants. They found that when one host was treated with salt solution, mobile systemic signals were produced and transmitted through dodder bridges, reaching another host, and this […]

A new project entitled “Striga Smart Sorghum Solutions for Smallholders in East Africa” funded through a GCRF – Royal Society Society, International Collaboration award, started in December 2019. This is a collaboration between Dr Jonne Rodenburg of NRI, University of Greenwich (UK) and Dr Steven Runo of Kenyatta University (Kenya). The project aims to combine […]

Link to paper By: Nathan R Johnson, Claude W dePamphilis, Michael J Axtell Trans-species small regulatory RNAs (sRNAs) are delivered to host plants from diverse pathogens and parasites and can target host mRNAs. How trans-species sRNAs can be effective on diverse hosts has been unclear. Multiple species of the parasitic plant Cuscuta produce trans-species sRNAs that collectively target many […]

Link to paper by: Mounia Ennami, Joseph Mbasani-mansi, Fatima Zahra Briache, Nada Oussible, Fatima Gaboun, Lamiae Ghaouti, Loubna Belqadi, Michel Edmond Ghanem, Kamal Aberkani, James Westwood, Rachid Mentag   Orobanche infections reduce biomass of hosts at the first stages of infection on both contrasting faba bean cultivars. It is likely that plant growth-defense tradeoffs have a […]

Parasitic plants can connect to the vasculature of a host plant from which they take part or all of the water, nutrients, and assimilates they need to complete their life cycle. This parasitic lifestyle required that these parasitic plants evolved host detection, host attachment, host exploitation, and host defense suppression strategies. The elucidation of these […]