In a new paper, published in Journal of Plant Physiology (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jplph.2021.153438) we show that leaf photosynthesis and a range of associated parameters is heavily impacted in rice plants when they are infected by the facultative parasitic weed Rhamphicarpa fistulosa. Previously we found that this parasite starts benefiting from its host at around 6 weeks after […]

Dear Colleagues at the IPPS, To date few journals accept video articles for submission/publication in our field, despite this type of articles being very engaging and useful to share new techniques and approaches. For this reason, under an invitation of the Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE), I decided to serve as guest editor for a […]

Recently, Jianqiang Wu Group at the Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in Kunming, China revealed that the parasitic plant dodder can bridge nutrient systemic signals inter-hosts. Nitrogen (N) deficiency is a common challenge to plants worldwide. In the dodder bridged cluster, whether dodder can also mediate nutrient systemic signals still unknown. In […]

Recently, the Jianqiang Wu Group at the Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in Kunming, China uncovered how a dodder plant controls its flowering time. Using different host species and genetically modified plants, this team found that the dodder Cuscuta australis synchronizes its flowering time with those of the hosts, and the expression […]

Plants (http://www.mdpi.com/journal/plants) announced the special issue “Parasitic Weeds: Biology and Control”. Plants (ISSN 2223-7747; CODEN: PLANCD) is an international, scientific, peer-reviewed, open access journal published monthly online by MDPI. Impact Factor: 2.762 (2019), Q1 in the category ‘Plant Sciences’. This special issue will be focused on both research articles and reviews providing a new insight in […]

Our understanding of how obligate parasites in the Orobanchaceae sense host germination stimulants has advanced dramatically in the last several years, with some important discoveries arriving in just the last few months. In the Plant Physiology Focus Issue on Parasitic Plants, I have attempted to sum up the current state of knowledge for this area […]

Plants constantly adapt their metabolism and signaling to survive in a highly dynamic environment. In the past few years, the integration of metabolomics and other omics technologies such as genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metagenomics, and metatranscriptomics has accelerated our understanding of plant metabolism and plant signaling and their role in the interaction between plants and their […]

Parasitic plants are plants that connect with a haustorium to the vasculature of another, host, plant from which they absorb water, assimilates, and nutrients. Because of this parasitic lifestyle, parasitic plants need to coordinate their lifecycle with that of their host. Parasitic plants have evolved a number of host detection/host response mechanisms of which the […]