More Sorghum, Less Striga? Using resistant cultivars and improved crop nutrition. Striga is a parasitic weed causing severe yield losses to sorghum and other cereal crops in sub-Saharan Africa. This 17-minute farmer-instruction video emphasises the need for an integrated management approach to address that problem. The video shows examples of Striga-resistant sorghum cultivars and suggests […]
The IPPS and the WCPP2024 local organizing committee offer two types of travel grants for outstanding PhD students and early-career researchers. The WCPPs are a series of biennial meetings with a long tradition, providing opportunities to exchange information and discuss new discoveries among experts of parasitic plants. WCPP17 will cover a wide range of topics […]
Plant Physiology https://doi.org/10.1093/plphys/kiad343 Martina Leso, Anna Kokla, Ming Feng & Charles W Melnyk The formation of the haustorium is common to all parasitic plants and requires a dedicated process of growth, attachment and tissue invasion. Such a process presumably involves cell wall modifications to allow cell division, cell expansion and the digestion of host […]
Plants People Planet, https://doi.org/10.1002/ppp3.10491 Jonne Rodenburg & Lammert Bastiaans Parasitic weeds in African rice systems affect household-level food security and income generation in Africa. Most affected farmers are smallholders with limited weed management capacities, crop production infrastructure and resources. The facultative parasite Rhamphicarpa fistulosa (rice vampireweed) has become a major problem in rainfed lowland rice whereas the […]
Striga hermonthica, a root parasitic weed from the Orobanchaceae family, devastates cereals yields and is, therefore, one of the major biological threats to global food security. Herein, we uncover a role of abscisic acid (ABA) as a rhizospheric signal that is involved in controlling Striga seed germination, Striga/Striga and Striga/host interactions. We propose that ABA serves as […]
The IPPS and the WCPP2024 local organizing committee offer two types of travel grants for outstanding PhD students and early-career researchers. The WCPPs are a series of biennial meetings with a long tradition, providing opportunities to exchange information and discuss new discoveries among experts of parasitic plants. WCPP17 will cover a wide range of topics […]
Rafflesia is an endangered endophytic holoparasitic plant that lives the majority of its life inside the tissues of its sole plant host, Tetrastigma. Rafflesia floral buds emerge to produce the world’s largest single flower. Like other plants, holoparasites harbor a diverse microbiome, the role(s) of which has remained largely unstudied. Some of it might involve […]
https://doi.org/10.1111/pce.14781 This review summarizes the sensorial abilities that drive host location and selection in Cuscuta species, from directed growth of foraging individuals to initiation of parasitic structures. […]
https://doi.org/10.1093/plphys/kiad505 In this paper we show that Cuscuta can parry the changes in host cell wall composition that it triggered during its infection and that different host species are met with different strategies of gene expression fine-tuning. The same can be triggered by offering isolated cell wall polysaccharides in a host-free system (without a live […]
In this study, we analyzed the stress responses to the exogenous application of self exDNA and nonself exDNA from the mistletoe P. calyculatus as a source of DAMPs in mesquite trees (P. laevigata). Mesquite trees perceive self- and non-self exDNA with the synthesis of ROS-enzymes system, MAPKs activation and spatial concentrations of phytohormones. https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/25/1/457 […]