New paper: Compensatory sequence variation between trans-species small RNAs and their target sites

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 […]

New paper: Growth-defense tradeoffs and source-sink relationship during both faba bean and lentil interactions with Orobanche crenata Forsk

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 […]

Plant Physiology Focus Issue on Parasitic Plants

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 […]

IPPS elected two new board members

Editor: Susann Wicke, Humboldt-University of Berlin, Germany Member at large: Dr Luiza Teixeira-Costa, Department of Organismic & Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University Herbaria, 22 Divinity AvenueCambridge, MA 02138, USA […]

WCPP2019: both scientifically and socially excellent

The 15th World Congress on Parasitic Plants (WCPP) meeting took place in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, from 30 June to 5 July. Over 110 participants attended the meeting from different parts of the world. The meeting was excellent both scientifically and socially; both the location and the weather were beautiful! I would like to thank Harro […]