PNAS Journal Club

Spectral assessment of plant traits: can we assess what we do not see?

The Plant Sensing Laboratory (PSL) was established in 2018 and its main focus is at early stress detection and identification, and yield prediction based on sensing plant trait assessment. We are using spectral sensors (i.e., multi- and hyper- spectral cameras and spectro radiometrs) mounted on ground, airborne and spaceborne platforms to acquire spectral data.

We might refer to someone’s personality as “mousy,” but in truth, mice have a range of personalities nearly as great as our own. ...A quantitative understanding of the traits that make each animal an individual might help answer some of the open questions in science concerning the connections between genes and behavior. The findings of this research were published in Nature Neuroscience. Dr. Oren Forkosh, then a postdoctoral fellow who led the research in Prof. Chen’s group in Germany, explains that understanding how genetics contribute to behavior has remained an open question. Personality, scientists hypothesized, might be the “glue” that binds the two together: both genes and epigenetics (which determines how the genes are expressed) contribute to personality formation; in turn, one’s personality will determine, to a great extent, how one behaves in any given situation.

The secret to better equine wound healing might have been with us all along, thanks to bees.

"When field practitioners applied MGH to horses’ wounds prior to suturing, the defects were more likely to have complete wound healing within two weeks, before suture removal, than horses that didn’t receive MGH, said Gal Kelmer, DVM, MS, Dipl. ACVS, ECVS, of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Koret School of Veterinary Medicine, in Beit Dagan, Israel.

Microscopic droplets on the surface of leaves give refuge to bacteria that otherwise may not survive during the dry daytime, according to a new study published today in eLife. Understanding this bacterial survival strategy for dry conditions may enable scientists to develop practices that support healthy plant microbiomes in agricultural and natural settings. 

A special issue of Agri Magazine in collaboration with The Robert H Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment

Decoding the genetic basis of floret fertility in wheat - A high grain yield is undoubtedly a desirable trait in cereal crops. Floret fertility is a key factor which determines the number of grains per inflorescence of cereals such as bread wheat or barley. Nonetheless, until recently little was known about its genetic basis. Whilst investigating floret fertility, a group of researchers have now discovered the locus Grain Number Increase 1 (GNI1), an important contributor to floret fertility. A writeup from Science Daily of an international collaboration, including researchers from the Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, to decode the genetic basis of floret fertility in wheat.