Synergistic and antagonistic interactions between potassium and magnesium in higher plants
April 2021
Magnesium (Mg) affects various critical physiological and biochemical processes in higher plants, and its deficiency impedes plant growth and development. Although potassium (K)-induced Mg deficiency...
RNAi technologies for insect control in crop protection
August 2025
RNA interference (RNAi) has been used for agricultural insect pest control based on silencing of targeted insect genes. However, the effectiveness of RNAi and its applications in insect pest control...
The impact of high-temperature stress on rice: Challenges and solutions
October 2021
Heat stress (HS) caused by rapidly warming climate has become a serious threat to global food security. Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is a staple food crop for over half of the world’s population, and its...
Magnesium deficiency in plants: An urgent problem
April 2016
Although magnesium (Mg) is one of the most important nutrients, involved in many enzyme activities and the structural stabilization of tissues, its importance as a macronutrient ion has been overlooked...
Salt tolerance in rice: Physiological responses and molecular mechanisms
February 2022
Crop yield loss due to soil salinization is an increasing threat to agriculture worldwide. Salt stress drastically affects the growth, development, and grain productivity of rice (Oryza sativa L.),...
Advances in the study of auxin early response genes: Aux/IAA, GH3, and SAUR
August 2024
Auxin plays a crucial role in all aspects of plant growth and development. Auxin can induce the rapid and efficient expression of some genes, which are named auxin early response genes (AERGs), mainly...
High-throughput phenotyping: Breaking through the bottleneck in future crop breeding
June 2021
With the rapid development of genetic analysis techniques and crop population size, phenotyping has become the bottleneck restricting crop breeding. Breaking through this bottleneck will require phenomics,...
JAZ proteins: Key regulators of plant growth and stress response
December 2024
The jasmonate ZIM-domain (JAZ) family of proteins serves as co-receptors and transcriptional repressors of jasmonic acid (JA) in plants. Their functional diversity and multiple roles make them important...
Genetic transformation and genome editing in wild soybean (Glycine soja)
April 2026
Soybean (Glycine max), a key food and oilseed crop, is derived from wild soybean (Glycine soja). Compared with cultivated varieties, wild soybean exhibits significantly higher genetic diversity, harboring...
Far-red light: A regulator of plant morphology and photosynthetic capacity
April 2022
Plant photosynthetic capacity directly determines crop yield. Light quality regulates photosynthetic capacity. This review discusses plant responses to far-red light from the phenotypic to the molecular...
Integrated multi-omics analysis identifies OsMYB48 as a transcriptional repressor of coleoptile elongation in anaerobic rice germination
December 2025
Direct seeding of rice (DS) has been widely adopted due to reduced labor cost and simpler cultivation practices. However, anaerobic flooding conditions reduce seed germination and seedling establishment....
Biological nitrogen and carbon fixation: Bridging the gap between synthetic symbioses and synthetic biology
February 2026
Biological nitrogen fixation (BNF) and photosynthetic carbon fixation underpin food production and climate mitigation, yet natural systems are constrained by oxygen sensitivity, high energy demand,...
Interplay of light and nitrogen for plant growth and development
June 2025
Light and nitrogen (N) are two critically environmental factors essential for plant survival, as they constitute the fundamental molecular framework of plant cells and significantly influence patterns...
The rice auxin response factor OsARF12 coordinates ROS scavenging, photosynthetic protection, and Na+/K+ homeostasis under salt stress
December 2025
Salt stress severely limits rice growth and productivity. Auxin signaling has a well-documented role in development, but its role in rice salt stress responses is far from clear. In this study, we identified...
Physiology of medicinal and aromatic plants under drought stress
April 2024
Drought poses a significant challenge, restricting the productivity of medicinal and aromatic plants. The strain induced by drought can impede vital processes like respiration and photosynthesis, affecting...
PlantGaussian: Exploring 3D Gaussian splatting for cross-time, cross-scene, and realistic 3D plant visualization and beyond
April 2025
Observing plants across time and diverse scenes is critical in uncovering plant growth patterns. Classic methods often struggle to observe or measure plants against complex backgrounds and at different...
Identification of a major QTL and its candidate genes controlling stem strength in soybean via QTL mapping and GWAS
December 2025
Stem strength is an important indicator of lodging that significantly influences yield and quality in soybean. Therefore, understanding the regulatory mechanisms underlying stem strength is critical...
Plant aquaporins: Their roles beyond water transport
June 2024
Compared to other organisms, plants have evolved a greater number of aquaporins with diverse substrates and functions to adapt to ever-changing environmental and internal stimuli for growth and development....
Genes controlling grain chalkiness in rice
August 2024
With rising living standards, there is an increasing demand for high-quality rice. Rice quality is mainly defined by milling quality, appearance quality, cooking and eating quality, and nutrition quality....
Rice OsMYB9 enhances salt stress tolerance by regulating the vacuolar Na+/H+ antiporter
December 2025
Salinity is a major hazard to crop plant growth and significantly reduces grain yield. When subjected to high salinity, plants maintain ion homeostasis through Na+ compartmentalization and exclusion,...
QTL IciMapping: Integrated software for genetic linkage map construction and quantitative trait locus mapping in biparental populations
June 2015
QTL IciMapping is freely available public software capable of building high-density linkage maps and mapping quantitative trait loci (QTL) in biparental populations. Eight functionalities are integrated...
Origin, evolution, and molecular function of DELLA proteins in plants
April 2022
Gibberellic acid (GA), a ubiquitous phytohormone, has various effects on regulators of plant growth and development. GAs promote growth by overcoming growth restraint mediated by DELLA proteins (DELLAs)....
Maize yield and nitrogen use efficiency are increased by optimizing nitrogen fertilizer depth under film mulching in semiarid region
Available online 12 January 2026
Nitrogen (N) fertilizer deep placement has been widely adopted to improve nutrient use efficiency and maize yield in the semiarid regions of northwest China. However, previous studies on optimal fertilization...
Crop metabolic engineering towards enhanced resistance to pests and pathogens
February 2026
Plants produce a vast array of specialized metabolites that serve as essential defenses against herbivores and pathogens. However, the capacity to produce these compounds differs substantially among...
High-throughput phenotyping of plant leaf morphological, physiological, and biochemical traits on multiple scales using optical sensing
October 2023
Acquisition of plant phenotypic information facilitates plant breeding, sheds light on gene action, and can be applied to optimize the quality of agricultural and forestry products. Because leaves often...