Coffee prices surged this week to multi-year peaks, extending stellar gains this year after frost damaged crops in the world's biggest producer Brazil.

Scientists have identified five new plant species in the Bolivian Andes.

Around 470 million years ago, plants began to conquer the terrestrial surfaces. The first examples had a small axis terminated by a structure capable of forming spores, almost like current mosses. The appearance of plant organs mediated the explosive radiation of land plants, which shaped the surface of our planet and allowed the establishment of terrestrial animal life.

The international team of geoscientists led by Prof. Silke Voigt from the Goethe University Frankfurt, Prof. Ireneusz Walaszczyk from the University of Warsaw and Dr. André Bornemann from LBEG have thoroughly investigated 40 meters of the geological strata sequence in the former limestone quarry at Hasselberg. The researchers determined that this is only sequence in the transition between Turonian and Coniacian without gaps and it therefore represents a perfect rock sequence to serve […]

Manipulating RNA can allow plants to yield dramatically more crops, as well as increasing drought tolerance, announced a group of scientists from the University of Chicago, Peking University and Guizhou University.

Drought can have a lasting impact on the community of microbes that live in and around roots of rice plants, a team led by UC Davis researchers has found. Root-associated microbes help plants take up nutrients from the soil, so the finding could help in understanding how rice responds to dry spells and how it can be made more resilient to drought. The work is published July 22 in Nature Plants.

According to a new report co-written by Illinois Natural History Survey postdoctoral researcher Valeria Trivellone, climate change, poverty, urbanization, land-use change and the exploitation of wildlife all contribute to the emergence of new infectious diseases, which, in turn, threaten global food security. Trivellone spoke with News Bureau life sciences editor Diana Yates about how global authorities can tackle these intertwined challenges.

A new study by a team of researchers has found that the consolidation of traditional smallholder farms in China has a devastating effect on the biodiversity of wild pollinators in the area.

Plants are DNA hoarders. Adhering to the maxim of never throwing anything out that might be useful later, they often duplicate their entire genome and hang on to the added genetic baggage. All those extra genes are then free to mutate and produce new physical traits, hastening the tempo of evolution.

Cannabis was first domesticated around 12,000 years ago in China, researchers found, after analyzing the genomes of plants from across the world.