How do plant roots store carbon? Researchers found that the energy a plant devotes to its roots depends on proximity to other plants: when close together, plants heavily invest in their root systems ...

To feed a hotter and drier planet, Stanford scientists are building a smarter plant. The team has genetically reprogrammed plants, nurtured in a laboratory chamber, to grow roots that are long or ...

Keith van de Riet in his office on the KU campus, holding a model of an artificial Reef Wall segment. LAWRENCE – As an avid fly fisherman, Keith Van de Riet spends a lot of time trying to think like a ...

For centuries, corn growers have focused almost entirely on what happens above ground in terms of plant health and yield. Today, scientists like Jim Schwartz are looking below ground – in the root ...

Scientists have developed a toolbox of transcriptional regulators for plants and show that they can be used to construct synthetic genetic circuits that predictably modify root growth. Their work is ...

As part of an investigation to boost agricultural yields and develop crops that are resilient to climate change, Berkeley Lab scientists have introduced RhizoNet, a computational tool that harnesses ...

You might have observed plants competing for sunlight — the way they stretch upwards and outwards to block each other’s access to the sun’s rays — but out of sight, another type of competition is ...