Plants in the News: Help us identify 2015’s Plant Science Highlights

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Normally, our Friday posts highlight plants featured in the news over the past week, but this week we take a short break to make an appeal for your thoughts on the most notable and newsworthy plant-related events, resources, breakthroughs and headline makers of the past year.

Here are the stories we featured last year as the Best of Plants 2014 (link).  We shared highlights from plant science communication, headline makers, and research highlights including the production of antibodies to treat Ebola Virus Disease in plants and advances in plant breeding and phenotyping, and a collection of research syntheses, educational resources, and fun stuff.

Please, help us out. What do you consider the top stories, breakthroughs, headline makers and other highlights of plant science, 2015? You can reply to this blog, comment on facebook, email mwilliams@aspb.org, or Tweet to @PlantTeaching. We’ll share our lists during the final week of the year.

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5 thoughts on “Plants in the News: Help us identify 2015’s Plant Science Highlights”

  1. A few of the stories that I covered on Quiet Branches seem like big deals (I know, shameless plug):

    Naturally GM sweet potatoes: http://wp.me/p5y1MV-gR2

    espresso on the ISS: http://wp.me/p5y1MV-gQ1

    Evolution of glucosinolates in mustards got quite a bit of press too: http://wp.me/p5y1MV-h4b

    And perhaps internal to plant biology world, it was the 25th anniversary of The Plant Cell, 50 years since the discovery of Cytokinin, and what was it, 165 years after Julius von Sach’s book on plant physiology:

    http://wp.me/p5y1MV-2bR

    http://wp.me/p5y1MV-gy5

    http://wp.me/p5y1MV-h5f

    Oh, and the tree census (3 trillion trees): http://wp.me/p5y1MV-h4S

    Reply
  2. Another big story this year was the story of communicating plant bio-tech and just what a “relationship” with industry means and how academics probably need to be involved in public discussions, but it’s really tricky when they also even talk to or collaborate with representatives of industry.

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  3. The blight resistant transgenic American chestnut should be a 2015 Best of Plants headline maker! These were produced by the American Chestnut project at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science & Forestry, by Bill Powell & Chuck Maynard.

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  4. The 2015 Best of Plants headline maker has to be the breakthrough achieved by American chestnut project of the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry. They have developed a blight resistant transgenic American chestnut that appears to be even more resistant than the Chinese chestnut. It is our best hope to save this once-important species.

    Reply

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