Are you a creative, articulate and web-savvy plant scientist looking to connect with other like-minded folks? We need your help to nurture and grow Plantae, the online community for the global plant science community. We are looking for individuals who are interested in being highly engaged contributors by curating content and facilitating discussions. The benefits … Read more
Your “elevator pitch” is how you present yourself in an intriguing, attention-grabbing and articulate way. When someone asks you about yourself or your work, being prepared with your “pitch” immediately catches their interest and opens the conversation so you can provide more detail. Developing and refining your pitch is more difficult than it sounds, which is why there are … Read more
Please contact Mary Williams if you’d like to discuss submitting a Teaching Tool preproprosal. Investigating Darwin’s “abominable mystery” – the angiosperms, by Sonja Dunbar Flowering plants, the angiosperms, make up roughly 1/6th of the living species currently known. This teaching tool will explore the rapid diversification and success of the flowering plants.This tool will first … Read more
Today, May 18, is the fourth international Fascination of Plants Day! Fascination of Plants Day aims to get as many people as possible around the world fascinated by plants and enthused about the importance of plant science. Submissions for the ASPB Fascination of Plants Day Social Media Photo Contest (#PlantDayUSA) and Event Raffle were open … Read more
There’s a new Teaching Tool in town! It’s not easy being not green: the making of a parasitic plant – By Caitlin E. Conn and David C. Nelson. This Teaching Tool explores the biology and evolution of parasitic plants, and their impact on agriculture. In the last portion of the Teaching Tool, the molecular evolution … Read more
by Nan Eckardt, Senior Features Editor, The Plant Cell neckardt@aspb.org Update 5/9/2017: So I couldn’t get that poor paper out of my mind – the only one pubished in The Plant Cell prior to 2015 that, apparently, had received zero citations to date, and decided to double-check. Turns out the paper is listed incorrectly in … Read more
Cross-posted from Kelsey Wood with permission. Kelsey is a PhD student at U.C. Davis. How to make a DNA bracelet, from any organism and any gene! I study plant-pathogen interactions, so I chose to make a sequence from a wild tobacco gene that is important for plant defense against pathogens. What you’ll need: Four colors of … Read more
May 18th is the Fascination of Plants Day, and we want to help in this international effort to highlight the importance of plants and plant science. Therefore, we’re supporting the #BotanyLive e-event! In a nutshell, we’re asking planty folks (curious, enthusiasts, professionals) to share something about their fascination with plants online. We’re particularly recommending the … Read more
Guest post by Erin Sparks, Guillaume Lobet, Larry York and Frédéric Bouché It is midnight on a cold winter evening and you are scheduled to give a seminar at 8 am the next morning. All you are missing to complete your presentation is one last graphic to illustrate your conclusions. You wearily open Adobe Illustrator, … Read more
Now that we have all had a chance to learn a bit more about the Trump administration and its positions on science, it is time to launch the inevitable conversation about how best to respond. The appointment of Robert F. Kennedy to lead a task force to evaluate the safety of vaccines (Phillip et al., … Read more
As the editor-in-chief, I am excited to introduce Plant Direct (plantdirectjournal.org), a new journal from Wiley and the societies behind Plant Physiology, The Plant Journal, and The Plant Cell. Although there is a crowded landscape of journals to choose from, we believe that Plant Direct fills an unserved role for the plant community. We seek to be the … Read more
Update: Stomatal biology of CAM plants Crassulacean acid metabolism (CAM) plants open their stomata at night, decreasing water loss and increasing water-use efficiency as well as drought tolerance. Males and Griffiths review the stomatal biology of CAM plants as compared to C3 plants. For example, CAM stomata are relatively insensitive to blue light, which is … Read more
Have you got a passion for plant science that you are eager to share? Do you have a favorite paper, experiment, topic, or method that you like to share with undergraduates? Have you found a clever way to engage students and stimulate their curiosity? We want to hear your ideas for new content for The … Read more
Guest post by Kelsey Wood (@klsywd) a PhD student researching the genetics and genomics of plant-pathogen interactions at the University of California, Davis. I recently attended a Plant Pathology symposium on “Genomics Strategies for Developing Sustainable Disease Resistance for Neglected Crops in the Developing World“. The symposium was held at the University of California, Berkeley and … Read more
Guest post by Rosanne Quinelle, an Associate Professor in the School of Life and Environmental Science at the University of Sydney, Australia. Proficiency in any discipline requires exposure to both breadth and depth, where “breadth” is akin to acquiring the vocabulary and “depth” is akin to an understanding of the prevailing patterns, the rules of … Read more
By Courtney Price, Education & Outreach Specialist, Arabidopsis Biological Resource Center & Center for Applied Plant Sciences, and Plantae Fellow With a passion for life science, conservation and education, my academic and professional experience has taken me on a convoluted path. That unique path has led me to my current role as the Education & … Read more
The Plant Science Today blog is only a few years old and continues to gain readers. In 2016 more than 250 posts were shared, with contributions from many guest authors as well as ASPB staff. Here are the ten most widely read posts this year. Did you catch them all? From LUCA to lily, 12 … Read more
I consider it a tremendous privilege to serve you as president of ASPB this year. Because I have participated for the past several years as chair of the Publications Committee and member of the Science Policy and Executive Committees, I feel as though the start of this year provides an invaluable opportunity to take a … Read more
On October 10th, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) convened a summit in Chicago for the purpose of identifying the future of data in agriculture and building on existing US government-wide investments in big data. NIFA Director Sonny Ramaswamy, who attended the summit, announced a new initiative named … Read more
There’s a lot of buzz right now about indoor farming. I’m sure you’ve seen photos of fuchsia-illuminated lettuces hydroponically growing in abandoned warehouses, airplane hangars, and disused subway terminals (see for examples here and here and here.) One of the goals of these programs is to cut the energy costs of food shipping, and another … Read more