A team of scientists led by researchers with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and Texas A&M University recently uncovered genetic traces of ancient migration in DNA from avocados growing in Nicaragua. They found evidence that, around 5,000 years ago, people migrating north from South America carried the oversized seeds of one of their favorite fruits—avocados. As these seeds were dispersed throughout the humid lowlands of Central America, they hybridized with native varieties, producing a diversity of avocado varieties that produce the large, smooth-skinned berries that are now enjoyed around Central America. Despite resembling the avocados found in humid regions like Florida and the Caribbean, these local varieties are genetically distinct from the commercially grown fruits found in guacamole.

A research team has identified a previously uncharacterized long non-coding RNA, lnc87821, that helps control how tea plants respond to salt and alkali stress by negatively regulating the stress-related gene CsJAZ2. 

Factors such as erosion, dehydration and compaction of the soil are jeopardizing food supplies for broad swathes of the world’s population according to a recent study by the University of Bonn, the University of Minnesota, the University of Basel and Hamburg University of Technology. If human-made soil degradation were to be reversed by 10 percent, the Earth’s arable land could feed an extra 70 million or so people in purely mathematical terms. The findings have now been published in the journal “Nature Food.” Embargo: Do not publish before 22 July 2026, 11 am CEST!

Spikelet production efficiency (SPE) – the number of spikelets produced per unit of vegetative organ dry weight at the spikelet differentiation stage – can boost rice grain yield and harvest index without compromising grain filling or grain weight, particularly under high-yielding population conditions.

Zhonghua 11 and Taichung 65 exhibit distinct physiological and molecular responses to brassinosteroids despite their close japonica relationship.

A near-isogenic line, d61-zh11, was developed to transfer the classical brassinosteroid (BR)-insensitive mutation into a modern functional genomics background.

d61-zh11 provides a standardized reference mutant for the reproducible and system-level dissection of BR signaling in rice.