Crop production is inherently sensitive to variability in climate. Temperature is a major determinant of the rate of plant development and, under climate change, warmer temperatures that shorten development stages of determinate crops will most probably reduce the yield of a given variety. Earlier crop flowering and maturity have been observed and documented in recent decades, and these are oft...

The maize sex determination pathway results in the arrest of stamen in ear spikelets and the abortion of pistils in both the tassel spikelets and in the secondary florets of ear spikelets. Arrested stamen cells showed no signs of DNA fragmentation, an absence of CYCLIN B expression, and an accumulation of the negative cell cycle regulator WEE1 RNA.

Shoot apical meristems produce organs in a highly stereotypic pattern that involves auxin. Auxin is supposed to be actively transported from cell to cell by influx (AUXIN/LIKE AUXIN proteins) and efflux (PIN-FORMED proteins) membrane carriers. Current hypotheses propose that, at the meristem surface, PIN proteins create patterns of auxin gradients that, in turn, create patterns of gene expressi...

The dangers of plastic "champagne" corks With the rising cost of cork there are now many types of sparkling wines, such as hock and Moselle, which have a ribbed plastic cork which is securely fastened by a metal band and twisted wire in the conventional way. When these corks are released, however, they are often projected with an extremely high velocity in spite of caution and care on the part ...

Tassel counts provide valuable information related to flowering and yield prediction in maize, but are expensive time-consuming acquire via traditional manual approaches. High-resolution RGB imagery acquired by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), coupled with advanced machine learning approaches, including deep (DL), provides a new capability for monitoring flowering. In this article, three state-...