August 26, 2019
Plants have biological clocks, much like humans. Listening to plant life with help use nurture their growth and development which will ultimately help them, us, and the planet. Listening does in fact make all of the difference.
Learn about this and more interesting stories from the scientific community in today's issue.
*-- Biological clock of plants affects herbicide efficacy --*
Like humans, plants have a circadian rhythm, or biological clock. Scientists suggest that following plant circadian rhythms when making decisions on herbicide application could require less of the chemicals and make them more effective.
The death of plant tissue and slowing of growth after using the herbicide glyphosate, known as the active ingredient in Roundup, depends on the time of day it is applied, according to research published Friday in the journal Nature Communications.
Glyphosate is one of the most widely used herbicides in the world, however levels of the chemical used in agricultural production have raised health concerns, and also pose challenges for farmers.
Dr. Antony Dodd, a researcher at the University of Bristol and senior author of the new paper, said a method of chronology -- the practice in human medicine of timing doses of medication to a patient's circadian rhythm -- could help improve and sustain the agricultural production the growing human population needs.
"This proof of concept research suggests that, in future, we might be able to refine the use of some chemicals that are used in agriculture by taking advantage of the biological clock in plants," Dodd said in a press release. "Approaches of this type, combining biotechnology with precision agriculture, can provide economic and environmental benefits."
For the study, Dodd and his team tested the timing of glyphosate application, finding that it was most effective at dawn -- plants were especially sensitive at this time -- as opposed to dusk.
They noticed, however, that transport processes within plants and leaf position may be circadian-regulated, suggesting an even more detailed understanding of the best time to spray can be found.
Future research, they say, should be focused on identifying the specific biological processes to determine how to better optimize the use of glyphosate and other herbicides.
"The pervasive influence of circadian regulation upon plant metabolism suggests that the principle we identify might scale to other agrochemicals," the researchers wrote in the paper. "The circadian regulation of plant responses to agrochemicals provides a basis to refine agrochemical development and use, through this novel concept of agricultural chronotherapy, to optimize crop protection for food security."
*-- Study: NASA data shows Earth-sized exoplanet lacks atmosphere --*
A rocky planet orbiting a star beyond the Sun does not have an atmosphere, according to a study released Monday.
The study published in the journal Nature found that the Earth-sized exoplanet known as LHS 3844b is hot, with no gasses surrounding it, similar to Mercury, and lacks the thin atmosphere that helps to facilitate life on Earth.
"The temperature contrast on this planet is about as big as it can possibly be," said Harvard researcher Laura Kreidberg, the study's lead author. "That matches beautifully with our model of a bare rock with no atmosphere."
The planet is likely "tidally locked" meaning one side of the planet permanently faces the star it orbits, with temperatures on that side reaching about 1,410 degrees.
NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Satelite Survey discovered the planet, which has a radius 1.3 times that of earth, in 2018.
The study published Monday used data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to provide information about the atmosphere of a terrestrial world around an M dwarf star for the first time.
"We've got lots of theories about how planetary atmospheres fare around M dwarfs, but we haven't been able to study them empirically," said Kreidberg. "Now, with LHS 3844b, we have a terrestrial planet outside our solar system where for the first time we can determine observationally that an atmosphere is not present."
|