Plant Sciences Content

Can Winter Grains Prevent Fallowing Fields?

Amy M Quinton — July 06, 2026 - 12:31pm

California’s San Joaquin Valley produces an enormous share of the nation’s fruits, nuts and vegetables. But it takes an unsustainable amount of groundwater to do it. New state rules aimed at reducing groundwater use are expected to force up to 20 percent of the valley’s irrigated fields out of production – a blow to farmers and communities.

The Fungus That Spoils Nearly Everything

Amy M Quinton — May 20, 2026 - 6:00am

51�ԹϺ�� Davis scientists discovered gray mold adapts to different crops, revealing why decades of disease-resistant breeding failed.

Egghead Weekend Basket for April 24

Andy Fell — April 24, 2026 - 12:22pm

This week's round up of research ranges from plant clones to wildfires with a detour into helping families in poverty. Also, geese.

Propagating plants without mutations

A cool thing about plants is that you can generally grown an entire new copy of a plant from any small piece of it. People have been doing this for centuries by growing plants from cuttings.

Not All Clones Are Created Equal

Andy Fell — April 24, 2026 - 11:12am

Plant scientists use clones for their research, but they’re different from the kind people grow from cuttings. Scientists grow these clones in Petri dishes by the thousands, along with a potential headache: The resulting little plants can carry loads of mutations that must be culled out for research to continue.

Tomato Industry Taking Steps to Stop Spread of Parasitic Weed

Amy M Quinton — April 15, 2026 - 9:51am

51�ԹϺ�� Davis researchers are playing a key research role in the battle against branched broomrape, developing in-field sanitation guidelines for tomato harvesters.

Unlocking Longevity Insights From Ancient Bristlecone Pine

Katherine E Kerlin — March 23, 2026 - 9:00am

Scientists have sequenced the bristlecone pine genome, which could help unlock the secrets of this tree's exceptionally long life.

Egghead's Weekend Basket for March 6

Andy Fell — March 06, 2026 - 3:39pm

Another week, another roundup of 51�ԹϺ�� Davis research news.

Tracking bacteria in the salad bowl

A series of outbreaks of E. coli illness linked to leafy greens grown on California's central coast prompted the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to ask 51�ԹϺ�� Davis to lead a five-year effort to better understand how the bacteria circulate between soil, water, crops and animals in the nation's salad bowl.

Introducing the ‘Bloom’ Cycle, or Why Plants Are Not Stupid

Andy Fell — March 02, 2026 - 10:47am

For decades, the basics of plant growth have been taught in grade-school: Plants make their food out of water from the soil, light from the sun and carbon dioxide from the air in a process called photosynthesis.

Enemy at the Stomatal Gate: How Bacteria Trick Plants Into Letting Them Pass

Andy Fell — February 17, 2026 - 4:45pm

Plants have resources, and bacteria want them. Plants have gates on their leaves to keep the thieves out. But a nasty bug called Salmonella has figured out how to trick plants into opening up their safety gates so it can sneak in and live happily inside.

When people eat those contaminated leaves, they can get sick, sometimes severely. Because the bacteria are actually inside the leaves, they cannot be removed by washing.

Grant to Expand Self-Cloning Crop Technology for Indian Farmers

Andy Fell — January 27, 2026 - 9:40am

Venkatesan Sundaresan, a Distinguished Professor of plant biology and plant sciences at the University of California, Davis, has been awarded a Gates Foundation grant to develop self-cloning crops for Indian farmers.