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ucdavisplants.bsky.social
UCDavisPlants
@ucdavisplants.bsky.social
1.6K followers 110 following 470 posts
🌱 Discussion of all plant-related research and concepts.
UC Davis supports academic and research programs in plant sciences, plant biology, plant pathology, viticulture and agricultural engineering.

https://instagram.com/ucdavisplants
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ucdavisplants.bsky.social
🍇 From Journal of Plant Physiology: Grapevines adapt to drought type: under gradual stress, they “procrastinate,” delaying defense, while rapid drying triggers fast ABA-driven escape responses. (J. Orozco, M.A. Zwieniecki)
▶️ www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
#PlantScience #Viticulture
Fig. 1. – Scheme of the experimental setup. Gradual reduction of water provided under progressive drought (PD; water-green) treatment started on day 0. To achieve rapid drought (RD; grey), irrigation on the selected group of grapevines was interrupted from day 27; before that date, plants were watered up to pot capacity as controls. The yellow square represents control plants maintained at well-watered conditions throughout the whole duration of the experiment. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)
November 12, 2025 at 7:12 PM
ucdavisplants.bsky.social
🚜 From Journal of Agricultural Safety Health: As robotics reshape farm work, researchers call for urgent study of human–machine safety, event tracking, and collaboration to protect agricultural workers. (Farzaneh Khorsandi)
▶️ pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40794928/
#AgEngineering #Agriculture
Figure 1. Autonomous tractor (www.monarchtractor.com) (left) and autonomous sprayer (www.gussag.com) (right).
November 6, 2025 at 5:15 PM
ucdavisplants.bsky.social
🌱From Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment: Managed cattle grazing can suppress invasive grasses and boost native plant diversity, offering a sustainable tool for restoring tropical grasslands. (Bruna H. Campos, Jennifer L. Funk)
▶️ www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
#RangelandScience
Fig. 1. Detailed representation of the experimental design and grazing regime during the observation period. Cow icon sourced from Flaticon.com.
November 4, 2025 at 5:59 PM
ucdavisplants.bsky.social
🌾From Apomixis: Researchers have engineered rice plants that clone themselves from seed, preserving hybrid vigor across generations, a major step toward true synthetic apomixis. (Imtiyaz Khanday, Venkatesan Sundaresan)

▶️ link.springer.com/protocol/10....
#PlantScience #Agriculture
Examples of chromatogram interpretations for mutations in OsSPO11-1, PAIR1, OsREC8, and OsOSD1. (Ho = homozygous mutations; Bi = biallelic mutations)
November 3, 2025 at 6:16 PM
ucdavisplants.bsky.social
🌱 From HortScience: Combining steam with quicklime improved soil pathogen control, but effects on weeds were inconsistent—highlighting the need to refine heat-based disinfestation methods. (Steven Fennimore)
▶️ journals.ashs.org/view/journal...
#WeedScience #PlantScience
(C) Posttreatment view of the microplot after plastic was removed. Soil probes were placed perpendicular to steam emitters in the wooden wedge. Type T thermocouple wires used in 2022 were placed adjacent to seed sachets.
October 29, 2025 at 5:09 PM
ucdavisplants.bsky.social
🌳From Urban Forestry & Urban Greening: California schools lost 1.8% of tree canopy between 2018–2022, with 85% of campuses seeing declines. Losses were greatest in heat-stressed regions.(Luisa Velasquez-Camacho,Moreen Willaredt, Pooja Singh, Alessandro Ossola)
▶️ www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Fig. 2. Tree canopy distribution and change across urban school districts in California. A) Spatial distribution of tree canopy extent (in hectares) across urban California school districts in 2018. B) Net change in canopy cover (as a percentage) between 2018 and 2022, calculated relative to the initial canopy area in 2018. To see the results based only on the school boundaries see Supplementary Materials.
October 27, 2025 at 4:35 PM
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🌱 From Agricultural and Forest Meteorology: Compound and cascading climate extremes are intensifying in California’s farm valleys, shifting northward and amplifying risks to crops like almonds and grapes. (Andre Daccache)
▶️ www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
#PlantScience
Fig. 1. Overview of the CV case study, showing California state with CV borders and almond/grape fields locations for 2023.
October 23, 2025 at 7:47 PM
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🌱 From Plants, People, Planet: Plant performance remained stable under reduced irrigation across climatic zones, showing strong trait plasticity and potential for lower urban water use. (Jared Sisneroz, Lorence Oki)
▶️ nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
#PlantScience #Drought
a. Map of the Western U.S. with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) hardiness zones indicated and black dots to indicate the location of the three Climate Ready Landscape Plant (CRLP) sites sampled in this study: University of Washington (UW) in zone 9a, Oregon State University (OSU) in zone 8b, and Utah State University (USU) in zone 6a (USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map, 2023). b. Climate norms for each site from the past decade (2011–2020), with black text indicating annual monthly means, yellow text indicating monthly means during the deficit irrigation/growing season months (June–September) and green text indicating monthly means during the opposite winter months (November–March). Data acquired from ClimateNA (Wang et al., 2016).
October 22, 2025 at 8:05 PM
ucdavisplants.bsky.social
🌱From Agricultural Water Management: Winter groundwater recharge in alfalfa fields can store large volumes of water with minimal yield loss, though timing is key to avoid quality declines. (Helen E. Dahlke, Daniel H. Putnam)
▶️ www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
#PlantScience #Groundwater
Fig. 1. Experimental field at the University of California Kearney Research and Extension Center (KARE), Parlier, CA (a) Overhead field layout, (b) photo of a flood treatment plot, and experimental layout, and instrumentation for the years 2019 (c) and 2020 (d). (aerial image data © 2021 Google).
October 21, 2025 at 4:59 PM
ucdavisplants.bsky.social
🌱International Communications in Heat and Mass Transfer: A solar-powered cold storage system cut produce weight loss threefold and extended shelf life fourfold, offering an efficient, low-cost preservation method. (Md Shamim Ahamed)
▶️ www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
#AgEngineering #Postharvest
Fig. 1. (a) percentage share of post-harvest losses (PHL) at different stages of fruits and vegetables supply chain, and (b) percentage share of global PHL with respect to different commodities, data is taken from [11].
October 17, 2025 at 4:06 PM
ucdavisplants.bsky.social
🌱From Ecology: Invasive annuals show strong local adaptation to aridity, but not to nitrogen deposition, highlighting climate as a key driver of evolutionary response. (Justin M Valliere, Mayra J Hernández)
▶️ pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...
#PlantScience #InvasiveSpecies
Locations of source populations of (A) Bromus diandrus and Centaurea melitensis. Shaded map area indicates average annual rainfall and circle color denotes N deposition rates. Phenology of (B) B. diandrus and (C) C. melitensis by month, with lighter and darker colors indicating vegetative growth and flowering, respectively. Months colored in gray are outside of a typical growing season. Photo credits: (B) B. Banfield and (C) Justin M. Valliere.
October 16, 2025 at 4:38 PM
ucdavisplants.bsky.social
🛰️ From Building and Environment: A new LiDAR and thermal infrared method maps urban heat at a centimeter scale, revealing sharp temperature differences between sunlit and shaded areas. (Brian Bailey)
▶️ www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
#PlantScience #lidar
Fig. 2. Relevant instruments for measurement: (a) the combined LiDAR and TIR scanner (left foreground), (b) instruments used for measuring meteorological forcing mounted on a scissor lift.
October 13, 2025 at 7:21 PM
ucdavisplants.bsky.social
🍓From HortScience: Two new day-neutral strawberry cultivars combine Fusarium wilt resistance with high yields and long shelf life.(Glenn S. Cole, Dominique D.A. Pincot, Cindy M. Lòpez, Randi A. Famula, Steven J. Knapp)
▶️ journals.ashs.org/view/journal...
#PlantPathology #PlantSceince #PlantBreeding
Changes in the visual appearance of fruit of long-shelf-life cultivars in cold storage. ‘UC Golden Gate’, ‘UC Keystone’, and ‘Monterey’ fruit were stored in the dark at 4 °C for 0, 7, and 14 d postharvest. The fruit were placed in 19-cm × 11.5-cm × 7-cm plastic clamshells and were not handled or disturbed.
October 10, 2025 at 4:02 PM
ucdavisplants.bsky.social
🌱 From Current Opinion in Plant Biology: Half a century of research reveals how actin and myosin coordinate with microtubules to guide plant cell division, ensuring precise cell plate placement. (Bo Liu, Yuh-Ru Julie Lee)

▶️ www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
#PlantBiology #PlantScience
Figure 1. Discovery of actomyosin function in division plane orientation in dividing guard mother cells of onion cotyledons in 1974. (a) A guard mother cell undergoes a symmetric cell division to produce two guard cells by having the cell plate (arrowheads) oriented along the longitudinal axis of the cotyledon. (b) After treatment with the actin-depolymerizing agent cytochalasin, a guard mother cell forms a misoriented cell plate (arrowheads). Micrographs are from a published study [10]. Scale bar, 5 μm.
October 6, 2025 at 5:00 PM
ucdavisplants.bsky.social
🌱 From HortScience: New research shows that while #almond cultivars show limited symptoms, many commonly used rootstocks are highly vulnerable to Sharka, posing a major risk. (Theodore Dejong, Thomas Gradziel)

▶️ journals.ashs.org/view/journal...
#PlantScience #PlantPathology
Fig. 1. Plum pox virus (PPV) phenotyping process. Plant models tested: own-rooted rootstock scheme (left) and ‘GF305’ rootstock infected with PPV and grafted with the genotypes to be tested (right). Pictures show the greenhouse where the evaluation has been performed and the cold chamber where the plants had been submitted to artificial rest periods. Citation: HortScience 60, 11; 10.21273/HORTSCI18765-25
September 29, 2025 at 5:47 PM
ucdavisplants.bsky.social
🌱 Leaf spectral analysis combined with machine learning can detect broomrape infestations in tomato crops early, before visible symptoms appear.(Mohammadreza Narimani, Alireza Pourreza, Ali Moghimi, Parastoo Farajpoor, Hamid Jafarbiglu, Mohsen B. Mesgaran)
▶️ www.arxiv.org/abs/2509.12074
#WeedScience
Figure 2: (a) Map of California showing major tomato farming counties and the location of our target farm, generated with ArcGIS Pro; (b) Top view of the target tomato farm, including selected non-infected and branched broomrape infected tomato plants.
September 26, 2025 at 4:29 PM
ucdavisplants.bsky.social
🖥️ From New Phytologist: Leaf inclination is key to modeling canopy function. A new study shows terrestrial LiDAR methods outperform photography, offering more complete and reliable estimates. (Brian N. Bailey)

▶️ nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

#PlantScience #LiDAR
Pictures of the tree representations included in this study: (a) Pyrus communis ‘Olga’, (b) Quercus robur, (c) Rhododendron cf. brachycarpum, (d) Fagus sylvatica, (e) Wollemia nobilis, (f) Gingko biloba, (g) Ostrya japonica, (h) Diospyros lotus; synthetic (i) spherical, (j) uniform, and (k) erectophile point clouds.
September 19, 2025 at 4:50 PM
ucdavisplants.bsky.social
🌱 From Plant Science: Disrupting 2S seed proteins in Arabidopsis reveals redox homeostasis as a core driver of proteome rebalancing, though it comes at a cost to germination. (Amanda Agosto Ramos, Daniel J. Kliebenstein)
▶️ www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
#PlantScience #PlantBiology
Fig. 6. Comparing the dry seed proteome reorganization between the two SSP rebalanced mutants, cruabc and napin-RNAi show major overlap. a, a Venn Diagram displaying the proteome overlap between the two mutants. b, STRING protein-protein interaction of the differentially expressed proteins (DEPs) that increased in both mutants. c, STRING protein-protein interaction of the DEPs that decreased in both mutants. Venny 2.1.0 and STRING v12.0 were used to generate the Figures are described in the Material and Methods. The capital letter “C” denotes cluster.
September 17, 2025 at 4:45 PM
ucdavisplants.bsky.social
💧Agricultural Water Management: In vineyards, extra drip irrigation during heatwaves eases water stress but does not cool land surface temperature or boost evaporative cooling.(A. Gal, N. Bambach,S. Bagshaw,S. Castro-Bustamante,M. Galeano,N. Raab,E. Forrestel)
▶️ www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Fig. 3. Land surface temperature spatial differences during the UAV flight (left). Differences in Tleaf_IRT and TCanopy from the handheld IRT and tower-mounted IRT, respectively (right). These measurements were collected simultaneously at solar noon (∼13:30) during the midpoint of each heatwave event.
September 15, 2025 at 4:40 PM
ucdavisplants.bsky.social
🍓From HortScience: ‘UC Surfline’ is a new short-day strawberry delivering early yields, firm fruit, and resistance to Fusarium, Verticillium, and crown rot. (Steven J. Knapp, Glenn S. Cole, Dominique D. A. Pincot, Cindy M. Lòpez, Randi A. Famula)
▶️ journals.ashs.org/view/journal...
#PlantBreeding
The short-day strawberry cultivar UC Surfline, Apr 2023, Santa Maria, CA, USA. Photographs by Fred Greaves for UC Davis.
September 12, 2025 at 4:55 PM
ucdavisplants.bsky.social
🌱 Structural variants control sex-specific flowering in walnuts and hickories, offering parallel but distinct evolutionary solutions. (Jeffrey S. Groh, Diane Vik, Matthew Davis, J. Grey Monroe, Kristian Stevens, Patrick J. Brown, Charles Langley, and Graham Coop)
▶️ www.science.org/doi/full/10....
Multiple genetic mechanisms control a balanced polymorphism for flowering order in walnuts and hickories. In Juglans (top left) and Carya, two morphs show complementary temporal separation between male and female flowering (heterodichogamy). Mating types are controlled by two nonhomologous single-locus mechanisms that arose in the common ancestor of each genus, respectively. (Bottom left) Simplified schematic of a putative functional regulatory element at the Juglans locus. (Bottom right) Strong genotypic correlations across the Carya locus indicate a lack of recombination between two colinear haplotypes with similar gene content.
September 11, 2025 at 6:04 PM
ucdavisplants.bsky.social
🌱From BioOne: Genomic and morphological analyses show Fremontodendron decumbens is a distinct species, while look-alike forms align genetically with F. californicum. (Reed J. Kenny, Will McMahan, Debora Ayres, Virginia Meyer, Eva Grotkopp, Shannon Still, Daniel Potter)
▶️ bioone.org/journals/mad...
Fremontodendron californicum (A), F. aff. decumbens (B), F. decumbens (C). Top photos show the floral color, bottom shows the habit. Photos provided by Debra Ayres.
September 8, 2025 at 4:34 PM
ucdavisplants.bsky.social
🌱 From Scientia Horticulturae: Biostimulants are moving from experimental tools to essential components of crop management. Their value lies in improving plant resilience, root growth and stress tolerance. (Patrick H. Brown, Theodore M. DeJong)
▶️ www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
#Agriculture
Fig. 1. Drivers of innovation in sustainable agriculture. The dynamic interaction between scientific and technological push drivers, and societal and agricultural pull drivers shapes resilient, efficient, and environmentally aligned farming solutions.
August 27, 2025 at 3:41 PM
ucdavisplants.bsky.social
🌱 Valley oak adapts to heat with smaller leaves, maintaining crown health if irrigated. London plane grows larger leaves, limiting heat tolerance. (Mickie Tang, Matthew E. Gilbert, Emily K. Meineke)
▶️ www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
#PlantScience #Irrigation #Climate
Fig. 1. Map of land surface temperature (left) and study trees for the leaf morphology survey (center) and crown condition survey (right) in Sacramento, CA, USA. The land surface temperature imagery was captured by Landsat 8 on July 11, 2021 at 11:45 AM PDT.
August 21, 2025 at 7:24 PM
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🌱 From Plant Phenomics: A new neural network method generates realistic 3D leaf point clouds, improving automated trait estimation critical for crop growth and yield analysis. (Brian N. Bailey)

▶️ www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
#AgTech #PlantScience
Figure 1. Overview of our approach. We show the input point cloud made up from the skeleton points in and in white hte points sampled from the GMM. Our network predicts per-point offsets depicted as arrows. Adding the offsets to the points’ positions we obtain . We supervise the network using real leaf point clouds .
August 15, 2025 at 5:25 PM