Modern tomatoes can’t get same soil microbe boost as ancient ancestors
Beneficial soil microbe Trichoderma harzianum helpswild-type tomato plants grow larger and improves their defense against disease. Plants treated with the microbe (right of each frame) grew taller and amassed significantly more root growth than non-treated plants. Purdue University scientists hope to identify the genes that allow the plants to benefit from soil microbes to strengthen modern hybrids. (Photos courtesy Lori Hoagland and Amit Jaiswal)
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. Tomato plants are especially vulnerable to foliar diseases that can kill them or impact yield. These problems require a number of pesticides in conventional crops and make organic production especially difficult.
Posted December 16th, 2020 for Purdue University Deforestation of the Amazon rainforest, often for agricultural purposes, creates conditions that are conducive for fires. Researchers at Purdue University, the University of Lleida and the Forest Sciences Centre of Catalonia in Spain used remote sensing technology to show that 85% of the Amazon rainforest fires of 2019 were in areas that had been deforested just the year before. (Photo courtesy of André Dib.) WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. In 2019, unprecedented wildfires destroyed thousands of square miles of Amazon rainforest, roughly the size of New Jersey. The loss of biodiversity and invaluable habitats, release of carbon from the fires, and other socioeconomic and environmental consequences have concerned scientists around the world.
Non-tenured and female faculty feeling COVID burdens, study says
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. The COVID-19 pandemic forced many faculty scientists to come in from field work and leave their labs for makeshift home workspaces. Those disruptions have affected faculty differently.
Purdue University and Colorado State University researchers surveyed ecology and evolutionary biology faculty across the United States to understand how the pandemic is affecting them and their work. In the journal Ecological Applications, they report that junior faculty and female faculty especially those with children are most negatively affected.
“Women in these fields are often still primarily responsible for their children, and we found that this is obstructing them from keeping up with the demands of their research and teaching,” said Zhao Ma, a professor in Purdue’s Department of Forestry and Natural Resources. “Faculty seeking tenure or promotion feel a lot of pressure to conduct and publish r
Bioengineered probiotic could prevent Listeria infections Bioengineered lactobacillus (red) interacts with surface heat shock protein 60 (white, yellow arrows), blocking Listeria monocytogenes (green, white arrows) from crossing into the bloodstream. (Photo provided by Rishi Drolia and Arun Bhunia.)
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. For pregnant women, the elderly and those with weakened immune systems, listeriosis is a serious foodborne illness often linked to deli meats, fresh produce and dairy products. Even with antibiotic treatment, listeriosis is fatal for about 20 percent of patients, resulting in thousands of deaths annually.
Purdue University’s Arun Bhunia, a professor of food science, and postdoctoral researcher Rishi Drolia have developed a probiotic that could prevent infections in at-risk populations. A bioengineered version of Lactobacillus, a bacterium common in the human gut, can block the pathway the Listeria monocytogenes bacteria use to cross intestinal wall cell