Plants — they’re just like us, with unique techniques for handling stress. To save one of the most important crops on Earth from extreme climate swings, scientists are mapping out plants’ own stress-busting strategies. A UC Riverside-led team has learned what happens to the roots of rice plants when they’re confronted with two types of...

The worst fire impacts this year are predicted to hit Northern California’s higher elevation forests and Southern California’s chaparral-clad mountainous National Forest lands. To aid recovery, UC Riverside ecologists are collaborating with the US Forest Service to target these spots with new post-fire ecological restoration strategies. Wildfires are becoming more ferocious, damaging, and expansive in...

Scientists at UC Riverside have a shot at eradicating a deadly threat to vineyards posed by the glassy-winged sharpshooter, just as its resistance to insecticide has been growing. When the half-inch-long flying insect feeds on grapevines, it transmits bacteria that causes Pierce’s Disease. Once infected, a vine is likely to die within three years —...

Claire Whitaker loves fresh fruit. That’s why the botany and plant sciences doctoral student has spent the last three years researching how to prevent gray, fuzzy fungus from consuming fruits such as strawberries. That same passion is what garnered her the top slot in UC Riverside’s 8th annual Grad Slam competition, held Thursday, March 3...

A new study casts doubt on drought as the driver of ancient Mayan civilization collapse. There is no dispute that a series of droughts occurred in the Yucatan Peninsula of southeastern Mexico and northern Central America at the end of the ninth century, when Maya cities mysteriously began to be depopulated. Believing the Maya were...

A $1.5 million emergency grant is enabling UC Riverside scientists to find plants impervious to a disease threatening America’s citrus fruit supply. Citrus Greening Disease — also known as Huanglongbing, or HLB — results in fruit that is bitter and worthless. It has crippled Florida’s citrus industry and has already been detected in California, which...

team of researchers led by UC Riverside has demonstrated for the first time one way that a small molecule turns a single cell into something as large as a tree. For half a century, scientists have known that all plants depend on this molecule, auxin, to grow. Until now, they didn't understand exactly how auxin...

Picking fruit at the University of California, Riverside, is a singular experience. In the Citrus Variety Collection’s orchard, researchers walk among trees bearing oranges, lemons, and limes of all shapes and sizes, from spindly to oblong, bumpy to smooth, huge to tiny. There are more than 1,000 kinds of citrus, two trees of each: a...

Scientists have figured out how plants respond to light and can flip this genetic switch to encourage food growth. The discovery could help increase food supply for an expanding population with shrinking opportunities for farming. The research on this genetic switch, led by UC Riverside, has now been published in the journal Nature Communications. Almost...

Seeds that would otherwise lie dormant will spring to life with the aid of a new chemical discovered by a UC Riverside-led team. Plants have the ability to perceive drought. When they do, they emit a hormone that helps them hold on to water. This same hormone, ABA, sends a message to seeds that it...

The future of vaccines may look more like eating a salad than getting a shot in the arm. UC Riverside scientists are studying whether they can turn edible plants like lettuce into mRNA vaccine factories. Messenger RNA or mRNA technology, used in COVID-19 vaccines, works by teaching our cells to recognize and protect us against...

Name: Alejandro (Alex) Cortez Undergraduate Education: University of California, Riverside, Bachelor of Science in Biology and Psychology minor (2002) Graduate Education: University of California, Riverside, Master of Science in Evolution, Ecology. and Organismal Biology (2009) Hometown: Guadalajara, Mexico and Riverside, CA Alejandro shared about his career journey, passion for outreach, and experiences with undergraduate students...

Janet Franklin, a distinguished professor of biogeography in the Department of Botany and Plant Sciences, has been named a recipient of the 2021 Distinguished Landscape Ecologist Award by the North American Chapter of the International Association for Landscape Ecology. Janet Franklin, a distinguished professor of biogeography in the Department of Botany and Plant Sciences, has...

Barley is important for more than beer. A UC Riverside geneticist has won $1.7 million to study how one of the world’s staple foods might survive climate change. The National Science Foundation CAREER Award to Daniel Koenig, an assistant professor in the Department of Botany and Plant Sciences, will reveal details about genetic adaptations barley...

The Ecological Society of America (ESA) is pleased to announce its 2021 Fellows. The Society’s fellowship program recognizes the many ways in which its members contribute to ecological research and discovery, communication, education and pedagogy, and management and policy. Fellows are members who have made outstanding contributions to a wide range of fields served by...

The plant that encourages kissing at Christmas is in fact a parasite, and new research reveals mistletoe has an unusual feeding strategy. Like other plants, mistletoe is capable of using sunlight to create its own food, a process called photosynthesis. However, it prefers to siphon water and nutrients from other trees and shrubs, using “false...

Ten researchers at the University of California, Riverside, have been included in the 2020 Highly Cited Researchers list compiled by Clarivate Analytics, which was previously part of Thomson Reuters. The list includes the 6,167 most frequently cited researchers in the physical and social sciences, recognized as “researchers who demonstrated significant influence in their chosen field.”...

Katayoon "Katie" Dehesh has many distinguished titles: director of UC Riverside’s Institute for Integrative Genome Biology, distinguished professor of molecular biochemistry, member of the German National Academy of Sciences, and now, president-elect of the American Society of Plant Biologists. But her attitude toward life can be summarized in a single word: power. “My mantra is...

Following a decade-long effort, scientists have mapped out the genome of an aphid-like pest capable of decimating vineyards. In so doing, they have discovered how it spreads — and potentially how to stop it. The research team’s work on the genome was published this past week in a BMC Biology paper. In it, they identified...

Vanessa Perez, 21, is a Class of 2020 graduate completing a bachelor’s degree in plant biology who developed her love for plants working in her father’s backyard garden as a child. She’s researched plant varieties in the Mojave Desert, co-authored two research papers, and cataloged about 1,000 trees on campus for a GIS project. She...