Plant immunity-boosting molecule identified
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Two studies published in the journal Science by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne, Germany in collaboration with colleagues in China have discovered natural cellular molecules that drive critical plant immune responses. This compound has all the advantages of being a small messenger designed by plants to activate the main defense control center. Harnessing this insight allows scientists and plant breeders to design molecules that make plants, including many important plant species, more resistant to disease. World food production must double by 2050 to feed the additional 2 billion people living on Earth by that time. Increasing food production requires increasing yields of many of our staple crops. To do so, there needs to be strategies to ensure that we can make crops more resistant to microscopic infectious agents, while also ensuring that food product...