News

Thanks to an experiment started before the Great Depression, researchers have pinpointed the genes behind the remarkable adaptability of barley, a key ingredient in beer and whiskey. These insights could ensure the crop’s continued survival amidst rapid climate change.

Three UC Riverside faculty experts weigh in on how the extreme summer heat affects our flora.

Climate resilient, nutritious long beans are unfortunately susceptible to aphids and nematodes. By creating four new pest-resistant varieties of the beans, scientists aim to reduce farmers’ reliance on pesticides.

Plants’ ability to sense light and temperature, and their ability to adapt to climate change, hinges on free-forming structures in their cells whose function was, until now, a mystery.

Ernst and Helen Leibacher's donation of land to UCR fund the establishment of an endowed chair in botany and plant sciences.

Scientists have known about a particular organelle in plant cells for over a century. However, UCR scientists have only now discovered that organelle’s key role in aging.

With three new grants totaling more than $11 million, UC Riverside is helping lead the fight against citrus greening or Huanglongbing, a disease threatening citrus industries in the U.S. and worldwide.

A new study shows the protective effect of income has largely eroded over the past 40 years, as landscape plants can’t keep up with the pace of climate warming.

The Luna UCR avocado is named by TIME as one of the best inventions of the year. Therecognition comes just months after UCR released the variety to commercial growers worldwide.

What if your house plant could tell you your water isn’t safe? Scientists are closer to realizing this vision, having engineered a plant to turn beet red in the presence of a banned, toxic pesticide.

Now is the time to identify the conditions that cause plants to die. Doing so will allow us to better protect plants by choosing conservation targets more strategically, UC Riverside botanists argue in a new paper.

Mary Lu Arpaia and Eric Focht have bred avocado trees in association with the University of California, Riverside, for decades. In the video below, they describe their quest for a better avocado that resulted in the release this year of the Luna UCR™, a new variety that is the great-grandchild...

The newly release Luna UCR™ avocado offers consumers great flavor, a rind that turns a tell-tale black when ripe, while growers will benefit from a smaller tree size, allowing denser plantings for more efficient and safer harvesting.

Though prescribed burns reduce wildfire threats and even improve habitat for some animals, new research shows these fires also spread stinknet, an aptly named weed currently invading superblooms across the Southwestern U.S.

UC Riverside scientists have significantly advanced the race to control plant responses to temperature on a rapidly warming planet. Key to this breakthrough is miRNA, a molecule nearly 200,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair.

Many Southern Californians plant trees prized for drought tolerance, but a new UC Riverside-led study shows that these trees lose this tolerance once they’re watered.

For decades, scientists have been stumped by the signals plants send themselves to initiate photosynthesis, the process of turning sunlight into sugars. UC Riverside researchers have now decoded those previously opaque signals.

Without clocks or modern tools, ancient Mexicans watched the sun to maintain a farming calendar that precisely tracked seasons and even adjusted for leap years.

Though it is disappearing, California’s official state grass has the ability to live for 100 years or more. New research demonstrates that sheep and cattle can help it achieve that longevity.

Researchers have identified a new reason to protect mangrove forests: they’ve been quietly keeping carbon out of Earth’s atmosphere for the past 5,000 years.