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News

Tuesday, 05 Mar 2019

An international study has found a drought alarm system that first appeared in freshwater algae may have enabled plants to move from water to land more than 450 million years ago – a big evolutionary step that led to the emergence of land animals, including humans. 

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Tuesday, 29 Jan 2019

Human error, not human biology, largely accounts for the apparent decline of mortality among the very old, according to a new report by Saul Newman of the Research School of Biology, ANU. The result casts doubt on the hypothesis that human longevity can be greatly extended beyond current limits.

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Two people looking at a plant in a lab
Thursday, 24 Jan 2019

A scientific breakthrough intended to help boost the yields of food crops has solved a long-standing question of how cyanobacteria, known as blue-green algae, builds the carbon-capturing engines called carboxysomes in a protein liquid droplet formation.

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Tuesday, 18 Dec 2018

Fred Chow has dedicated his working life to the study of photosynthesis.

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Tuesday, 18 Dec 2018

Susanne von Caemmerer is recognised as a worldwide expert for using mathematics to represent the process by which plants convert sunlight, gases and water into sugars and oxygen – photosynthesis.

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Thursday, 13 Dec 2018

Sam Periyannan was born and brought up on a small sugar cane farm in Southern India. He never dreamed he would become a crop researcher, rather than a cane farmer.

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Events

10 Jun 2022 | 3:30pm

Source-to-sink allocation of, and sink-to-sink competition for, photoassimilates, mainly in the form of sucrose, play a key role in determining energy and resource distribution in plants for growth and reproduction.

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A person wearing a cap and glasses stands at a viewpoint, with a scenic view of a canyon and a cloudy sky in the background.
27 May 2022 | 3:30pm

Rhynchosporium commune is a pathogenic fungus causing barley scald disease. Although scald disease has become a significant issue for commercial barley growers, the molecular mechanisms underpinning the disease are poorly understood.

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25 May 2022 | 4pm

Seeds provide 70% of global food resources, being the most valuable output from plant production. They also play a critical role in agriculture because the lifecycle of most crops begins from seed germination.

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A person smiling at the camera while conducting research in a lush green farm field.
20 May 2022 | 3:30pm

C4 photosynthesis involves a number of biochemical and anatomical traits that significantly improve plant productivity under conditions that reduce the efficiency of C3 photosynthesis.

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A woman with glasses wearing a black jacket and a red floral blouse smiles gently in a park setting.
18 May 2022 | 1pm

Nitrogen (N) is a primary nutrient that is essential to the survival of all living organisms. Crops are inefficient in their N use, losing 50-70% of applied N, which transforms to reactive nitrogen Nr, to the environment.

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A woman in a winter hat and jacket smiles in front of snow-covered pine trees.
29 Apr 2022 | 3:30pm

The interaction of C-TERMINALLY ENCODED PEPTIDEs (CEPs) with CEP RECEPTOR1 (CEPR1) controls root growth and development, as well as nitrate uptake, but the underlying protein interactions involved are yet to be comprehensively defined.

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