News & events
News
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.
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.
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.
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.
Fred Chow has dedicated his working life to the study of photosynthesis.
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.
Events
The rust fungi (Pucciniales) comprise the largest order of plant pathogenic fungi and are among the most serious threats to both agricultural crops and natural ecosystems.
The Australian agrifood sector faces complex and multifaceted challenges to its continued growth and evolution, including a changing climate and geopolitical instability.
This seminar will explore photosynthetic strategies across diverse extreme environments, presenting case studies on cyanobacteria inhabiting marine oxygen deficient zones, algae growing within sea-ice and snow, and chemoautotrophic bacteria encased within ancient anoxic marine brines.
Soil salinity (soil NaCl) can significantly reduce plant growth and yield; even moderate levels can reduce the grain yield of major cereal crops by 50%. In Australia, the estimated cost of salinity on agricultural productivity is valued at $1 billion per annum.
Genome structure and maintenance determine the evolvability of organisms. The genomes of fungal plant pathogens are often structured heterogeneously, harboring highly variable compartments and compartments of relative stability.