News & Announcements

Li-Jun Ma,  Anne Gershenson, and Robert Wick Featured for: Science Scene: ‘Studying basil diseases to help U.S. producers’

Basil

Researchers combine techniques to protect sweet basil from pathogens. What’s the big idea? Basil is the most important commercially grown herb crop in the United States; its essential oils are used in applications from medicine to skin care products and soft drinks. Currently basil production in the U.S. is threatened by the recently introduced plant pathogens Peronospora belbahrii, which causes downy mildew, and Fusarium oxysporum, which causes Fusarium wilt.  Read more

Ragweed may follow climate change northward

Professor Kristina Stinson

A new predictive model suggests that climate change may allow common ragweed to extend its growing range northward and into major northeast metro areas, worsening conditions for millions of people with hay fever and asthma. 

Plant ecologist Kristina Stinson, Environmental Conservation, who leads a research team that has been studying this plant for over a decade – particularly how it responds to elevated CO2 levels – worked with climate modeler and corresponding author Michael Case at University of Washington on this project. Details appear online in the journal PLOS One, and were also featured in The Daily Hampshire Gazette, as well as University of Washington News. Read more

Smarty Plants
UMass Amherst scientists work to crack a code that might help nourish the world

Smarty Plants: Maize

Iron deficiency anemia is a huge global problem. It affects 2 billion people, particularly in low-income countries where many rely on grain as a staple. Yet so far, plants have managed to outwit our efforts to convince them to carry more iron. University of Massachusetts Amherst molecular biologist Elsbeth Walker has received a three-year $870,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to discover exactly how plants regulate the amount of iron they take up through their roots. Read More

Jedaidah Chilufya Awarded Travel Grants by Wild and Tamed Phytobiomes and SACNAS

Jedaidah Chilufya, Graduate Student

Jedaidah Chilufya has been awarded a travel grant by the "Wild and Tamed Phytobiomes" to attend and present a short talk and a poster during the '21st Penn State Plant Biology Symposium' at Penn State in State College, PA.  (June 19th to 22nd, 2018). 

In addition, she also was awarded a travel scholarship by the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) to attend and present a poster at this years's 'National Diversity in STEM Conference in San Antonio, Texas (October 2018).

Bees’ Medicine Chest Should Include Sunflower Pollen, UMass Amherst Study Suggests

A new study by Jonathan Giacomini and his former advisor, evolutionary ecologist Lynn Adler at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, with others, found that eating sunflower pollen dramatically and consistently reduced a protozoan pathogen infection in bumble bees and reduced a microsporidian pathogen of the European honey bee, raising the possibility that sunflowers may provide a simple solution to improve the health of economically and ecologically important pollinators. Read more

Kristen M. DeAngelis Interviewed on the NPR Program "Science Friday" 

Professor Kristen M. DeAngelis

Professor Kristen DeAngelis discusses her work on a soil-warming experimental plot of hardwoods in Central Massachusetts and its effect on carbon loss. The segment begins at 5:50. Read more

Elizabeth Vierling Featured in CNS' "Science Scene: ‘How does nitric oxide regulate plant growth?'"

Professor Elizabeth Vierling

Elizabeth Vierling receives a four-year, $800,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for her work on nitric oxide effects in plants. The project will determine how nitric oxide (NO) modulates important aspects of plant growth, development and seed yield, processes critical to food security and plant biomass production. Read more

Annual Plant Biology Potluck

Plant Biology Potluck 2018

The Annual Plant Biology Potluck will be Friday, September 21, 2018.  The potluck will start at 6pm.  Professor Elizabeth Vierling has agreed to host the potluck this year.  For more information, please contact Jimmy Wright (jpwright@umass.edu).

Special IDGP Workshop for Graduate Students and Post-Docs: Hands-on workshop aimed to help students get creative about ways they can market their skills and knowledge

Katherine Onk

Plant Biology Graduate Student Samantha Glaze-Corcoran will host Katherine Onk from LinkedIn, who will lead a workshop targeted towards IDGP Graduate Students and Post-Docs.  
French Hall, Room 209
Tuesday, Sept. 18, 2018 at 10am

Kristen DeAngelis recognized by the NSF with its Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award

Kristen DeAngelis

Microbial ecologist Kristen DeAngelis has been recognized by the National Science Foundation with its Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award, a five-year grant that will support her research and teaching on soil microbes and their response to a warming environment. Read more

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