Regenerative agriculture effects on biomass, drought resilience and 14C-photosynthate allocation in wheat drilled into ley compared to disc or ploughed arable soil
Authors: Austen, N., Short, E., Tille, S., Johnson, I., Summers, R., Cameron, D. D., Leake, J. R.
Regenerative agriculture using a grass-clover ley increased wheat yields and macroaggregate stability despite reduced root biomass, but did not enhance soil carbon sequestration as measured by 14C retention. Drought further decreased photosynthate allocation to roots, especially in ley soils, while genotype effects on yield were minimal.
The study integrated weekly morphophysiological measurements with high-density genotyping-by-sequencing data and a machine‑learning pipeline to dissect flowering time variation in diverse Cannabis sativa landraces. By applying mutual information, recursive feature elimination, random forest, and support vector machine classifiers to over 234,000 combined genetic, phenotypic, and environmental features, the authors identified 53 key markers that classify early, medium, and late flowering types with 96.6% accuracy. Notable loci, including CsFT3 and CsCFL1, were highlighted as promising targets for breeding and smart‑crop strategies.
The study examined how soil phosphorus and nitrogen availability influence wheat root-associated arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal (AMF) communities and the expression of mycorrhizal nutrient transporters. Field sampling across two years combined with controlled pot experiments showed that P and N jointly affect AMF colonisation, community composition (with Funneliformis dominance under high P), and regulation of phosphate, ammonium, and nitrate transporters. Integrating metabarcoding and RT‑qPCR provides a framework to assess AMF contributions to crop nutrition.
The study compared aphid resistance and Barley Yellow Dwarf Virus (BYDV) transmission among three wheat varieties (G1, RGT Wolverine, RGT Illustrious). G1 emits the repellent 2‑tridecanone, restricts aphid phloem access, and shows reduced BYDV transmission, whereas RGT Wolverine limits systemic viral infection despite high transmission efficiency. The authors suggest breeding the two resistance mechanisms together for improved protection.
The study investigated whether wheat homoeologous genes actively compensate for each other when one copy acquires a premature termination codon (PTC) mutation. By analyzing mutagenised wheat lines, the authors found that only about 3% of cases exhibited upregulation of the unaffected homoeolog, indicating that widespread active transcriptional compensation is absent in wheat.
The study used extensive gravimetric load‑cell and ambient sensor data collected over seven years from hundreds of greenhouse-grown crops to train machine‑learning models for predicting daily whole‑plant transpiration. Random Forest and XGBoost achieved the highest accuracy (R² up to 0.89), with ambient temperature identified as the dominant driver. These results highlight the promise of ML‑based tools for precise agricultural water management.
Overexpression of the wheat bHLH transcription factor TaPGS1 leads to increased flavonol accumulation in the seed coat, which disrupts polar auxin transport and causes localized auxin accumulation, delaying endosperm cellularization and increasing cell number, thereby enlarging grain size. Integrated metabolomic and transcriptomic analyses identified upregulated flavonol biosynthetic genes, revealing a regulatory module that links flavonol-mediated auxin distribution to seed development in wheat.
The study evaluated how alginate oligosaccharide (AOS) chain length influences the levels of seven key phytohormones in wheat seedlings challenged with Botrytis cinerea. Hormone profiling revealed that mid‑range oligomers (DP 4‑6) most strongly up‑regulate defense‑related hormones (JA, SA, ABA, CTK), whereas longer oligomers (DP 7) most effectively suppress ethylene. These findings suggest that tailoring AOS polymerization can optimize disease resistance and growth in cereal crops.
Endophytes induce systemic spatial reprogramming of metabolism in poplar roots under drought
Authors: Aufrecht, J. A., Velickovic, D., Tournay, R., Couvillion, S. P., Balasubramanian, V. K., Winkler, T., Herrera, D., Stanley, R., Doty, S., Ahkami, A. H.
The study used high-resolution chemical imaging to map cell-type specific metabolic changes in plant roots inoculated with a nine-strain endophyte consortium under drought, revealing that endophytes differentially alter root metabolomes across spatial domains. Machine learning identified metabolites and exudates predictive of drought and endophyte treatment, and correlation analyses showed dynamic endophyte–metabolite relationships under stress.
The study introduces ENTRAP-seq, a high‑throughput in‑planta assay that couples protein‑coding libraries with a nuclear magnetic sorting‑based reporter to multiplexively assess transcriptional regulatory activity of thousands of protein variants. Using this platform and machine‑learning analysis, the authors screened 1,495 plant viral proteins, uncovering numerous novel regulatory domains, and applied machine‑guided, semi‑rational design to modify the activity of a plant transcription factor.