The authors applied semi‑supervised deep‑learning to super‑resolution images of modern and fossil grass pollen, training convolutional neural networks to extract abstract morphological features. These features were used to quantify past grass community diversity and C3:C4 ratios in a 25,000‑year lake‑sediment record, revealing a marked diversity loss during the last glacial and a gradual decline of C4 grasses in the Holocene.
The authors introduce AdaPoinTr, a geometry-aware transformer that predicts the alpha‑shape of coniferous tree crowns from incomplete terrestrial or mobile laser‑scanning point clouds, focusing on crown reconstruction rather than full tree completion. Trained on synthetically generated partial crowns, the model consistently improves crown shape similarity and reduces height estimation bias across three diverse forest datasets, providing a cost‑effective solution for enhanced 3D forest structural monitoring.
Root-Suppressed Phenotype of Tomato Rs Mutant is Seemingly Related to Expression of Root-Meristem-Specific Sulfotransferases
Authors: Kumari, A., Gupta, P., Santisree, P., Pamei, I., Valluri,, S., Sharma, K., Venkateswara Rao, K., Shukla, S., Nama, S., Sreelakshmi, Y., Sharma, R.
The study characterizes a radiation‑induced root‑suppressed (Rs) mutant in tomato that displays dwarfism and pleiotropic defects in leaves, flowers, and fruits. Metabolite profiling and rescue with H2S donors implicate disrupted sulfur metabolism, and whole‑genome sequencing identifies promoter mutations in two root‑meristem‑specific sulfotransferase genes as likely contributors to the root phenotype.
An ancient alkalinization factor informs Arabidopsis root development
Authors: Xhelilaj, K., von Arx, M., Biermann, D., Parvanov, A., Faiss, N., Monte, I., Klingelhuber, F., Zipfel, C., Timmermans, M., Oecking, C., Gronnier, J.
The study identifies members of the REMORIN protein family as inhibitors of plasma membrane H⁺‑ATPases, leading to extracellular pH alkalinization that modulates cell surface processes such as steroid hormone signaling and coordinates root developmental transitions in Arabidopsis thaliana. This inhibition represents an ancient mechanism predating root evolution, suggesting that extracellular pH patterning has shaped plant morphogenesis.
The study examined how DNA methylation influences cold stress priming in Arabidopsis thaliana, revealing that primed plants exhibit distinct gene expression and methylation patterns compared to non-primed plants. DNA methylation mutants, especially met1 lacking CG methylation, showed altered cold memory and misregulation of the CBF gene cluster, indicating that methylation ensures transcriptional precision during stress recall.
The study examines how ectopic accumulation of methionine in Arabidopsis thaliana leaves, driven by a deregulated AtCGS transgene under a seed‑specific promoter, reshapes metabolism, gene expression, and DNA methylation. High‑methionine lines exhibit increased amino acids and sugars, activation of stress‑hormone pathways, and reduced expression of DNA methyltransferases, while low‑methionine lines show heightened non‑CG methylation without major transcriptional changes. Integrated transcriptomic and methylomic analyses reveal a feedback loop linking sulfur‑carbon metabolism, stress adaptation, and epigenetic regulation.
The study assessed how well common deep learning models (ResNet, EfficientNet, Inception, MobileNet) generalize across different tomato pest and disease image datasets. While models performed well on the dataset they were trained on, they suffered substantial accuracy drops when applied to other datasets, indicating that architectural changes alone cannot overcome dataset variability. The results highlight the necessity for more diverse, representative training data to improve real-world deployment of PPD diagnostic tools.
The study demonstrates that hyperspectral imaging can non‑destructively differentiate active nitrogen‑fixing root nodules from non‑fixing nodules and root tissue based on distinct spectral signatures. By integrating deep‑learning models, the authors created an automated nodule counting pipeline that works across multiple legume species and growth conditions, eliminating labor‑intensive manual counting and reliably detecting nodules within dense root systems.
The study introduces the Botanical Spectrum Analyzer (BSA), a GUI that incorporates a modified U‑Net deep neural network for accurate segmentation of plant images from RGB and hyperspectral (VNIR and SWIR) data. BSA was tested on wheat, barley, and Arabidopsis datasets, achieving >99% accuracy and F1‑scores above 98%, and markedly outperformed commercial tools on root segmentation tasks.
Phenotypic scoring of Canola Blackleg severity using machine learning image analysis
Authors: Hu, Q., Anderson, S. N., Gardner, S., Ernst, T. W., Koscielny, C. B., Bahia, N. S., Johnson, C. G., Jarvis, A. C., Hynek, J., Coles, N., Falak, I., Charne, D. R., Ruidiaz, M. E., Linares, J. N., Mazis, A., Stanton, D. J.
The study introduces a deep‑learning based image analysis pipeline that scores blackleg disease severity from stem cross‑section images of canola species, achieving greater consistency than median expert raters while preserving comparable heritability of susceptibility traits. This standardized scoring method aims to improve selection of resistant varieties in breeding programs.