People, Events and News

American Beauties joins forces with Whole Foods

Whole Foods reached out to American Beauties Native Plants last year for help with a large-scale native plant garden for its new distribution center in Indiana. Peggy Anne Montgomery, brand manager for American Beauties, designed the garden as a gift to Whole Foods and Peggy was invited to Chicago to teach its staff about the importance of native plants. This spring, American Beauties will be offered to Whole Food’s 27 Midwest locations. “Whole Foods slogan is: Whole Foods, Whole People, Whole Planet. Native plants play a critical roll in keeping our planet, food and people whole as well. It’s a natural fit,” says co-owner Steve Castorani. As natural habitats continue to decline, the plants we put into gardens become increasingly important. It’s hard to imagine a world without Monarchs but populations are declining and there is just one native plant that can feed their caterpillars - milkweed. “We’re excited about this opportunity. We believe that together we can make a difference,” says Montgomery.
 

Previously unknown orchid named

A previously unidentified orchid discovered by a researcher from the University of California, Riverside, eight years ago has been named, according to an article on UCR Today. The plant, Lophiaris silverarum, was named after Katia Silvera, the postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Riverside, who was on a field trip with her father in central Panama when she caught a glimpse of the unfamiliar orchid.

For more: http://ucrtoday.ucr.edu/21707
 

Bayer opens North American Bee Care Center

On April 15, Bayer CropScience opened its North American Bee Care Center in Research Triangle Park, N.C. The 6,000-square-foot, $2.4 million center will support scientific research, product stewardship, and sustainable agriculture to protect and improve honey bee health, as well as educate stakeholders and the general public about the beneficial insects.

The center has a laboratory with a teaching and research apiary, honey extraction and hive maintenance space, interactive learning center, meeting and training facilities for beekeepers, farmers and educators, office space for staff and graduate students, on-site honey bee colonies, pollinator-friendly gardens, and a screened hive observation area.

The North American Bee Care Center, part of the company’s $12 million corporate-wide investment in bee health in 2014, brings together experts in agriculture and apiology to develop comprehensive solutions for bee health, including entomologists and apiarists and graduate researchers.

The facility complements Bayer’s Eastern Bee Care Technology Station, a 1,200-square-foot field station that opened in November in nearby Clayton, N.C. Bayer’s first Bee Care Center opened in 2012 at the company’s global headquarters in Monheim, Germany.

“Honey bees are essential to modern agriculture production, and our North American Bee Care Center will help facilitate the research needed to help honey bees meet the increasing global demand for crop pollination,” said Jim Blome, president and CEO of Bayer CropScience LP North America. “Bayer CropScience actively seeks to promote bee-responsible use of Bayer products through worldwide communication activities and education. What we are developing here will serve not only to protect honey bees and their ability to effectively pollinate crops but will also help us leave a better world, one hive and one harvest at a time.”

For more: http://beecare.bayer.com/home
 

Research could produce a new generation of high-yield plants

A new generation of high-yield plants could be created following a fundamental change in our understanding of how Laser scanning reveals an image of an early embryo while surrounding placental endosperm cells plants develop.

The research, led by the University of Warwick and published in the journal Science, provides the first evidence that plants have evolved ways to control embryo growth and development by emitting information from surrounding cells.

The international study, headed by Dr. Jose Gutierrez-Marcos from Warwick’s School of Life Sciences, revealed that female sex cells and the placenta-like endosperm contained within plant seeds send out specific signals to developing embryos to help direct their growth.

“This new information fundamentally changes our understanding of plant development and opens up exciting avenues of research, which could allow for the breeding and propagation of plants that incorporate the most successful characteristics of existing species”, said Dr Gutierrez-Marcos.

“With rising global populations and changing climates, there is an increasing need for more robust plant varieties that provide higher yields and can grow under a wide set of environmental conditions. By understanding how plants control embryo growth we have opened up the possibility of breeding a new generation of plants that potentially meet these requirements.”

Plant embryos are found within seeds and, once germinated, give rise to the adult plant. It was previously thought that embryo development was determined by the genetic make-up of the embryo alone.

The new research has shown that specific cell-types present in the embryo environment can send out protein signals that may also influence this process.

This situation mirrors a similar scenario in mammals, whereby embryo development is regulated by signals sent out by neighbouring placental cells.

Understanding how these cells of non-embryonic origin can influence developing plant embryos, the researchers argue, is key to creating new, improved plant species including advantageous hybrid crops, where at present embryos often fail to develop properly when distantly-related parents are used.

“Before our discovery, the ability of non-embryonic plant cells to direct embryo growth was unrecognized, but we now have valuable information that neighboring cells can directly interact with and influence embryos, most likely via a cascade of protein signals. The next step is to identify the embryonic factors that respond to these non-embryonic signals and understand their mode of action,” commented Dr Gutierrez-Marcos.

 

Biancheri Creations partners with Onings Holland to sell ranunculus and anemone varieties

Biancheri Creations has given Onings Holland Inc. of Paso Robles, Calif., the exclusive rights to sell, market and distribute its ranunculus and anemone varieties to flower growers in the U.S. and Canada.

Biancheri Creations of San Remo, Italy, breeds multicolored ranunculus and anemones varieties. These hybrids are characterized by their early blooming, high productivity, increased color homogeneity, and large dimension of the flower. The Elegance, Festival and the cloned (Clooney) PonPon and Success ranunculus as well as Mistral anemone are available in many different colors.

Onings Holland supplies pot and cut flower growers with top-quality lily bulbs all over the world. While Abbott-Ipco will focus on Biancheri Creations varieties for the pot-plant segment of the industry, Onings Holland will supply and support cut flower growers in the U.S. and Canada.