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Why India's farmers want to conserve indigenous heirloom rice https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/24/why-indias-farmers-want-to-conserve-indigenous-heirloom-rice?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other View in LinkedIn

ROOT GROWTH SPECIFICITY. "Considerable specificity appears to be conveyed by roots: the growth patterns of roots have shown to depend on neighbour genotype, neighbour species, whether neighbouring roots are self- or non-self or connected by stolons, even in genetically identical individuals." http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/3/4/435.short View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS this perspective on the nuanced and complicated lives of plants. It has been often stated that because they move slowly, human are often sublimely oblivious to these phenomena. But with the help of time lapse cinematography, we can appreciate a little more their animated live, growth and mating cycles. https://lnkd.in/gvP8Mxa View in LinkedIn

ROOT ALLOCATION. "Plants increase root allocation in the presence of neighbour roots, increasing below-ground competitive ability." https://lnkd.in/d7SNVuH View in LinkedIn

NEW PERSPECTIVES. "The fact that plants can recognize the shape of their neighbors and rearrange their leaf position in consequence is novel and very exciting. It could be a cooperative or an altruistic behavior in a species where populations are viscous, the other mechanism described by Hamilton (1964) allowing for kin selection, that is, where dispersal is rare enough for neighbors in a population to be closely related." https://lnkd.in/gWWRrBP View in LinkedIn

NEW PARADIGMS. "One of the objections for kin selection to actually occur in plants is that the kin recognition mechanisms were thought to be impossible in the plant kingdom (i.e. lack of sensors). This has recently been challenged by experimental studies showing differential response of root growth depending on the relatedness of neighbors, providing a major opportunity to explore new hypotheses and perspectives." https://lnkd.in/gWWRrBP View in LinkedIn

CHANGES IN TRAITS. "Plants recognize their kin and respond to growing with relatives with changes in functional traits." https://lnkd.in/ghemavh View in LinkedIn

LIGHT SIGNALS. "Plants recognized kin neighbours and horizontally reoriented leaf growth, a response not observed when plants were grown with nonkin. Plant kin recognition involved the perception of the vertical red/far-red light and blue light profiles. Light signals from neighbours are known to shape a more competitive plant body. Here we show that photosensory receptors mediate cooperative rather than competitive interactions among kin neighbours by reducing the competition for local pools of resources." https://lnkd.in/gA-pj6A View in LinkedIn

LEAF ORIENTATIONS. "When plants of Arabidopsis thaliana are cultivated in rows of coetaneous kin neighbours (plants of the same accession) the growth of their leaves is horizontally reoriented towards the empty spaces out of the row, increasing self-shading and reducing mutual shading among plants. This growth pattern is not observed among nonkin plants." https://lnkd.in/gD_46dv View in LinkedIn

CHEATING. "The stability of cooperative interactions among different species can be compromised by cheating. In the plant-mycorrhizal fungi symbiosis, a single mycorrhizal network may interact with many plants, providing the opportunity for individual plants to cheat by obtaining nutrients from the fungi without donating carbon. Here we determine whether kin selection may favour plant investment in the mycorrhizal network, reducing the incentive to cheat when relatives interact with a single network." https://lnkd.in/gAWcQQc View in LinkedIn