A UC Davis survey found that gardening during the COVID-19 pandemic helped people relieve stress, connect with others, and grow food. It highlighted the positive mental health benefits and the need for more green spaces to support public health.
Brassica plants, such as broccoli, produce metabolites that benefit humans (flavor, anti-cancer defenses), benefit the plant (attacking insects) and, in new research, defend against drought. Dan Kliebenstein’s lab examines drought tolerance in Arabidopsis.
Sometimes, the evolutionary history of a species can be found in a fossil record. Other times, DNA and genetic fingerprints replace rocks and imprints. That is the case for the carrot, the richest crop source of vitamin A in the American diet, whose full genetic code has been deciphered by a team led by the University of Wisconsin-Madison in collaboration with the University of California, Davis.
