Department of Botany & Plant Sciences

Plants can stop growing within minutes to survive sudden stress

tomwt — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 22:04:13 +0000

Plants can stop growing within minutes to survive sudden stress tomwt Mon, 03/30/2026 - 15:04 More CNAS in the Media Andrei Ionescu | Earth.com March 26, 2026

EARTH.COM - Plants can’t run from danger. When sunlight suddenly becomes too intense, temperatures spike, or conditions turn hostile, they have to survive exactly where they are.

To cope, they rely on rapid internal changes. One of the most important is the ability to slow growth almost instantly – not over hours or days, but within minutes. That quick response can mean the difference between surviving a burst of stress or suffering lasting damage.

Now, researchers at the University of California, Riverside (UCR), say they’ve uncovered how that rapid slowdown actually works.

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Department of Botany & Plant Sciences

Katayoon Dehesh

Plants pause their own growth to survive stress

tomwt — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 15:10:52 +0000

Plants pause their own growth to survive stress tomwt Mon, 03/30/2026 - 08:10 More CNAS in the Media Eric Ralls | Earth.com March 28, 2026

EARTH.COM - Scientists have identified a single molecule that surges inside stressed plant cells and rapidly chokes off a growth pathway they cannot live without.

The study recasts stunted growth as an active survival response, and it points to a hidden control system that could shape tougher crops.

Inside leaf cells, the slowdown took hold in a pathway so essential that disabling one key enzyme can be fatal.

By tracking shifts in the pathway’s compounds, Wilhelmina van de Ven at the University of California, Riverside (UCR⁠) identified a single intermediate that surged as growth began to slow.

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Katayoon Dehesh

Wildflowers are blooming in the driest place in North America — but not for long

tomwt — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 22:05:43 +0000

Wildflowers are blooming in the driest place in North America — but not for long tomwt Tue, 03/10/2026 - 15:05 More CNAS in the Media Jessica Hill | AP | The Washington Post March 10, 2026

THE WASHINGTON POST - Death Valley, known as the driest place in North America, is teeming with life with a once-in-a-decade blossoming of wildflowers known as a superbloom, transforming a normally brown desert landscape into carpets of gold.

Wildflowers bloom across parts of southern California and Nevada at different degrees usually every year. In some years, superblooms are so vibrant they can be seen from space . But it’s rare for Death Valley National Park, the hottest place on Earth, to burst with color.

“This landscape that sometimes people think of as desolate or devoid of life is coming alive right now with this really beautiful palette of colors,” said park ranger Matthew Lamar.

...

Ecologists say the superbloom disproves a misconception about deserts: that there’s no life. Even in years without vibrant blooms, a lot of life happens in Death Valley, said Loralee Larios, plant ecologist at the University of California, Riverside.

“The plants and the animals have developed really amazing strategies to be able to persist, and especially in a system like Death Valley that’s really sort of characterized by extremes,” Larios said.

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Loralee Larios

Grape Day shows San Joaquin Valley growers ‘what works in our area, for our crops’

tomwt — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 17:01:39 +0000

Grape Day shows San Joaquin Valley growers ‘what works in our area, for our crops’ tomwt Thu, 08/21/2025 - 10:01 More CNAS in the Media Michael Hsu | UC ANR August 20, 2025

UC ANR - Grape Day at the Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center – a time-honored learning event dating to the late 1960s – was convened again on Aug. 12 for wine, table and raisin grape growers to hear about the latest field trials and innovations.

“The primary purpose of Grape Day is to showcase research that University of California faculty, specialists and advisors are doing to benefit the California grape industry, and particularly for growers in the San Joaquin Valley,” said Matthew Fidelibus, UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the UC Davis Department of Viticulture and Enology.

...

At the first stop, Andreas Westphal, professor of Cooperative Extension in the Department of Nematology at UC Riverside, provided an overview on the biology of nematodes – microscopic roundworms that can rob grapevines of vigor and yield.

Then Ashraf El-kereamy, UCCE specialist in the Department of Botany and Plant Sciences at UC Riverside, shared the results of testing two products aimed at mitigating heat stress on table grapes.

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Department of Nematology

Department of Botany & Plant Sciences

UC Agriculture and Natural Resources

Scientists find a surprising case of 'reverse evolution' in wild tomatoes

tomwt — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 22:26:52 +0000

Scientists find a surprising case of 'reverse evolution' in wild tomatoes tomwt Thu, 07/17/2025 - 15:26 More CNAS in the Media Adrian Villellas | Earth.com July 16, 2025

EARTH.COM - Wild tomatoes rooted on the raw lava of Fernandina and Isabela Islands have done something biologists once filed under “nearly impossible,” reviving a molecular defense that disappeared from their relatives millions of years ago during species evolution.

The phenomenon has been traced to a tiny tweak in the plants’ chemistry, and it now stands as the clearest plant example of reverse evolution, the re‑emergence of an ancestral trait after a long dormancy.

Lead author Adam Jozwiak at the University of California, Riverside, working with colleagues from the Weizmann Institute, mapped the unexpected comeback.

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Adam Jozwiak

Scientists discover Galápagos tomatoes evolving backwards, bringing back ancient traits lost millions of years

tomwt — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 14:46:37 +0000

Scientists discover Galápagos tomatoes evolving backwards, bringing back ancient traits lost millions of years tomwt Mon, 07/14/2025 - 07:46 More CNAS in the Media Arezki Amiri | Daily Galaxy July 14, 2025

DAILY GALAXY - In an unexpected discovery, researchers have found that wild tomatoes in the Galápagos Islands seem to be evolving in reverse. This fascinating phenomenon, previously thought to be rare, suggests that evolution isn’t always a straightforward process. The finding, which challenges conventional wisdom, could lead to exciting breakthroughs in genetic research.

Tomatoes Turning Back Time on the Galápagos
A team of scientists from the University of California, Riverside (UC Riverside) and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel have uncovered a surprising case of evolutionary reversal in wild tomatoes. This study, published in Nature Communications, focused on two tomato species, Solanum cheesmaniae and Solanum galapagense, both native to the Galápagos Islands. Researchers observed that these plants, particularly those from the western islands, were reverting to ancestral traits that had been lost millions of years ago.

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Adam Jozwiak

Evolution experts say wild tomatoes in Galápagos are going 'back in time'

tomwt — Thu, 10 Jul 2025 15:42:51 +0000

Evolution experts say wild tomatoes in Galápagos are going 'back in time' tomwt Thu, 07/10/2025 - 08:42 More CNAS in the Media Beki Hooper | BBC Wildlife Magazine June 27, 2025

BBC WILDLIFE MAGAZINE - Evolution is commonly thought of as a process that creates new and more complicated traits. But this is not always the case.

On the youngest islands of the Galápagos archipelago, wild tomato plants have adapted to their environment by producing toxins identical to those used by their ancestors millions of years ago.

Tomatoes are a part of the nightshade family, which also includes potatoes and aubergines. Many nightshades, including potatoes, produce alkaloids – bitter toxins that protect the plants against predation.

An international team of researchers were studying these alkaloids because – at high concentrations - they are toxic to humans. The team therefore wanted to get a better grip on how plants make them.

...

The flip to ancestral alkaloids may be an adaptation to the harsher conditions in the western islands. “The plants may be responding to an environment that more closely resembles what their ancestors faced,” lead author of the study, Dr. Adam Jozwiak tells BBC Wildlife. But he stresses that more research is needed to support this theory.

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Adam Jozwiak

Something strange is happening to tomatoes growing on the Galápagos Islands

tomwt — Thu, 10 Jul 2025 15:30:09 +0000

Something strange is happening to tomatoes growing on the Galápagos Islands tomwt Thu, 07/10/2025 - 08:30 More CNAS in the Media Sarah Kuta | Smithsonian Magazine July 09, 2025

SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE - Some tomatoes growing on the Galápagos Islands appear to be going back in time by producing the same toxins their ancestors did millions of years ago.

Scientists describe this development—a controversial process known as “reverse evolution”—in a June 18 paper published in the journal Nature Communications.

Tomatoes are nightshades, a group of plants that also includes eggplants, potatoes and peppers. Nightshades, also known as Solanaceae, produce bitter compounds called alkaloids, which help fend off hungry bugs, animals and fungi.

When plants produce alkaloids in high concentrations, they can sicken the humans who eat them. To better understand alkaloid synthesis, researchers traveled to the Galápagos Islands, the volcanic chain roughly 600 miles off the coast of mainland Ecuador made famous by British naturalist Charles Darwin.

They gathered and studied more than 30 wild tomato plants growing in different places on various islands. The Galápagos tomatoes are the descendents of plants from South America that were probably carried to the archipelago by birds.

The team’s analyses revealed that the tomatoes growing on the eastern islands were behaving as expected, by producing alkaloids that are similar to those found in modern, cultivated varieties. But those growing on the western islands, they found, were creating alkaloids that were more closely related to those produced by eggplants millions of years ago.

Researchers suspect the environment may be responsible for the plants’ unexpected return to ancestral alkaloids. The western islands are much younger than the eastern islands, so the soil is less developed and the landscape is more barren.

To survive in these harsh conditions, perhaps it was advantageous for the tomato plants to revert back to older alkaloids, the researchers posit. “The plants may be responding to an environment that more closely resembles what their ancestors faced,” says lead author Adam Jozwiak, a biochemist at the University of California, Riverside, to BBC Wildlife’s Beki Hooper.

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Adam Jozwiak

These wild tomatoes are reversing millions of years of evolution

tomwt — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 17:23:35 +0000

These wild tomatoes are reversing millions of years of evolution tomwt Wed, 07/09/2025 - 10:23 More CNAS in the Media Tudor Tarita | ZME Science July 09, 2025

ZME SCIENCE - On the Galápagos Islands, wild tomatoes are producing molecules not seen since the Ice Age, reversing a genetic trajectory millions of years in the making. In a study published in Nature Communications, researchers from the University of California, Riverside and the Weizmann Institute of Science have documented a rare and striking example of what they call “reverse evolution.”

“It’s not something we usually expect,” said Adam Jozwiak, a molecular biochemist at UC Riverside and lead author of the study. “But here it is, happening in real time, on a volcanic island.”

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Adam Jozwiak

Some tomatoes are evolving backwards in real time, scientists find

tomwt — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 17:11:21 +0000

Some tomatoes are evolving backwards in real time, scientists find tomwt Wed, 07/09/2025 - 10:11 More CNAS in the Media Darren Orf | Popular Mechanics July 09, 2025

POPULAR MECHANICS - The famous ape-to-man illustration, known as The March of Progress, depicts evolution as a one-way street toward evolutionary perfection—but nature isn’t always so simple.

Many organisms have displayed what appears to be “reverse evolution,” or regression, where ancient attributes of past ancestors seem to reappear down the evolutionary line. Cave fish, for example, will lose eyesight and return to a state similar to a previous ancestor that lacked this visual organ, but the argument remains whether this is reverse evolution or simply the ending of an evolutionary pathway that creates a vestigial organ.

Of course, complex animals are not the only ones that appear to rewind the evolutionary clock. A new study in Nature Communications, led by scientists at University of California (UC) Riverside, analyzed species of tomato in the Solanaceae family, comparing populations from both eastern and western islands of the Galápagos—that famous Pacific island chain that inspired Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory nearly 200 years ago.

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Department of Botany & Plant Sciences

Adam Jozwiak