Tea, one of the oldest and most popular beverages, is cherished for its economic, medicinal, and cultural value. The quality of tea largely depends on the tenderness of young tea shoots, which are high in bioactive compounds.

However, achieving optimal tenderness while ensuring disease resistance, especially against gray blight, remains a significant challenge. To address these issues, researchers are delving into the regulatory mechanisms of lignin biosynthesis in tea shoots, aiming to find a balance that enhances both quality and resistance.

Researchers from Northwest A&F University have made a significant stride in this field, with their findings published in the Horticulture Research journal on March 28, 2024. The study delves into the regulatory role of the CsmiR397a-CsLAC17 module in lignin biosynthesis, the key to the tenderness and disease resistance in tea shoots.

The study discovered that the CsmiR397a-CsLAC17 module plays a pivotal role in regulating lignin biosynthesis in tea plants. When CsLAC17 was overexpressed, lignin content significantly increased, leading to enhanced disease resistance but reduced tenderness of the tea shoots.

On the other hand, CsmiR397a acted as a negative regulator of CsLAC17, reducing lignin accumulation and thereby increasing the tenderness of the shoots. These results were validated through experiments in both Arabidopsis and tea plants, demonstrating that the CsmiR397a-CsLAC17 module is essential for balancing lignin levels.

This balance is crucial as lignin strengthens cell walls against pathogen invasion but also affects the concentration of bioactive compounds in the shoots. Therefore, understanding and manipulating this regulatory mechanism can help achieve the optimal balance between quality and resistance, enhancing the overall value of tea plants.

Dr. Weidong Wang, the lead researcher, stated, “Our findings highlight the dual role of the CsmiR397a-CsLAC17 module in tea plants. By understanding and manipulating this regulatory mechanism, we can develop tea cultivars that offer both high quality and robust disease resistance, benefiting both producers and consumers.”

This study provides valuable insights into the genetic regulation of lignin biosynthesis in tea plants. The CsmiR397a-CsLAC17 module offers a potential target for breeding programs aiming to improve tea quality and resistance. The ability to balance tenderness and disease resistance could lead to the development of superior tea cultivars, enhancing the economic value and sustainability of tea production.

A team of researchers have identified unexpected ways coral reef fish living in the warmest waters on Earth, in the Arabian Gulf, have adapted to survive extreme temperatures.

Led by Co-Principal Investigator at The Mubadala Arabian Center for Climate and Environmental Sciences (ACCESS) at NYU Abu Dhabi John Burt and Associate Research Professor, Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology Jacob Johansen, the team discovered adaptations in both metabolism and swimming abilities that help fish survive the conditions of the Arabian Gulf.

Surprisingly, these fish did not follow leading theoretical predictions, which expected that the maximum size of fishes should be reduced due to limitations in metabolic oxygen-supply. Instead, these fishes demonstrated a capacity to maintain efficient oxygen supply to fuel performance even at elevated temperatures.

The warming of our oceans is anticipated to drastically affect marine life and the fishing industry, potentially upsetting entire ecosystems and economic structures reliant on these habitats. Current scientific models predict that by 2050, coral reef fishes could shrink by 14–39% in size due to increasing temperatures under climate change.

The study’s findings challenge the prevailing view that oxygen supply limitations in larger fishes are the main reason for smaller fish in warmer waters—the so-called “shrinking of fishes phenomenon.” The species observed did not follow this pattern, suggesting that other factors are also at play.

The study proposes a new theory that the decrease in fish sizes and their survival in increasingly warm oceans might be more closely related to an imbalance between how much energy fish species can obtain and how much they need to sustain themselves.

In the paper titled “Impacts of ocean warming on fish size reductions on the world’s hottest coral reefs” published in the journal Nature Communications, the researchers compared two species of fishes, Lutjanus ehrenbergii and Scolopsis ghanam, surviving under the elevated temperatures within the Arabian Gulf to those of similar age living in the cooler, more benign conditions in the nearby Gulf of Oman.

Specifically, the researchers set out to determine what qualities reef fishes in the Arabian Gulf have that enable them to survive there, where typical summer water temperatures are comparable to worst-case ocean warming projections for many tropical coral reefs globally by 2100.

“The hottest coral reefs in the world are an ideal natural laboratory to explore the future impact of rising water temperatures on fishes. Our findings indicate that some fish species are more resilient to climate change than previously understood and help explain why smaller individuals are evolutionarily favored at high temperatures,” said Burt.

“This has significant implications for our understanding of the future of marine biodiversity in a continuously warming world.”

An Otago study has found New Zealand fish species ingest more plastic near urban areas.

It’s the first study to examine how urbanization affects plastic consumption in New Zealand fish species, in a bid to understand whether species in particular locations are more affected than others.

While previous studies have found microplastic levels in sediments increase near urban areas, few studies have examined whether this results in fish ingesting more plastics in those areas.

The study, published in the New Zealand Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research, sampled three sites around Dunedin to demonstrate that fish collected 2.5 km and 10 km from the city center ingested significantly more microplastics than fish collected 25 km away from the city.

Adult mottled triplefins—a nest-guarding intertidal fish—were collected at each of the three sites: Dunedin city center, Port Chalmers, and a rural site, Pūrākanui.

Lead author, Zoology Master’s graduate Fletcher Munsterman, says initially the researchers set out to discover whether there was a correlation between the level of microplastics in the sediment at each location and how much plastic fish had ingested.

However, despite finding no significant relationship between the two, the fish collected at Pūrākanui had ingested 8.5 times less plastic overall than those in Dunedin city, and 6.3 times less plastic than Port Chalmers.

Fish dwelling in the more urbanized areas of the Otago harbor are exposed to far more plastic in the sediment, in correlation with the human population density, he says.

“Even if they aren’t ingesting it directly, they’re still being exposed to the effects from the presence of these plastics. Whether that’s the physical impact or chemical.

“If a fish is eating large amounts of microplastics, and the plastics are too large to pass directly through the system, the fish themselves will hold onto those plastics in their systems, and pass these on to the next level up the food chain when they are eaten.”

Of the total samples collected from all three sites, 83% contained microplastics.

While the Pūrākanui microplastic counts were similar to counts found in the guts of various New Zealand commercial fish species, the Port Chalmers and Dunedin city counts were much higher, with fish averaging 20 microplastics per gut.

Research supervisor Associate Professor Sheri Johnson says she is surprised by the high levels of microplastic concentrations in Otago compared to other areas in New Zealand.

“The concentration of microplastics in sediments and ingested by the triplefins here in Otago are similar to the microplastic levels in the highly-polluted Venetian Lagoon.

“We need to understand more about why Otago sediments and marine life have so much higher concentrations of microplastics.”

Hopefully studies like this make people think more about their use and disposal of plastics, she says.

“It would be great if people would at least collect plastic rubbish when they see it on beaches/shorelines.

“Whenever I see plastic rubbish in these areas, I think about marine life ingesting it and collect it—I try to always carry a bag with me to collect plastic rubbish.”

A new study of coral reefs in Papua New Guinea shows ocean acidification simplifies coral structure, making crucial habitat less appealing to certain fish species.

While much media attention has focused on heat stress-induced coral bleaching, this finding, by a University of Adelaide research team led by Professor Ivan Nagelkerken, adds nuance to concerns about how global warming affects coral reefs.

Ocean acidification is caused by an increase in the level of carbon dioxide in oceanwater, leading to a reduction in pH. This makes calcium carbonate less available in the ocean, which corals use to build and repair their skeleton.

Professor Nagelkerken and his team show that, while ocean acidification in some instances does not reduce overall coral cover on a reef, the structures are less branched and therefore less appealing as habitat to some fish species. The study is published in the Journal of Animal Ecology.

Researchers observed two reefs in Upa-Upasina, Papua New Guinea: one located next to a volcanic seep releasing a steady stream of carbon dioxide, causing natural acidification, and another located 500 meters away unaffected by the volcanic gases.

“Aquarium experiments are rather simplistic and cannot adequately mimic the complex species interactions that commonly occur in nature,” says Professor Nagelkerken.

“These reefs presented an incredible opportunity to directly compare current and future-analogous conditions side-by-side, with a full suite of ecological interactions in place.”

Of the five damselfish species Professor Nagelkerken’s research team observed, two displayed a preference for complex, branched structures; while two others were not disinclined to interact with simplified coral structures but still sought out complex habitats even as they became scarce. A fifth rubble-specialist species associated most strongly with rubble.

“Ocean acidification has the potential to reshuffle ecological communities globally, lead to the loss of key habitats and biodiversity, reduce fisheries’ productivity, and have negative physiological impacts on many marine animals and plants,” says Professor Nagelkerken, from the University of Adelaide’s School of Biological Sciences.

“It might also lead to a reduction in populations of various fish species, which could create novel species community structures that might have lower biodiversity and not be as resilient as present-day communities. It could also clearly distinguish winner species from loser species. And if this ocean acidification affects fisheries species, some species that recreational and commercial fishers target might become less abundant.”

The acidification conditions observed in the research at the reef beside the volcanic seep are expected to occur in the ocean more broadly as the increasing level of human-caused carbon emissions in Earth’s atmosphere are absorbed by the ocean.

“If we continue to emit carbon dioxide unabated, at some point in the future we could see such levels of ocean acidification in Australia,” says Professor Nagelkerken, who worked alongside colleagues from James Cook University as part of an international team that included researchers from New Caledonia, Hong Kong and Japan.

“The effects observed in our study would be similar in Australian ecosystems, because many of the coral and fish species that we studied in Papua New Guinea also occur on the Great Barrier Reef.

“But temperate reefs might also be affected, with ocean acidification having negative effects on cold-water reef builders such as oysters, mussels and calcareous algae, among others.”

The way to avoid this looming future, according to Professor Nagelkerken, is simple. “We should increase our efforts to reduce CO₂ emissions globally,” he says.

A research team has developed the SCAG algorithm for accurate branch detection and angle calculation in soybean plants using LiDAR data. SCAG achieved high accuracy in branch detection (F-score=0.77) and angle calculation (r=0.84), outperforming traditional methods.

This algorithm identified novel, heritable traits for evaluating soybean density tolerance, such as the average angle to height ratio (AHR) and the angle to stem length ratio (ALR). The open-source SCAG can be applied to other crops, enhancing plant architecture characterization and aiding in ideal variety selection for improved agricultural outcomes.

Soybean is a major source of plant oil and protein, crucial for meeting the demands of a growing global population. Increasing soybean productivity is a long-term breeding goal, but limited arable land and various stresses, particularly nutrient stress, pose challenges. Traditional stress monitoring methods are labor-intensive and inefficient, whereas remote sensing techniques have their own limitations.

Current research highlights the potential of deep learning, particularly Transformer architecture, to enhance hyperspectral imaging analysis. However, combining deep learning with hyperspectral imaging for identifying soybean nutrient stress remains underexplored, which necessitates further investigation.

A study published in Plant Phenomics on 19 May 2024, introduces the SCAG algorithm for accurate branch detection and angle calculation in soybeans using LiDAR data.

This innovative method demonstrated high accuracy in branch detection (F-score=0.77) and angle calculation (r=0.84) when evaluated on 152 diverse soybean varieties, significantly outperforming the SVM (F-score=0.53) and density-based (F-score=0.55) methods. SCAG’s robustness was confirmed through parameter sensitivity analysis, showing insensitivity to parameters N and D, and minor sensitivity to parameter H, which should be set to approximately twice the branch diameter for optimal results.

SCAG’s applicability was tested on maize and tomato point clouds from the Pheno4D dataset, demonstrating high accuracy in leaf/branch angle calculations (r=0.95 for maize, r=0.94 for tomato), showcasing its potential for diverse crop types. The algorithm also identified novel traits for evaluating soybean density tolerance, such as the average angle to height (AHR) and the ratio of average angle to stem length (ALR), which exhibited better heritability and repeatability compared to traditional traits like the canopy width to height ratio (CHR).

Despite its success, SCAG faces challenges with complex 3D structures, sparse point clouds, and small targets. Future research should focus on improving data quality, addressing missing data issues, and integrating advanced deep learning methods to enhance detection accuracy.

According to the study’s lead researcher, Shichao Jin, “Ourwork demonstrates significant advances in 3D phenotyping and plant architecturescreening. The algorithm can be applied to other crops, such as maize and tomato. Ourdataset, scripts, and software are public, which can further benefit the plant sciencecommunity by enhancing plant architecture characterization and facilitating ideal variety selection.”

In summary, the open-source SCAG algorithm offers significant potential for enhancing crop development and agricultural productivity. Future research will focus on improving data quality and integrating advanced methods to further expand its applicability.