Plants

WSU scientist contributes to important soil carbon sequestration research

Kirsten Ball, a post-doctoral researcher with WSU’s Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources (CSANR), is working to understand the short- and long-term potential for organic amendments to improve carbon storage in soils of agricultural systems.

Kirsten Ball bends over in a green field, next to a bucket.

Online Databases Provide New Tool for Unlocking the Genetic Secrets in Medicinal Plants

PULLMAN, Wash. – Unlocking the genetic and biochemical secrets of plants used for medicinal purposes could be easier in the future, thanks to new online databases funded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences through the American Recovery and Re-investment Act. The three-year projects were funded as part of a $10 million initiative from […]

WSU Scientists First to Characterize Barley Plant-Stem Rust Spore ‘Communication’, Clone Genes to Build Stem Rust Resistance

PULLMAN, Wash. – Traditional thought holds that a disease-causing organism has to penetrate a plant to initiate resistance. Now, two Washington State University scientists have established that a barley plant recognizes an invader and begins to marshal its defenses within five minutes of an attack. The discovery, along with the scientists’ successful cloning of barley’s […]

Living on a Different Clock

It’s obvious that miners focus on the highest concentration of gold or copper they can find. And geologists like me are always on the lookout for unusually high concentrations of metals in veins and rocks. We go where the best stuff is, and make a living helping to bring it to where it’s used in […]