What Canola Can Tell Us About Crops And Climate Change
When canola seedpods shatter prematurely, farmers can lose a lot of their crop. Scientists have now figured out how this happens, and it has implications for similar crops facing global warming.
Hot summers can devastate canola farmers. Prolonged heat waves can leave behind fields of fallen, shattered oilseed pods and destroy vast amounts of the crop. Why canola (oilseed rape) seedpods disintegrate rapidly in prolonged heat blasts has been something of a mystery, but a new study suggests rising temperatures trigger a genetic cascade in the plant that leads to premature fruit development.
That discovery offers a potential path to protecting canola, which is important, a plant biologist at the University of California, Davis, who did not work on the study.
