De novo creation of popcorn-like fragrant foxtail millet.

Popcorn aroma is a valuable flavor quality in cereals, but, despite more than ten thousand years of millet domestication, millet lacks traits that confer this desirable aroma. Here, we developed a popcorn-scented millet, providing an important resource for future breeding.

The miR172/IDS1 signaling module confers salt tolerance through maintaining ROS homeostasis in cereal crops.

Salt stress triggers the overdose accumulation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in crop plants, leading to severe oxidative damage to living tissues. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) act as master regulators orchestrating the stress responsive regulatory networks as well as salt tolerance. However, the fundamental roles of miRNAs in modulating salt tolerance in cereal crops, especially in salt-triggered ROS scavenging remain largely unknown.

The Importance of Conserved Serine for C-Terminally Encoded Peptides Function Exertion in Apple.

Background: The C-terminally encoded peptide (CEP) family has been shown to play vital roles in plant growth. Although a genome-wide analysis of this family has been performed in Arabidopsis, little is known regarding CEPs in apple ().

Methods: Here, a comprehensive bioinformatics approach was applied to identify MdCEPs in apple, and 12 genes were identified and distributed on 6 chromosomes.