By Susan Milius
Two new genetic insights could make plants’ sex more convenient for the people growing and eating them.
Genes that keep a plant from fertilizing itself can be transferred successfully from one species to another across an unexpectedly wide evolutionary gap, says Noni Franklin-Tong of the University of Birmingham in England. And research on melons and cucumbers shows how the interplay of three main genes controls the shifts between unisexual and bisexual blooms, says Abdelhafid Bendahmane of the INRA French national agricultural labs in Évry.