CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — According to a popular hypothesis, grasses such as maize, sugar cane, millet and sorghum got their evolutionary start as a result of a steep drop in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels ...

One of the major challenges the world faces is how to provide sustainable sources of energy that meet societal needs as the global population continues to grow. Bioenergy crops have garnered ...

Secrets regarding the spread of the world's grasslands — which proved vital to countless species of grazing animals and may have influenced humanity's evolution — have now been uncovered in fossil ...

The evolutionary relationships among grasses have been clarified in new molecular study of the grass family tree, the study also provides evidence that a type of photosynthesis -- known as 'C4 ...

West Virginia University researchers are exploring the potential for carbon-hungry grasses planted on reclaimed mine land to help mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. A $35,000 grant from the ...

The arrival of a new variety of plants, particularly grasses, may have altered the environment in ways that could have helped push our ancestors to acquire traits that would come to define modern ...

Almost 100 years ago, there was a strange, slow-motion takeover of the Great Plains. During the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, as a historic heatwave and drought swept the middle of the United States, there ...

To determine how grassland, woodland, and bordering forests respond to increased aridity, we used paleoecological methods to examine past responses along a transect of three sites at the eastern ...

Biologists evaluated limitations to photosynthetic efficiency of bioenergy grass species during fluctuating light. One of the major challenges the world faces is how to provide sustainable sources of ...