How does a plant reliably produce smooth leaves, protective flower parts and other complex structures? Adrienne Roeder is uncovering the cellular and molecular mechanisms that allow plants to grow with remarkable precision despite the inherent randomness of life.

A professor in Cornell's School of Integrative Plant Science, Roeder studies how groups of cells coordinate their behavior to shape developing plant organs. Her recent research revealed how cells can buffer noisy genetic signals and how differences in growth patterns and mechanical forces determine whether plant structures remain smooth or become wrinkled.

While driven by fundamental questions about how living organisms develop, these discoveries are laying the groundwork for future advances in crop improvement, synthetic biology and the engineering of living materials. By revealing the rules that govern plant form, Roeder's work helps explain how biological complexity emerges from individual cells.

From alpine mountaintops to island ecosystems, Hannah Marx studies how plant diversity evolves and how species adapt to changing environments over time. Her research combines fieldwork, evolutionary biology and genomic tools to better understand the forces that shape plant communities and their responses to environmental change, including climate change. 

As an assistant professor in the Plant Biology Section, Marx also directs the L.H. Bailey Hortorium Herbarium – one of North America's largest collections of preserved plants totalling roughly one million specimens. 

Herbarium collections serve as biological time capsules, providing historical records and genetic material that help researchers track shifting species distributions, changes in biodiversity and long-term ecological trends. Together, Marx's research and stewardship of the herbarium are helping scientists better understand and predict how plant ecosystems may change in the future.

While a staple in much of sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, most maize varieties fall dangerously short in key nutrients like vitamin A and vitamin E.  Rather than engineer a solution in the lab, Michael Gore, professor in Plant Breeding and Genetics Section, turned to maize itself.  Over 15 years, Gore's lab "scanned thousands of maize varieties from around the globe. Using high-resolution mapping and advanced gene sequencing, they uncovered rare but powerful variants that naturally produce higher levels of beta-carotene, the precursor to vitamin A. Some of these maize lines, bright orange and brimming with nutrients, are now growing in Zambian fields through collaborations with HarvestPlus and CIMMYT," reports SeedWorld. “We didn’t need to invent a miracle,” Gore said. “We just had to listen to what maize already knew.”

Researchers at Cornell have discovered a new grape downy mildew resistance gene – giving the wine and grape industry a powerful new tool to combat this devastating disease. “Of the downy mildew resistance genes found in the world to date, this is one of the strongest,” said Lance Cadle-Davidson, adjunct professor in the School of Integrative Plant Science in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and a research plant pathologist with the USDA’s Grape Genetics Research Unit in Geneva. “The discovery could help breeders develop more resistant grape varieties.”

Imagine if a plant in a farmer’s field could warn a grower that it needs water? Or if a farmer could signal to plants that dry weather lies ahead. Margaret Frank, associate professor in the Plant Biology Section of the School of Integrative Plant Science, is one of the collaborators advancing our understanding of such two-way communication with plants through the efforts of the Center for Research on Programmable Plant Systems (CROPPS), which is funded by a five-year, $25 million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant.