plants

What usually happens when you cut up a piece of fruit to eat or to put in a salad? If it is an apple, a pear,...

In this activity, students observe the colour inside the root nodules of clover (or other legume) to see if they are fixing nitrogen. By the end...

Hub's writer, Nelville Gardner, talks about our pollination resources. One of the scientists featured in the articles on pollination, Dave Kelly of the University of Canterbury,...

Clover grows well in New Zealand pasture and has long been used to get nitrogen into the soil. It was introduced in the 1800s from England...

In this activity, students learn about animal and plant adaptations in Antarctic species and use these ideas to design their own unique animal or plant. By...

Antarctica is not just a land of ice and snow – it is the coldest, driest climate on earth. When we say the word ‘desert’, we...

Flowering plants create seeds, which get spread away from the parents and grow into new plants in new places. Pollination has to happen before seeds can...

In this activity, students read about pollination using a three-level reading guide and use their ability to locate information to interpret the scientific information. Students apply...

In this activity, students use information to annotate a diagram of pollen processing and use this to justify the management practice of using processed pollen on...

In this activity, students take on the role of flower parts and act out the process of insect pollination By the end of this activity, students...

In this activity, students match native flowers with their pollinators, basing predictions on the main characteristics of flowers pollinated by wind, insects or birds. By the...

In this activity, students will look at flowers and identify the different reproductive parts. By the end of this activity, students should be able to: identify...

In this unit, students investigate trends and drivers and what may be possible and preferable attributes for new fruit varieties in the future. Purpose To understand...

In this activity, students relate commonly eaten foods to different parts of the flowering plant life cycle. They use an interactive or paper-based graphic organiser. By...

Position: field services manager and research assistant, University of Canterbury. Field: Ecology As part of her job as Terrestrial Ecology Technician, at the School of Biological...

Position: Professor, School of Biological Sciences, University of Canterbury. Field: Population ecology Professor Dave Kelly is a population ecologist who has a particular interest in pollination...

Commercialising a new apple variety can take 25–30 years from selecting the initial cultivar to market launch, and the process must be carefully managed. Managing the...

Position: Head of research, Plant & Food Research. Field: Honey bees and pollination. For Dr Mark Goodwin, working with pollination has its challenges. Most crop plants...

Information about apple genetics is helping breeders at Plant & Food Research in New Zealand to breed new apple cultivars faster and more efficiently. Selectively breeding...

A collection of apple genetic resources, known as a germplasm collection, is maintained by Plant & Food Research at their Hawke’s Bay orchard to provide a...

Find out how and why a red-fleshed apple variety is being bred in New Zealand, and discover how genetic information, consumer research and sensory science are...

The flowers and fruit of flowering plants come and go as part of their life cycle. Some flowering plants don’t even have stems and leaves all...

Plants are living: They grow and die. They produce new individuals. They are made of cells. They need energy, nutrients, air and water. They respond to...

Flowering plants need to get pollen from one flower to another, either within a plant for self-pollination or between plants of the same species for cross-pollination...