'Battle of the Sexes'—How inhibition of male flower production lets female flowers emerge
Monday, November 30, 2015 - 10:20
in Biology & Nature
Most people don't know this, but the cucumbers we buy in the supermarket are purely female - grown from plants which were carefully cross-bred to produce female-only flowers. But while farmers have long known that "femaleness" factors into agricultural success - the greater the percentage of female flowers, the greater the yield of both seeds and fruit - it is only recently that scientists have revealed the molecular basis of plant sex determination.