Nowadays, when climate change is becoming more and more evident, drought stress plays a very important role, including in agriculture. The increasing number of years with extreme temperatures in the Czech Republic has a negative impact on agricultural production, among other things. Therefore, ways are being sought to reduce these negative impacts. One of them may be the use of compochar (a mixture of compost and biochar) to improve water retention in the soil.

The workflow enables the quantification of autophagosomes in Arabidopsis thaliana root epidermal cells in 3D. It combines immunolabeling of an autophagosome marker ATG8 with commercially available anti-ATG antibody and the subsequent stereological quantification of the immunolabeled particles. The immunolabeled samples are imaged with a confocal microscope and Z-stacks are acquired.

Macroautophagy is often quantified by live imaging of autophagosomes labeled with fluorescently tagged ATG8 protein (FP-ATG8) in Arabidopsis thaliana. The labeled particles are then counted in single focal planes. This approach may lead to inaccurate results as the actual 3D distribution of autophagosomes is not taken into account and appropriate sampling in the Z-direction is not performed.

The FLOWERING LOCUS T like 2–1 gene of Chenopodium ficifolium and Chenopodium quinoa acts as a strong activator of flowering in Arabidopsis, triggering flowering at cotyledon stage and causing lethality when overexpressed.

In Norway spruce, as in many other conifers, the germination capacity of somatic embryos is strongly influenced by the desiccation phase inserted after maturation. The intensity of drying during desiccation eminently affected the formation of emblings (i.e., seedlings developed from somatic embryos). Compared to non-desiccated embryos, the germination capacity of embryos desiccated at 100% relative humidity was about three times higher, but the reduction of relative humidity to 95% and 90% had a negative effect on the subsequent embryo development.