World financial markets may be reeling from new setbacks, but it turns out there’s a secret economy right under our noses and it’s thriving. The movers and shakers, however, are plants and fungi.

According to a new study scheduled to appear in the Aug. 12 issue of the journal Science, flora interact in a complex underground economy in which they exchange — even barter — commodities, much like traders in a stock market.

Insights gleaned from the international study may one day lead to improvements in agriculture by optimizing how fungi interact with crop plants, but there’s also reason for concern.

"The availability of a triploid seedless, non-invasive variety of burning bush creates a win-win situation for both consumers and commercial nurseries," says Li, head of UConn's Transgenic Plant Facility and director of the New England Invasive Plant Center on the UConn campus in Storrs, CT.

The research was led by scientists from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and the University of Cambridge, UK. The results are published online in the journal Nature Climate Change.

The researchers used results from a six-year experiment in a rainforest at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, Central America, to study how increases in litterfall -- dead plant material such as leaves, bark and twigs which fall to the ground -- might affect carbon storage in the soil.

Researchers say it represents an entirely new class of fungi: the Archaeorhizomycetes. Like the discovery of a weird type of aquatic fungus that made headlines a few months ago, this finding offers a glimpse at the rich diversity of microorganisms that share our world but remain hidden from view.

New Zealand’s intense ultraviolet light may be bad for the skin, but it could provide a boost for vegetable production, according to new research by a Massey University crop scientist.

Dr. Jason Wargent, a senior lecturer at the Institute of Natural Resources, has found exposing lettuce crops to ultraviolet (UV) light in the early stages of growth leads to increased photosynthetic activity and increased yield.

His United Kingdom-based research team took two sets of lettuce seedlings and exposed one to UV-B light while still seedlings.

"The road graders that are used during these operations can act like a plow, pushing seeds along the road," said Emily Rauschert, senior project associate and applied ecologist in crop and soil sciences. "They can pick up seeds of an invasive grass and spread them several orders of magnitude further than the natural dispersal."

Brian Wilsey, associate professor, and Stanley Harpole, assistant professor, both in Iowa State University's Department of Ecology, Evolution and Organismal Biology, are authors of a study on plant diversity published in the August 10 issue of the journal Nature.

Scientists from the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Subtropical Plant Pathology Research Unit in Fort Pierce, Fla., and the agency's Quality and Safety Assessment Research Unit in Athens, Ga., collaborated on the use of FTIR-ATR spectroscopy to identify citrus greening in plants.

Writing in the journal Annals of Botany, Professor Douglas Kell argues that developing crops that produce roots more deeply in the ground could harvest more carbon from the air, and make crops more drought resistant, while dramatically reducing carbon levels.

In principle, any crops could be treated in this way, giving more productive yields while also being better for the environment.

The researchers do not rule out the possibility that today's changing climate could cause a similar increase in pathogenic soil bacteria that could devastate forests already stressed by a warming climate and pollution.