Rapidly identifying undescribed species in a commercial fungi packetfor lovers of wild foods autumn harks a season of bounty.
Fungi of dizzying variety erupt from wood and soil luring intrepid collectors to woodlands in search of elusive but delectable wild mushrooms.
The Fungi Kingdom is enormously diverse yet vastly underdocumented --although some estimates range up to 10 million species only about 100000 species have been described.
Mushrooms are one the most conspicuous and well known groups of Fungi and make up around 16000 named species
With estimated rates of Fungi extinction exceeding current rates of description the enormity and urgency of the task of accurate identification cannot be overstated.
Some of the most sought-after of wild mushrooms are the sweet and nutty Boletus edulis and allies often referred to by the Italian common name porcini.
To expedite the formal naming process required by the International Code of Nomenclature for algae fungi
The researchers named them with Chinese epithets referring to local common names for porcini (Boletus meiweiniuganjun Boletus bainiugan) and the Chinese word for'edible'(Boletus shiyong.
and naming of new Fungi species in this way others in the community will be inspired to continue the important work of identifying new Fungi species before they disappear.
Smithsonian scientists and colleagues working on Panama's Barro Colorado Island discovered that small leaf samples from a single tree were home to more than 400 different kinds of bacteria.
Many bacteria were associated with certain functional traits such as leaf thickness wood density or leaf nitrogen content characteristics that directly impact tree growth survival and reproduction.
Our ability to use molecular techniques like 16s RIBOSOMAL RNA gene sequencing to characterize nearly all of the bacteria on a leaf is going to make it possible to see how very different members of forest communities interact said Wright.
and become more tolerant of stress including attack by common diseases like mildew and spot blotch.
Without this gene it would be more like sugar cane where it is a mess in the nucleus
This gene would not allow rye chromosomes to pair with wheat said Gill. We cannot get a single gene transfer into wheat
and make rye and other chromosomes pair with wheat and transfer genes by a natural method into wheat without calling it GMO Gill said.
The fungus is considered the world's most economically damaging wheat pathogen costing U s. farmers alone some $500 million in lost productivity in 2012.
#Potato ravaging pest controlled with fungiapproximately six thousand hectares of Veracruz in the west coast of Mexico are dedicated to the production of potato (Solanum tuberosum) in
and tested a fungus capable of feeding from the nematode therefore a biological pest control was achieved the use of chemicals ceased and agriculture on the region improved.
Plant parasitic nematodes are microorganisms that feed on the nutrients absorbed by the roots of plants;
or ten tubers an infected plant generates only four or five and of a smaller size than usual.
When studying the case we saw that in the mountainous area of â#ofre de Perote wild tubers are present
or stayed in the tubers making the damages greater relates the scientist at INECOL. From the laboratory phase spent we went to the countryside where fungi were were tested until we found one that worked and
which reduced up to 90 percent of the golden nematode population in two years by combining biological control with other methods for an integrated management.
and a 15 liter bioreactor was acquired to reproduce the fungus that was used in the experiments.
and intensive farmlands consisting of single crops such as sugar cane or pineapple with no adjoining forest areas.
and other plants in tropical landscapes and then in dispersing their seeds. Having just sparrows in an ecosystem is like investing only in technology stocks:
Even relatively modest increases in vegetation on farms can support diverse lineages of birds. Story Source:
For example farmers in the United states and Australia have used planting of pest-friendly refuges to delay evolution of insect resistance to genetically engineered corn and cotton.
Providing refuges of conventional plants has been especially effective for suppressing resistance in the pink bollworm an invasive pest of cotton.
The importance of this adaptation for biological control of problematic weeds in rice fields and the biology of the moth on new host plant have been described in the open access journal Nota Lepidopterologica.
The larvae of G. permixtana have been reported so far to feed on the seeds and flowers of plant species such as water-plantain eyebright lousewort bitter root
and European yellow-rattle which are weeds commonly present across Europe and Asia. A new study of the populations in northern Iran however has revealed a new host--Sagittaria trifolia commonly known as arrowhead.
This new discovery suggests that climatic and environmental conditions in northern regions of Iran resulted in the choice of a new new host plant
and provides an exciting insight into how adaptation mechanisms work. Arrowheads are groups of problematic perennial broadleaf weeds that thrive in rice fields and waterways.
Favorable climatic condition after rice harvesting results in continued activity and thriving populations throughout the year.
The economic importance of this weed has prompted researchers from the Rice Research Institute of Iran to seek for possible solutions for the management of arrowhead.
and seeds of the problematic weed can lead to a dramatic decrease of its germination potential.
Both of them--but especially Folsomia candida--might have difficulties to produce enough offspring to keep a population stable in dry soil says Cornelia Bandow an ecologist at ECT Ecotoxicology Gmbh who conducts research for the German Biodiversity
which is used on strawberries pome fruit and vine to protect against and treat fungal infestation.
To test for future climate conditions the experiments were performed independently at two different temperatures of 20 degrees and 26 degrees.
Nearly one-fifth (17%)of Brazilian beef 75%of Brazilian soy and 70-80%of the palm oil and plantation wood and pulp from Indonesia were destined for foreign markets.
Natural repellants such as clove oil citronella lemon grass eucalyptus castor oil peppermint lavender and cedar oil all work to a limited extent Pitts said
#Combining antibodies, iron nanoparticles and magnets steers stem cells to injured organsresearchers at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute infused antibody-studded iron nanoparticles into the bloodstream to treat
The combined nanoparticle enabled precise localization of the body's own stem cells to the injured heart muscle.
The study addresses a central challenge in stem cell therapeutics: how to achieve targeted interactions between stem cells and injured cells.
Although stem cells can be a potent weapon in the fight against certain diseases simply infusing a patient with stem cells is no guarantee the stem cells will be able to travel to the injured area and work collaboratively with the cells already there.
Infusing stem cells into arteries in order to regenerate injured heart muscle can be said inefficient Eduardo Marbã¡n MD Phd director of the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute who led the research team.
Because the heart is continuously pumping the stem cells can be pushed out of the heart chamber before they even get a chance to begin to heal the injury.
In an attempt to target healing stem cells to the site of the injury researchers coated iron nanoparticles with two kinds of antibodies proteins that recognize
and bind specifically to stem cells and to injured cells in the body. After the nanoparticles were infused into the bloodstream they successfully tracked to the injured area and initiated healing.
The Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute has been at the forefront of developing investigational stem cell treatments for heart attack patients.
which a patient's own heart tissue was used to grow specialized heart stem cells. The specialized cells were injected then back into the patient's heart in an effort to repair
Results published in The Lancet in 2012 showed that one year after receiving the stem cell treatment heart attack patients demonstrated a significant reduction in the size of the scar left on the heart muscle.
which heart attack patients are being infused with allogeneic stem cells which are derived from donor-quality hearts.
The process to grow cardiac-derived stem cells was developed by Dr. Marbã¡n when he was on the faculty of Johns hopkins university.
and vascular disease patients with appropriate stem cell clinical trials being conducted at Cedars-Sinai and other institutions.
After examining the population trends of birds in desert sagebrush and chaparral habitats of the West the report's authors identify aridlands as the habitat with the steepest population declines in the nation.
and ready availability In addition they are also a valuable target for researchers largely because of their high enzyme content fungi are ideal sources for potential studies of tyrosinase.
This means that it is not possible to predict where seedlings will take root and less specialised species therefore have an advantage even in the species-rich rainforests of the tropics.
and believe it stems from random spatial processes including seed dispersal by animals. The stochastic spatial processes interfere with the classic ecological theory of predictable dependence resulting in de facto independence.
GEDI will be a tremendous new resource for studying Earth's vegetation said Piers Sellers deputy director of Goddard's Sciences and Exploration Directorate.
Its immediate predecessors are Goddard's Ice Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESAT) and airborne Land Vegetation and Ice Sensor known as LVIS
or vertical profile when a pulse interacts with leafy tree tops versus woody branches and trunks or the ground.
and maintain 28 globally important crops including rice wheat soybean sorghum banana apple citrus fruits grape stone fruits
Oryza rufipogon a wild relative of rice utilised to confer tolerance to drought and aluminium toxicity;
Glycine soja used to improve protein content in soybean; and Vitis amurensis a wild relative of grape which has been used to improve cold tolerance.
Worryingly of these 871 CWR native to China at least 17%are threatened with extinction in China
For example the crop wild relative of the wheat crop Aegilops tauschii is resistant to Hessian fly
Saccharum arundinaceum is a relative of sugar cane and can survive very low temperatures and Prunus ferganensis the crop wild relative of peach is tolerant to drought conditions.
Globally the highest concentration of CWR per unit area is found in Syria and Lebanon.
'As well as the abundance of CWR in the Fertile Crescent many CWR can be found in the UK including the wild relatives of sugarbeet asparagus raddish and wild garlic.
#Speckled beetle key to saving crops in Ethiopia, researchers sayan invasive weed poses a serious and frightening threat to farming families in Ethiopia
The weed called parthenium is so destructive that farmers in the east African nation have given despairingly it the nickname faramsissa in Amharic
Farmers have doused the weed in pesticides and ripped it out with their hands but it has only spread further.
After a decade-long effort scientists from the Integrated Pest Management Innovation Lab released a parthenium-eating beetle called Zygogramma bicolorata.
and breeds only on parthenium leaves said Muni Muniappan director of the Integrated Pest Management Innovation Lab a program funded by the U s. Agency for International Development.
Parthenium is native to The americas where a suite of natural enemies that includes the Zygogramma beetle keeps the weed in check.
But in the early 1970s parthenium entered Ethiopia in shipments of food aid from the United states. With no serious contenders the plant flourished.
In the past three decades parthenium has become the second most common weed in Ethiopia suppressing the growth of all other plants
A single plant can produce 25000 seeds and completes its life cycle in six to eight weeks said Wondi Mersie a Virginia State university professor and principal investigator of the Virginia Tech-led project.
Parthenium is poisonous. People who come into contact with it can suffer from skin irritations bronchial asthma and fever.
The Innovation Lab built a quarantine facility in 2007 to ensure that the pea-sized beetle had eyes for parthenium alone.
The group moved from parthenium patch to parthenium patch dumping beetles from containers. Ethiopian researchers will monitor the sites
As a second step scientists are poised to release a stem-boring weevil that will join Zygogramma.
But even these measures will not eliminate parthenium from Ethiopian farmland. Biocontrol is control not eradication said Witt.
#Climate change to increase forest fire danger in Europeclimate change is expected to bring increased temperatures and longer droughts--conditions that will make forests more susceptible to fires.
By 2090 the area burned by forest fires in the European union could increase by 200%because of climate change according to a new study published in the journal Regional Environmental Change.
Improved firefighting response could provide additional protection against forest fires. The study was the first to examine adaptation to forest fire danger on a pan-European scale.
IIASA researchers together with colleagues from the Joint Research Centre (JRC) worked with national forest representatives in EU countries
and the EU Expert Group on Forest fires to understand fire prevention options and their impacts.
While there are many potential options for forest fire management the researchers focused on two adaptation strategies identified together with the expert stakeholders:
There is still a big debate on the effectiveness of prescribed burning as a forest fire management tool.
The researchers note that in Europe over 95%of all forest fires are caused by humans including negligence
In more populous areas the chance of occurrence of forest fires rises dramatically says IIASA researcher Andrey Krasovskii a study co-author.
and also the technologies--industrial fertilizers sophisticated large-scale irrigation new resilient cultivars--and financial resources to sustain high yields
Swafford noted that their acreage suffered a debilitating freeze in March that reduced the trees to tumbleweed look-alikes.
Kamas said those interested in growing olives must keep weeds out of the orchard. What do weeds compete for?
Light nutrients and water he said. Weed control is critical for the establishment of any perennial crop.
Cotton root rot a long-established disease in much of the state has been a problem for young trees according to Stein.
He said another challenge to consider is how to grow the trees in terms of how many per acre
because seeds have a lot of genetic variability and you don't know if a seed will produce the same fruit as the tree that produced it.
It's a gamble. If they simply started grafting it would guarantee the orchard would have the peaches they wanted.
and leased a section of land near Colman where they began planting blue stem prairie cord grass and other perennial species native to the area on retired cropland.
This stands in contrast to what's been suggested for several other large plant families where other investigators have noted correlations between high species diversity in a group and the presence of whole genome doublings or triplings.
Coffee lies in the plant family Rubiaceae which has about 13000 species and is the world's fourth largest;
thus with no genome duplication at its root it appears to break the mold of a genome duplication link to high biodiversity Denoeud said.
When they do emerge salamanders can be spotted not only on forest floors but also up in trees and on other vegetation oftentimes climbing as high as 8 feet up.
Given their infrequent appearances aboveground it has never been clear to biologists why salamanders take time to climb vegetation.
Researchers at the University of Missouri recently conducted a study testing a longstanding hypothesis that salamanders might climb vegetation for food.
and leaf hoppers that are not available on the ground said Grant Connette a biologist who helped carry out the study while a graduate student in the Division of Biological sciences at MU.
or shrubs and then brought them back to the lab where they anesthetized them and flushed the stomachs of their contents.
The diet of the salamanders captured on the ground was the same as the diet of salamanders captured sitting high up on vegetation.
The main component of smog ozone at ground level can cause leaf damage that stifles plant growth injuring and killing vegetation.
U s. tons) of India's wheat rice soybean and cotton crops in 2005. India could feed 94 million people with the lost wheat
Cotton--one of India's major commercial crops--lost more than 5 percent of its 3. 3 million metric ton (3. 6 million U s. tons) annual output in 2005 costing
Streptomycin in addition to being used a drug to fight disease is used also as a pesticide in fruit to combat the growth of bacteria fungi and algae.
when polluted runoff from a rapidly developing watershed overwhelmed the Bay's waters with nutrients causing algae blooms that blocked out much-needed sunlight for underwater plants.
That is until the early 2000s when the underwater grasses also called submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) rapidly recolonized nearly the entire region.
and exchanging crop seeds for harvesting the farmers in each ethnic group maintain varieties which are unique to them.
and exchanging seeds from one harvest to another the importance of the market in such trading etc.
In addition local seed varieties are transmitted traditionally in a very compartmentalized way within the same ethnic group.
which led to a Mexican scientist to design a technology capable of degrading the product materials by the mushroom Pleurotus ostreatus. The project led by Rosa Marã a Espinosa Valdemar researcher at the Autonomous Metropolitan University Azcapotzalco (UAM-A is
(which the fungus also needs) from pasture grape pomace coffee or pineapple crown. This preparation where the mushrooms are to be developed is called substrate.
On the other hand we have to play the fungus and get what we call commercial seed which is the growth of the fungus spores on some wheat or sorghum.
The product obtained is spread on the substrate (contained in plastic bag) and held two to three weeks in the dark with controlled humidity and temperature then exposing them to a light phase he describes.
He adds that after 2. 5 to three months the diaper degrades and reduces its volume and weight by up to 80 percent.
Moreover after the fungi grow remnants of the gel material that retain liquid can be recovered
and minerals are the same as that of commercial yeast. It shouldnâ##t have to be different mainly
According to the researchers runoff from mountain ranges is vulnerable to temperature hikes that lengthen growing seasons and result in more vegetation growth at high elevations.
Evapotranspiration is the combination of water evaporation from land and the loss of water through plant-leaf transpiration.
According to the data freshwater mountain runoff is expanded highly sensitive to vegetation growth. The authors found that greater vegetation density at higher elevations in the Kings basin with the 4. 1 degrees Celsius warming projected by climate models for 2100 could boost basin evapotranspiration by as much as 28
percent with a corresponding 26 percent decrease in river flow. Further the relationships among evapotranspiration temperature and vegetation density were similar across a broader area of the Sierra nevada suggesting that the impact of climate change on evapotranspiration
and freshwater availability could be widespread. Most people have heard about the giant forests around Yosemite
Despite initial signs of host race formation whiteflies prefer natural species to cultivated crops as host plants which could facilitate pest dispersal into natural vegetation in spring.
When did the first canopy flowers appear? Most plant fossils are isolated organs making it difficult to reconstruct the type of plant life or its ecosystem structure.
and colleagues used leaf vein density a trait visible on leaf compression fossils to document the occurrence of stratified forests with a canopy dominated by flowering plants.
Using a 40-meter-tall canopy crane equipped with a gondola they were able to collect leaves from the very top of trees in Panama and the United states. They measured leaf vein density in 132 species from two
The team also compared the leaf vein values of canopy-top and forest-bottom leaves
(i e. leaf litter on the forest floor). The authors show that venation density like plant metabolism
when flowering plants became part of the upper forest canopy. Vein density values similar to present ones appeared about 58 million years ago indicating that the emergence of flowering plants in the canopy occurred by the Paleocene.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Geological Society of America. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Using laser mappingto get a better read on the vegetation and hydrology the researcher uses light detecting
#Synthesis produces new fungus-derived antibiotica fortuitous collaboration at Rice university has led to the total synthesis of a recently discovered natural antibiotic.
The laboratory recreation of a fungus-derived antibiotic viridicatumtoxin B may someday help bolster the fight against bacteria that evolve resistance to treatments in hospitals and clinics around the world.
The work reported this month in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS) focused on a tetracycline discovered in 2008 by scientists who isolated small amounts from penicillium fungi.
Crop pests include fungi bacteria viruses insects nematodes viroids and oomycetes. The research published in the journal Global Ecology
three species of tropical root knot nematode whose larvae infect the roots of thousands of different plant species;
Blumeria graminis a fungus that causes powdery mildew on wheat and other cereals; and the Citrus tristeza virus (given its name meaning'sadness'in Portuguese and Spanish by farmers in the 1930s)
Fungi lead the worldwide invasion of crops and are the most widely dispersed group despite having the narrowest range of hosts.
Ancient conversation between plants, fungi and bacteriathe mechanical force that a single fungal cell or bacterial colony exerts on a plant cell may seem vanishingly small
In fact it may not be too much of a stretch to say that plants may have moved never onto land without the ability to respond to the touch of beneficial fungi according to a new study led by Jean-Michel Anã a professor of agronomy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
It's known that disease-causing fungi build a structure to break through the plant cell wall
but there is growing evidence that fungi and also bacteria in symbiotic associations use a mechanical stimulation to indicate their presence says Anã.
After the fungus announces its arrival the plant builds a tube in which the fungus can grow.
There is clearly a mutual exchange of signals between the plant and the fungus says Anã.
It's only when the path is completed that the fungus starts to penetrate. Mycorrhizae are the beneficial fungi that help virtually all land plants absorb the essential nutrients--phosphorus and nitrogen--from the soil.
Biologists believe this ubiquitous mechanism began about 450 million years ago when plants first moved onto land.
Mechanical signaling is only part of the story--microbes and plants also communicate with chemicals says Anã.
Beyond fungi some plants engage in symbiosis with bacteria called rhizobia that fix nitrogen from the atmosphere making it available to the plant.
When the bacterium first contacts a root hair the hair curls around the bacterium trapping it.
--but the growing tube inside the root hair that accepts the bacteria requires something else and nobody knew what.
which gives the bacterial colony a way to push against the root. In many respects this symbiosis parallels the older one between plants
and beneficial fungi Anã says. Indeed he says legumes have hijacked the mycorrhizae system. Plants used the symbiosis toolkit to develop this relationship with mycorrhizae
One is based on shrubs trees and herbs whose photosynthesis contains intermediate products with three carbon atoms (C3).
Small antelopes such as springbok or steenbok specialise on shrubs and herbs whereas the oryx antelope feeds on grass--just like the cattle.
which were hidden by thorn bushes except for a narrow passage. The only way to reach their tree is passing the trap.
Wine residue, herbal additives found in palace cellar jarsa Bronze age palace excavation reveals an ancient wine cellar according to a study published August 27 2014 in the open-access journal PLOS
or additives within similarly shaped wine jars including honey storax resin terebinth resin cedar oil cyperus juniper and possibly mint myrtle and cinnamon.
To address that question Youngsteadt examined more than 300 museum specimens of red maple branches collected between 1895 and 2011 in rural areas of North carolina South carolina
Unexpected diversity in New zealand tree, kanuka genus Kunzeaat the stroke of a pen a New zealand endemic tree has for the last 31 years been regarded incorrectly the same as a group of'weedy'Australian shrubs and small trees.
and shrubs were regarded now as identical to their distant Australian relatives all of which are serious agricultural pests known there as Burgan.
It is shown that far from being serious agricultural weeds all the New zealand Kunzea are important keystone species either forming their own distinct forest types
Furthermore the New zealand Kunzea species provide an important habitat for a wealth of endemic geckos orchids
and fungi--a far cry indeed from their past much undeserved'weed'status. This paper is also a brilliant showcase of how useful is the brand new Phytokeys publishing platform for the advancement of taxonomy.
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