and maintain a varied vegetation in temperate ecosystems and thereby ensure the basis for a high level of biodiversity says senior scientist Rasmus Ejrnã s. The study received financial support from the 15 june Foundation and a grant from the European Research Council.
The team focused their work in the western Amazon a swath of forest stretching from the Andean tree line down to the Amazonian lowlands.
and analyze foliage from 3560 canopies across 19 forests throughout Peru. They found that canopy chemical traits are organized in a large mosaic controlled by changes in the underlying soils and by elevation.
and rye as well as root crops such as sweet potato cassava and yam--have lost ground. Many other locally significant grain and vegetable crops--for which globally comparable data are not available--have suffered the same fate.
For example a nutritious tuber crop known as Oca once grown widely in the Andean highlands has declined significantly in this region both in cultivation and consumption.
pesticidesresistance to pesticides has now been recorded in nearly a thousand pest species including more than 500 insects 218 weeds and 190 fungi that attack plants.
and cotton plants genetically engineered to produce proteins from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). These proteins kill some key pests
In 2013 Bt corn and Bt cotton were planted on 187 million acres worldwide and accounted for 75%of all cotton
and 76%of all corn grown in the U s. Recognizing that resistance is not all
and cotton based on monitoring data from five continents for nine major pest species. Emerging resistance of the western corn rootworm to Bt corn exemplifies the urgent need for well-defined
Flowers attract pollinators fruits attract seed-dispersing animals plants express stress responses and organisms communicate with each other in many ways via color.
This formula will be critical for scientists studying flower and fruit development plant nutrient deficiencies responses to heat and drought stress and other biological phenomena that result in visible color changes.
Understanding effects of smoke compounds on seed germinationalthough seemingly destructive wildfires help to maintain biodiversity
As plant tissue is burned numerous compounds are released some of which have been found to break seed dormancy and stimulate germination.
In a new study published in the March issue of Applications in Plant sciences scientists at Eastern Illinois University have developed a novel system to produce smoke solutions to further investigate the importance of smoke compounds such as butenolides
and cyanohydrins in seed germination and seedling growth. Because many of the identified compounds are known to be water soluble using a smoke solution is a convenient alternative to direct fumigation of seeds explains Dr. Janice Coons lead author of the study.
The new system utilizes a bee smoker heater hose and water aspirator. Water-soluble compounds are dissolved by bubbling smoke through water contained in a flask.
which may have different effects on seed germination. Native species often require special conditions to break seed dormancy explains Coons.
This new system allows researchers to produce smoke solutions from any plant species they wish.
In addition commercially available smoke solutions often contain seed germination enhancers such as gibberellic acid which may confound results.
Some people with nut allergies were desensitized to related tree nuts to which were also allergic
In both experiments researchers used four diets in weanling pigs including a control diet and three additional diets that included garlic botanical extracted from garlic turmeric oleoresin extracted from ginger or capsicum
Pamela Templer and her co-authors show that soil freezing due to diminishing snowpack damages the roots of sugar maple trees
Heath warning labels on cigarette packs are an important medium for communicating about the serious health effects caused by tobacco products said Dr. Cohen director of the JHSPH Institute for Global Tobacco Control.
or refuges where there were brushy shrubs and even trees such as spruce birch willow and alder.
and shrubs that was very different than the open grassy steppe. It was an area where people could have had lived resources
But if there were these shrub-tundra refugia in central Beringia that provided a place where isolation could occur due to distance from Siberia O'Rourke says.
For a long time many of us thought the land bridge was a uniform tundra-steppe environment--a broad windswept grassland devoid of shrubs
and along the Alaskan coast--the now-submerged lowlands of Beringia--found pollens of trees and shrubs.
but a patchwork of environments including substantial areas of lowland shrub tundra O'Rourke says.
These shrub-tundra areas were likely refugia for a population that would be invisible archaeologically
Many smaller animals birds elk and moose (which browse shrubs instead of grazing on grass) would have been in the shrub tundra he adds.
Although most such sites are underwater some evidence of human habitation in shrub tundra might remain above sea level in low-lying portions of Alaska and eastern Chukotka (in Russia.
We are trying to alleviate the disease symptoms on tubers and throughout the plant and improve plant health
Bactericides for potatoes are labeled only for seed treatments although foliar applications in the field are allowed on some tree fruits crops.
Tuber symptoms associated with zebra chip were only as high as 3 percent in 2012 and 10 percent in 2013
and high nitrogen-fixing legume that can be intercropped with corn cotton and other crops in many countries including the U s. Zhang said.
This will help researchers design tools to effectively combine multiple traits into new cultivars adapted to the globally changing climate in this
Break off a branch from the nearest pine tree peel away the bark and slowly pour lake water through the stick.
They say the size of the pores in sapwood--which contains xylem tissue evolved to transport sap up the length of a tree--also allows water through
The wood is composed of xylem porous tissue that conducts sap from a tree's roots to its crown through a system of vessels and pores.
and spread in xylem eventually killing a tree. The xylem's tiny pores can trap bubbles preventing them from spreading in the wood.
Plants have had to figure out how to filter out bubbles but allow easy flow of sap Karnik observes.
Seeing redto study sapwood's water-filtering potential the researchers collected branches of white pine and stripped off the outer bark.
When they examined the xylem under a fluorescent microscope they saw that bacteria had accumulated around pit membranes in the first few millimeters of the wood.
while retaining the xylem function. In other experiments with dried sapwood Karnik found that water either did not flow through well
You don't find mesquite trees growing in Canada and you don't find spruce or fir trees growing in Texas. If
I find mesquite pollen in a honey sample I know it didn't come from Canada or if
#Vegetation and climate: New gas-phase compounds form organic particle ingredientsscientists have made an important step in order to better understand the relationships between vegetation and climate.
So-called extremely low-volatility organic compounds which are produced by plants could be detected for the first time during field and laboratory experiments in Finland and Germany.
and theories about how volatile organic compounds produced by vegetation are converted into atmospheric aerosol--especially over forested regions.
The new findings will help to better estimate different land use effects and especially the effects of vegetation on the climate.
#Characterization of stink bug saliva proteins opens door to controlling pestsbrown marmorated stink bugs cause millions of dollars in crop losses across the United states because of the damage their saliva does to plant tissues.
Unlike a chewing insect which causes damage by removing plant tissue stink bugs pierce plant tissue and suck nutrients from the plant said Michelle Peiffer research support assistant.
the Caribbean fruit fly and the invasive cactus moth. The low-oxygen effect has been known for decades
and sterilize the cactus moth. The reseachers found using a low-oxygen environment during sterilization boosted the sterile males'longevity as well as their ability to attract and successfully mate.
and as caterpillars can strip trees of their bark. Durrett helped the Swedish researchers use enzymes from plants
He contributed an enzyme from the burning bush plant that performed the final step in the synthesis process essentially turning plants into pheromone production factories.
Once the correct combination of enzymes was finalized researchers modified Nicotiana benthamiana an Australian plant that is closely related to tobacco plant.
and basil that the operations manager of Michigan Technological University's Sustainable Futures Institute grew in his greenhouse.
and then applied the methodology to data from gardenia production in a Georgia nursery. The most convenient method (of calculating profitability) is converting all revenues and costs to constant periodic payments;
#Rapeseed-based animal feed cuts greenhouse gases by up to 13 per centthe use of rapeseed cake in the production of livestock feed cuts methane
and carbon dioxide emissions by up to 13%according to the initial results of the research carried out by Neiker-Tecnalia within the framework of the Life-Seed Capital project.
Specifically the incorporation of this oilseed plant into animal food cuts methane emissions by between 6%and 13%and carbon dioxide emissions by between 6. 8%and 13.6%.
%The introduction of this oilseed preparation into the diet of ruminants also improves efficiency in the use of digestible organic matter by between 4. 4%and 10.1
The Life-Seed Capital project is being funded by the European union through its Life+program and is being led by the Basque Institute for Agricultural Research and development Neiker-Tecnalia and by the Multidisciplinary Centre for Industry Technologies CEMITEC.
The project seeks to take advantage of rapeseed crops to improve agricultural productivity and at the same time to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Once it has been harvested rapeseed can be used as a biofuel and added to diesel in varying proportions after simple cold pressing.
while global warming is causing the fruit trees to flower as much as a month earlier than 50 years ago
and damaging the flowers. No flowers equals no fruitâ#says Fitchett. According to the study at current rates it will take only 70 years before it becomes a certainty that frost will occur during peak flowering in Kerman.
Already since 1988 frost has occurred during peak flowering in 41%of the years. â#oeiran is a top citrus producer
#As hubs for bees, pollinators, flowers may be crucial in disease transmissionlike a kindergarten or a busy airport where cold viruses and other germs circulate freely flowers are common gathering places where pollinators such as bees
and butterflies can pick up fungal bacterial or viral infections that might be as benign as the sniffles
But almost nothing is known regarding how pathogens of pollinators are transmitted at flowers postdoctoral researcher Scott Mcart
As major hubs of plant-animal interactions throughout the world flowers are ideal venues for the transmission of microbes among plants and animals.
They say their synthesis could help efforts to control economically devastating pollinator-vectored plant pathogens such as fire blight
which affects rose family fruits such as apples and pears and mummyberry disease which attacks blueberries. Mcart adds Our intent with this paper is to stimulate interest in the fascinating yet poorly understood microbial world of flowers.
We found several generalities in how plant pathogens are transmitted at flowers yet the major take-home from our paper may be in pointing out that this is an important gap in our knowledge.
The authors identified 187 studies pertaining to plant pathogens published between 1947 and 2013 in
and where transmission must have occurred at flowers or pathogen-induced pseudoflowers. These are flower-like structures made by a pathogen that can look
and smell like a real flower for example. Regarding animal pathogens they identified 618 studies published before September 2013 using the same criteria.
In total we found eight major groups of animal pathogens that are transmitted potentially at flowers including a trypanosomatid fungi bacteria
and RNA VIRUSES they note. Their paper Arranging the bouquet of disease: Floral traits and the transmission of plant and animal pathogens was featured in the publisher's News Round up of most newsworthy research.
Traditionally research on flower evolution has focused largely on selection by pollinators but as Mcart and colleagues point out pollinators that also transmit pathogens may reduce the benefits to the plant of attracting them depending on the costs and benefits of pollination.
whether a flower's chemical or physical traits determine the likelihood that pathogens are transmitted for example
From the pollinator's perspective there has been surprisingly little work elucidating the role of flowers and floral traits for pathogen transmission.
#New technique promises cheaper second-generation biofuel for carsproducing second-generation biofuel from dead plant tissue is environmetally friendly
when it comes to producing bioethanol from plant parts like corn or sugar canes. Corn cubs and sugar canes are in fact plant parts that can also be used directly as food so there is a great public resistance to accept producing this kind of bioethanol.
A big challenge is therefore to become able to produce bioethanol from plant parts which cannot be used for food.
The goal is to produce bioethanol from cellulose. Cellulose is very difficult to break down and therefore cannot directly be used as a food source.
Cellulose is found everywhere in nature in rich quantities for example in the stems of the corn plant.
and it is made on the basis of rice husks. My Iraqi colleagues have made the acid from treated rice husk.
The worldwide production of rice generates enormous amounts of rice husk and ashes from burning the husk so this material is cheap and easy to get hold of he says.
It's all about the acidthe ashes from burnt rice husks have a high content of silicate
and this is the important compound in the production of the new acid. The scientists paired silicate particles with chlorosulfonic acid and this made the acid molecules attach themselves to the silicate compounds.
The result was an entirely new molecule--the acid RHSO3H --which can replace the enzymes in the work of breaking down cellulose to sugar explains Per Morgen.
Making the new acid3 grams of ash from burned rice husk were mixed with 100 ml of caustic soda (Naoh) in a plastic container.
#Sugarcane converted to cold-tolerant, oil-producing cropa multi-institutional team reports that it can increase sugarcane's geographic range boost its photosynthetic rate by 30 percent
and turn it into an oil-producing crop for biodiesel production. These are only the first steps in a bigger initiative that will turn sugarcane
and sorghum--two of the most productive crop plants known--into even more productive oil-generating plants.
Sugarcane and sorghum are exceptionally productive plants and if you could make them accumulate oil in their stems instead of sugar this would give you much more oil per acre he said.
Working first with the laboratory-friendly plant Arabidopsis and later with sugarcane the team introduced genes that boost natural oil production in the plant.
They increased oil production in sugarcane stems to about 1. 5 percent. That doesn't sound like a lot
but at 1. 5 percent a sugarcane field in Florida would produce about 50 percent more oil per acre than a soybean field Long said.
There's enough oil to make it worth harvesting. The team hopes to increase the oil content of sugarcane stems to about 20 percent he said.
Using genetic engineering the researchers increased photosynthetic efficiency in sugarcane and sorghum by 30 percent Long said.
And to boost cold tolerance researchers are crossing sugarcane with Miscanthus a related perennial grass that can grow as far north as Canada.
The new hybrid is more cold-tolerant than sugarcane but further crosses are needed to restore the other attributes of sugarcane
while preserving its cold-tolerance Long said. Ultimately the team hopes to integrate all of these new attributes into sugarcane he said.
Our goal is to make sugarcane produce more oil be more productive with more photosynthesis
and be more cold-tolerant he said. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
The original article was written by Diana Yates. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length h
Scientists at Michigan State university (MSU) and in China embarked on a dangerous boots-on-the-ground effort to understand how well the trees bamboo and critical ground cover were recovering.
#Genetically modified spuds beat blightin a three-year GM research trial scientists boosted resistance of potatoes to late blight their most important disease without deploying fungicides.
In 2012 the third year of the trial the potatoes experienced ideal conditions for late blight.
There was also a difference in yield with tubers from each block of 16 plants weighing 6-13 kg
while the non-GM tubers weighed 1. 6-5 kg per block. The trial was conducted with Desiree potatoes to address the challenge of building resistance to blight in potato varieties with popular consumer and processing characteristics.
but in most varieties late blight is able to elude them. Breeding from wild relatives is laborious and slow
and by the time a gene is introduced successfully into a cultivated variety the late blight pathogen may already have evolved the ability to overcome it said Professor Jonathan Jones from The Sainsbury Laboratory.
With new insights into both the pathogen and its potato host we can use GM technology to tip the evolutionary balance in favor of potatoes and against late blight.
and Maris Piper varieties that can completely thwart attacks from late blight. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Norwich Bioscience Institutes.
#Seed-filled buoys may help restore diverse sea meadows in San francisco Baya pearl net filled with seedpods tethered by a rope anchored in the coastal mud
but swaying with the tide could be an especially effective way to restore disappearing marine meadows of eelgrass according to a new study.
The resulting crop of eelgrass grown by SF State researchers is as genetically diverse as the natural eelgrass beds from
which the seeds were harvested said Sarah Cohen an associate professor of biology at the Romberg Tiburon Center.
As eelgrass meadows are threatened by a number of human activities restoration plans that maintain diversity are more likely to succeed she noted.
Eelgrass restoration projects are challenging because it's not easy to plant seedlings under the water
and seeds scattered over a large area could be washed away from the restoration site. Instead RTC researchers tested the Buoy Deployed Seeding (Buds) restoration technique.
They first harvested eelgrass seedpods from several eelgrass beds in San francisco bay then suspended the pods within floating nets over experimental tanks (called mesocosms) supplied with Bay water and with or without sediment from the original eelgrass areas.
As the seeds inside each pod ripened a few at a time they dropped out of the nets
and began to grow within the tanks. The researchers then examined genetic fingerprints called microsatellites from the plants to measure the genetic diversity in each new crop.
since a lot of eelgrass restoration projects are so small up to a few acres. Sea grass meadows are a key marine environment under siege.
For instance many of the eelgrass beds in the San francisco bay are submerged. If you were out kayaking at low tide you might see these grasses in places like Richardson Bay which is full of a big meadow she said.
During low tides beachcombers could walk to eelgrass beds at places like Crown Beach in Alameda or Keller Beach in Richmond.
and not realize that these are flowering plants instead of a piece of algae. In classes at the RTC students are learning how to combine genetics
and ecology for projects that build better strategies to preserve the surprisingly distinct eelgrass meadows of San francisco bay.
or silty bottom and the kinds of organisms that live with the eelgrass all might play a role in creating such genetically different meadows.
and black-and-white ruffed lemurs leaf-eating Coquerel's sifakas and ring-tailed and mongoose lemurs that eat a mix of fruit leaves seeds flowers nectar and insects.
A total of 64 animals took part in the studies which measured their ability to remember the locations of food treats in mazes and boxes.
whether the height change in a pixel is likely to be the normal growth of the incumbent tree a takeover by a neighboring tree or another branch of the incumbent tree.
Given their central role in pollinating wildflowers and crops it is essential that we understand what lies behind these declines.
honeybees have higher background levels of the virus and the fungus than bumblebees; bumblebee infection is predicted by patterns of honeybee infection;
Infected honeybees can leave traces of disease like a fungal spore or virus particle on the flowers that they visit and these may then infect wild bees.
While recent studies have provided anecdotal reports of the presence of honeybee parasites in other pollinators this is the first study to determine the epidemiology of these parasites across the landscape.
and fastest-growing flowering plants that often becomes a hard-to-control weed in ponds and small lakes.
Now the genome of Greater Duckweed (Spirodela polyrhiza) has given this miniscule plant's potential as a biofuel source a big boost.
Simple and primitive a duckweed plant consists of a single small kidney-shaped leaf about the size of a pencil-top eraser that floats on the surface of the water with a few thin roots underwater.
Although it's a flowering plant it only rarely forms small indistinct flowers on the underside of its floating leaves.
Most of the time it reproduces by budding off small leaves that are clones of the parent leaf.
For example unlike plants on land duckweeds don't need to hold themselves upright or transport water from distant roots to their leaves so they're a relatively soft and pliable plant containing tiny amounts of woody material such as lignin and cellulose.
Removing these woody materials from feedstock has been a major challenge in biofuel production. Also although they are small enough to grow in many environments unlike biofuel-producing microbes duckweed plants are large enough to harvest easily.
S. polyrhiza turns out to have one of the smallest known plant genomes at about 158 million base pairs and fewer than 20000 protein-encoding genes.
S. polyrhiza leaves resemble cotyledons embryonic leaves inside plant seeds that become the first leaves after germination.
and continuously produces cotyledon leaves. This prolonging of juvenile traits is called neoteny. S. polyrhiza had fewer genes to promote
and are used probably for creating starch-filled turions specialized buds produced by aquatic plants for overwintering enabling them sink to the bottom of ponds
A thorough understanding of the genome and cellular mechanisms of S. polyrhiza could greatly enhance current efforts to recruit duckweed as a biofuel source.
Messing estimates that duckweed will be a viable biofuel source within the next five years and points to Ceres Energy Group in New jersey
which is already producing electricity from duckweed. Understanding which genes produce which traits will allow researchers to create new varieties of duckweed with enhanced biofuel traits such as increased reduction of cellulose or increased starch or even higher lipid production.
Starch can be used directly as a biofuel source and it can be converted to ethanol the way corn is converted currently to ethanol fuel
The sequencing of this genome opens new frontiers in the molecular biology of aquatic plants said Messing.
or biochemistry of photosynthesis. The placement of the Spirodela genome as a basal monocot species will serve as a new reference for all flowering plants.
Nitrogen is primarily taken up from the soil by the roots and assimilated by the plant to become part of DNA proteins and many other compounds.
tree stump casts calcified roots and fossil leaves. The discovery underscores the importance of forested environments in the evolution of early apes.
To have the vegetation of a habitat preserved right along with the fossil primates themselves isn't a regular occurrence in primate paleontology she said.
since the 1980s for preserving a fossil ape and other creatures in a hollowed out fossilized tree trunk.
But it wasn't until the research team's discovery of additional tree trunks and fossil primates preserved in the same ancient soil that there was a strong link between the ape and its habitat at the site.
Combined with analyses of the roots trunks and even beautifully preserved fossil leaves it's possible to say that the forest was closed a canopy one meaning the arboreal animals like Proconsul could easily move from tree-to-tree without coming to the ground.
#Controlling stone fruit disease: New approaches foundresearchers at the University and East Malling Research have identified a new way of controlling a fungal disease that can have a devastating impact on the UK's valuable cherry and plum crops.
Brown rot disease--caused by the agent Monilinia laxa--attacks stone fruit as well as causing blossom wilt
and be used by the stone fruit industry to control brown rot disease.''Currently East Malling Research is exploiting ways with commercial companies to formulate the two strains of biocontrol agents and conduct pilot commercial trialling of formulated products.
The research paper titled Identification and Characterisation of New Microbial Antagonists for Biocontrol of Monilinia laxa the Causal agent of Brown Rot on Stone fruit is published in the journal Agronomy.
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