and other agricultural innovations that took root in the 1960s. That will mean scientific innovations such as new strains of the big three grains--rice wheat
Cellulose makes up tree trunks and branches corn stalks and cotton fibers and it is the main component of paper and cardboard.
People eat cellulose in dietary fiber the indigestible material in fruits and vegetables. Cows horses and termites can digest the cellulose in grass hay and wood.
#Seeds of model cereal plant now availableseeds of the model cereal plant Brachypodium distachyon are now available at the RIKEN Bioresource Center (BRC) in Japan the second bioresource facility to provide seeds
The seeds made available at BRC are of the Bd21 line the standard line used in the sequencing project.
In addition to the seeds BRC will provide the scientific community with the technology needed for the cultivation and genetic alteration of Bd21.
The BRC Brachypodium distachyon seed bank is the first of the kind in Asia. Our Bd21 seeds will be of particular interest to Asian scientists who can use it to generate transgenic plants
Unlike the other representatives of the family that chew leaves or flower petals many species of Megachile neatly cut circular pieces of leaves or petals for nest construction.
Nests of Megachile are constructed often within hollow twigs or other similarly constricted natural cavities but some species including members of the subgenus Megachiloides excavate burrows in the ground.
Her discoveries will be shared with seed companies so they can transfer the traits into their varieties.
Berkebile has uncovered many examples of other plant life the Puebloans might have used as a food source such as purslane pinyon nut juniper berries globemallow and even cactus.
Examples at MU 125 include pinyon nut juniper berries and cactus. -Domesticated resources: These are brought plants to the Southwest by humans
Ashman and George Meindl coauthor of the study and a Phd candidate in Ashman's lab studied bumblebee behavior using the Impatiens capensis a North american flower that blooms in summer.
The blooms were collected from the field each morning of the two-week study and were of a similar age color and size.
whether the bee moved to the same group it had sampled just or whether the bee left the flower group without visiting other individual blooms.
However past studies show that the concentrations of aluminum found throughout blooms tend to be higher than concentrations of nickel.
just as important as good water quality in preventing nuisance algae blooms and keeping seagrass beds healthy.
and death of roots and their associated fungi he said. The study involved a reexamination of 46 research papers published between 1957 and 2010 as well as an analysis of 409 soil profiles from the National Soil Carbon Network database.
because they use the long stalks for roofing thatch and other applications. However where millet is cultivated intensively dwarf millet allows farmers to harvest the grain with mechanical threshers.
Ranchers like dwarf millet as a forage plant because it has a high leaf-to-stem ratio Devos said.
and grow to maturity under high temperatures said the study's lead author Kent Bradford a professor of plant sciences and director of the UC Davis Seed Biotechnology Center.
And because this mechanism that inhibits hot-weather germination in lettuce seeds appears to be quite common in many plant species we suspect that other crops also could be modified to improve their germination he said.
Most lettuce varieties flower in spring or early summer and then drop their seeds--a trait that is likely linked to their origin in the Mediterranean region
Scientists have observed for years that a built-in dormancy mechanism seems to prevent lettuce seeds from germinating under conditions that would be too hot and dry to sustain growth.
In the California and Arizona lettuce industries lettuce seeds are planted somewhere every day of the year--even in September in the Imperial Valley of California
or priming the seeds to germinate by presoaking them at cool temperatures and redrying them before planting--methods that are expensive and not always successful.
In the new study researchers turned to lettuce genetics to better understand the temperature-related mechanisms governing seed germination.
They identified a region of chromosome six in a wild ancestor of commercial lettuce varieties that enables seeds to germinate in warm temperatures.
Further genetic mapping studies zeroed in on a specific gene that governs production of a plant hormone called abscisic acid--known to inhibit seed germination.
when the seed is exposed to moisture at warm temperatures increasing production of abscisic acid. In the wild ancestor that the researchers were studying
and the seeds can still germinate. The researchers then demonstrated that they could either silence or mutate the germination-inhibiting gene in cultivated lettuce varieties
and acting as a vital part of the life cycle of many plant species through their role as seed dispersers.
In corn however Hollick's lab had discovered previously that the absence of Pol IV creates clear problems in the plants such as growing seeds in the tassel.
Since we knew the misplaced tassel-seed trait was due to misexpression of a gene we hypothesized that this pigment trait might be due to a pigment regulator being expressed in a tissue where it normally is expressed never.
Among these adjustments scientists highlight the possibility of reusing leftover organic pulp (the glycerol and protein pulp that is not converted into biodiesel)
and bioethanol (obtained from monoculture of palm oil sugar cane maize etc.)have presented problems that make them less attractive.
So it's possible that the displacement of A. picea may affect the spread of seeds produced by early spring ephemerals said Warren. By comparing data collected in 1974 to current data Warren
. Because A. picea break dormancy at cooler temperatures than A. rudis they become active earlier in the spring when certain forest ephemerals such as Erythronium americanum (trout lilies) bloom.
The absence of A. picea may affect the spread of seeds produced by early-flowering woodland plants.
Acidic soils dissolve aluminum from clays in the soil making it toxic to plant roots in half the world's arable lands.
and locks up aluminum thereby preventing it from harming roots. We found three functional copies that were said identical senior author Leon Kochian director of the U s. Department of agriculture--Agriculture Research Service Plant Soil and Nutrition Laboratory at Cornell.
The decline in the number of primates causes a reduction in the dispersal of seed by the primates and this leads to a reduction in the numbers of important fruit trees and changes to the rainforest.
Both apes and small monkeys play an important role in seed dispersal in the rainforest as they feed on a variety of different fruits.
as a result of hunting their seed spreading role also declines. If fewer fruit seeds are spread fewer fruit trees will grow in the forests.
Instead species with wind-dispersed seeds will most likely take over. Ola Olsson stressed that the present study does not give any definite answers to how the composition of the forests could change
but in his view there could well be an increase in bushes and lianas. This would also have negative consequences for the local population.
battery electric vehicles such as the Nissan Leaf; hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles such as the Mercedes F-Cell scheduled to be introduced about 2014;
Unchecked the pest burrows into potato roots to feed obstructing nutrients and causing stunted growth wilted leaves and other symptoms that can eventually kill the plant.
Severe infestations can cause tuber yield losses of up to 80 percent. Now however U s. Department of agriculture (USDA) and cooperating scientists are evaluating new ways to control G. pallida using naturally occurring chemicals called egg-hatching factors.
According to lead scientist Roy Navarre with USDA's Agricultural research service (ARS) the egg-hatching factors are exuded actually chemicals from the roots of potato and certain other solanaceous plants into surrounding soil.
whose roots exude the chemicals but don't support the nematode's reproduction. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by United states Department of agriculture-Research Education and Economics.
and can detect a single spore of the fungus. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by USDA Forest Service-Northern Research Station.
and production has the potential to be 20 times more efficient than making ethanol from corn and sugar cane.
Union College Biology Professor Steve Horton likens this mostly underground portion of fungi (the mushrooms that pop up are the reproductive structures) to a tiny biological chain of tubular cells.
Mycelium is comparatively inexpensive too as it can grow on farm waste that can't be fed to animals
#Earliest tobacco use in Pacific Northwest discoverednative American hunter-gatherers living more than a thousand years ago in what is now northwestern California ate salmon acorns
Most soils in Malawi have extremely low levels of the selenium available to plant roots
pumpkins melon cucumber watermelon bottle gourds and bitter gourd. Molecular data have revealed recently that both cucumber (Cucumis sativus L)
The most species-rich genera are Trichosanthes with 22 species Cucumis with 11 (all but two wild) and the bitter gourd Genus momordica with eight.
#A new cryptic spider species from Africathe species from the genus Copa are very common spiders found in the leaf litter of various habitats.
To capture the build up of pressure observed in actual maple stems we must also include the freezing process as well as multiple freeze/thaw cycles.
Why does a light snow cover around the trunk have such a big influence on stem pressures?
which allows potato plants to develop tubers during the long days of spring and summer in northern latitudes.
Naturally occurring near the Equator Andean potatoes develop tubers on days which are relatively shorter than those in high latitude summer.
and short nights native South american potato varieties would only begin making tubers in autumn when the days last 12 hours or less.
However modern potato varieties show a wide variation in the timing of tuber formation with early varieties starting as early as April.
The mutations in the newly discovered regulator of tuber formation allow potatoes to escape the original short day regulation mechanism suited to the Andes
The authors also describe a variety of mutations in the tuber formation regulator gene which occur in different combinations in modern potato cultivars giving rise to early medium
Fox and Cruzan note The seed and genomic resources are publicly available so it would be relatively easy for any research group to establish a research program focused on slender false brome.
University of Arizona geneticists have discovered the oldest known genetic branch of the human Y chromosome--the hereditary factor determining male sex.
The new divergent lineage which was found in an individual who submitted his DNA to Family tree DNA a company specializing in DNA analysis to trace family roots branched from the Y chromosome tree before the first appearance of anatomically modern humans in the fossil record.
because previously the most diverged branches of the Y chromosome were found in traditional hunter-gatherer populations such as Pygmies
whether it's switchgrass remnants of corn stalks fast-growing trees or algae. The traditional strategy had been a multistep approach involving sample dissolution and chromatographic analysis
not only for the pulp and paper industry but also for any business wishing to reduce its carbon footprint.
Application of dynamic models to estimate greenhouse gas emission by wastewater treatment plants of the pulp
In other layers soils and roots were just starting to develop when they were smothered with more ash.
and form part of the protective coating on seeds. Phytoliths vary in appearance under a microscope depending on the kind of plant.
and bean--most species have specialized highly butterfly-shaped flowers with bilateral symmetry fused stamens and strongly differentiated standard wing
and keel petals. Papilionoid genera with radially symmetric or weakly differentiated flower parts have been regarded as primitive members of the group.
The flowers were in bloom eight fewer days on average and the insects flew for 22.5 fewer days.
and at worst can clog up pistils preventing fertilization the bee washings also pointed to a decline in pollination services.
and seed crops that make diets interesting such as tomatoes coffee and watermelon is limited because their flowers are pollinated not adequately says Harder.
Flowers of most crops need to receive pollen before making seeds and fruits a process that is enhanced by insects that visit flowers.
and colleagues have identified a special population of adult stem cells in bone marrow that have the natural ability to migrate to the intestine
Because these therapies aren't always effective scientists hope to use stem cells to develop an injectable cell therapy to treat IBD.
The new research complements a 2012 report by Almeida-Porada's team that identified stem cells in cord blood that are involved in blood vessel formation
In the current study the team used cell markers to identify a population of stem cells in human bone marrow with the highest potential to migrate to the intestine
At 75 days post-gestation the researchers found that most of the transplanted cells were positioned in the crypt area replenishing the stem cells in the intestine.
Macroscopic remains of maize (kernels leaves stalks and cobs) were rare. However the team looked deeper and found an abundance of microscopic evidence of maize in various forms in the excavations.
and yellow orange or purple color with a pleasant-tasting slightly acidic aromatic pulp rich in vitamins and minerals.
By placing electrodes in the stems of petunias the researchers showed that when a bee lands the flower's potential changes
Researchers propose new theory on deep roots of human speechthe sounds uttered by birds offer in several respects the nearest analogy to language Charles darwin wrote in The Descent of Man (1871)
Their observation of how patterns of pigmentation on flower petals influence bumblebees'behavior suggests that color veins give clues to the location of the nectar.
Patterns of pigmentation include color patterns within a petal or different colors on different petals.
Venation patterns--or lines of color on flower petals--are common in Antirrhinum flowers commonly known as snapdragons.
i e. to exclude anything that contains wheat rye or barley. Until the 1970s celiac disease was unusual
i e. to exclude anything that contains wheat rye or barley. Until the 1970s celiac disease was unusual
and the build up of leaf litter around the shrubs tends to cool the soil surface reducing the availability of soil nutrients for other plants Post said.
or not a leaf is edible. Organisms collect somatic genetic mutations throughout their lives. These mutations may have no effect
Researchers from the Australian National University found that in the long-lived eucalyptus tree (Eucalyptus melliodora) somatic mutation is also responsible for their interesting ability to produce some branches with leaves that are predated readily
The tree investigated had one branch which was untouched by insects when the rest of the tree was defoliated completely.
which raw material can be stored as seed. This could be of huge benefit in developing countries where problems with storage can render vaccines useless.
If seed could be transported to local production and extraction facilities the technology could also help boost local economies.
and only supplying seed to farmers specifically contracted to grow PMPS. Dr Sparrow was involved in a collaboration with EU partners to road test the challenges faced by potential investors.
and in some cases off-flavoured fruit with aborted seeds. In areas affected by HLB citrus management costs have increased dramatically in the last few years:
To study the expression of citrus srnas in response to HLB we grafted 19 greenhouse-grown healthy sweet orange plants with HLB-positive bark or leaf pieces.
The viruses get passed from plants to their offspring through the seeds. Researchers are still trying to uncover exactly
Biochar is a plant byproduct similar to charcoal that can be made from lumber waste dried corn stalks and other plant residues.
Using computer models Moreira found that from 1975 to 2007 ethanol production from sugar cane in Brazil resulted in a net-negative capture of 1. 5 metric tons of CO2 per cubic meter of ethanol produced.
We also enclosed tree stems in chambers and the results were surprising. About 80 per cent of all methane emissions was venting through the trees.
The roots of trees like all plants need oxygen to survive. One strategy that trees use to cope in waterlogged soil is to enlarge porous structures known as lenticels in their stems to allow air to enter
and diffuse to their roots. Pangala and colleagues have shown that these common adaptations in wetland trees are two-way conduits that also allow soil gas to escape to the atmosphere.
Dr Gauci said: This work challenges current models of how forested wetlands exchange methane with the atmosphere.
The cones in which the pinyon seeds are produced are initiated two years prior to seed maturity
Some scientists believe masting events evolved to produce a big surplus of nut-carrying cones--far too many for wildlife species to consume in a season--making it more likely the nuts eventually will sprout into pinyon pine seedlings she said.
Both Forcella and Redmond were able to document pinyon pine masting years by counting small concave blemishes known as abscission scars on individual tree branches that appeared after the cones have been dropped she said.
Since each year in the life of a pinyon pine tree is marked by a whorl--a single circle of branches extending around a tree trunk--the researchers were able to bracket pinyon pine reproductive activity in the nine study areas for the 1969-1978 decade
Coffee rust spores are spread by the wind and the rain from lesions on the underside of leaves.
They did find a notable depressed function in the trees'water-transport systems especially in the roots--some 70 percent loss of water conductivity.
The researchers also found that carbon mineralization was a better predictor of corn agronomic performance than other measures that are used currently (pre-sidress nitrate test and leaf chlorophyll.
when gluten a protein in wheat barley and rye damages the lining of the small intestine causing a variety of symptoms.
and with better root systems it's possible that Bt corn uses nitrogen differently than non-resistant strains the scientists hypothesized in turn affecting corn production.
With its resistance to corn rootworm Below explains Bt corn has healthier and more active roots than corn without the resistance trait.
If you can protect the investment the plants made in the root system explains Below you can realize everything that roots do like take up nutrients
The healthy roots and efficient nutrient use of Bt corn could lead to changes in management practices that would further increase production.
Banded or placed fertility a method by which a farmer can place fertilizer where the roots are likely to be would be more effective when used on the robust root system.
When you have a higher population of plants each individual plant has a smaller root system
when you had insects chewing on the roots explains Below. With the Bt corn though you can protect the root system
Plant roots are below ground and are hard to study. It's a big unexplored horizon both in agronomics and crop biology.
what biologists call the hairs that can be found on many plant leaves and stems.
whereas the element cerium did not dissolve into plant tissue. The results contribute to the controversial debate on plant toxicity of nanoparticles
and bound with plant tissue. We used X-ray beams 1000 times thinner than a human hair and the way in
but had reached also the plant pods. A detailed spectral analysis of the X-ray signals showed that the cerium in the nodules
and pods was in the same chemical state as in the nanoparticles. However part of the cerium had changed its oxidation state from Ce (IV) to Ce (III) which can alter the chemical reactivity of the nanoparticles.
As zinc is present in most plants it didn't come as a surprise that zinc from the nanoparticles in the soil can enter into the plant tissue.
Cerium has no chemical partner in the plant tissue and is not biotransformed in the soya bean
The researcher selected three winter cover crops often grown in the Salinas Calif. area--rye mustard
and a legume-rye mix --and planted each cover crop using either a typical seeding rate
The legume-rye and rye cover crops produced approximately 25 percent more dry matter biomass than the mustard crops.
But effectively suppressing weeds with the legume-rye crops required seeding at three times the typical rate
while rye and mustard crops appeared to suppress weeds adequately with typical seeding rates. The long-term study also provided Brennan with more data about year-to-year yield variations in the legume-rye mix including why legumes
which make up most of the seed costs are not consistently abundant. Brennan thinks cooler early-season weather helps legumes compete with the rye.
So when a hot and dry autumn is expected producers might want to use a rye cover crop
and skip spending the money on a cover crop with legumes. Brennan who works at the ARS Crop Improvement and Protection Research Unit in Salinas has published some his findings in Agronomy Journal and Applied Soil Ecology.
Read more about this research in the February 2013 issue of Agricultural Research magazine: http://www. ars. usda. gov/is/AR/archive/feb13/organic0213. htmstory Source:
and creative thinking on how to perform genetic manipulations in maize that will have the effect of increasing the number of its seeds--which most of us call kernels.
Plant growth and development depend on structures called meristems--reservoirs in plants that consist of the plant version of stem cells.
When prompted by genetic signals cells in the meristem develop into the plant's organs--leaves and flowers for instance.
Jackson's team has taken an interest in how quantitative variation in the pathways that regulate plant stem cells contribute to a plant's growth and yield.
Our simple hypothesis was that an increase in the size of the inflorescence meristem--the stem-cell reservoir that gives rise to flowers
and ultimately after pollination seeds--will provide more physical space for the development of the structures that mature into kernels.
but still partly functional--it is possible as Jackson postulated to increase meristem size and in so doing get a maize plant to produce ears with more rows and more kernels.
which each fertilized seed contained two siblings--an embryo and a corresponding bit of tissue known as endosperm that feeds the embryo as the seed grows said CU-Boulder Professor Pamela Diggle.
and behavior of the embryos and endosperm in seeds sharing the same mother and father with the growth and behavior of embryos and endosperm that had genetically different parents.
The results indicated embryos with the same mother and father as the endosperm in their seed weighed significantly more than embryos with the same mother
but a different father said Diggle a faculty member in CU-Boulder's ecology and evolutionary biology department.
We found that endosperm that does not share the same father as the embryo does not hand over as much food--it appears to be acting less cooperatively.
When the endosperm gives all of its food to the embryo and then dies it doesn't get more altruistic than that.
In corn reproduction male flowers at the top of the plants distribute pollen grains two at a time through individual tubes to tiny cobs on the stalks covered by strands known as silks in a process known as double fertilization.
When the two pollen grains come in contact with an individual silk they produce a seed containing an embryo and endosperm.
While the majority of kernels had an endosperm and embryo of the same color--an indication they shared the same mother
Wu was searching for such rare kernels--far less than one in 100--that had two different fathers as a way to assess cooperation between the embryo and endosperm.
Endosperm--in the form of corn rice wheat and other crops--is critical to humans providing about 70 percent of calories we consume annually worldwide.
The tissue in the seeds of flowering plants is what feeds the world said Friedman who also directs the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard.
%The large leaf area and low aerodynamic resistance of these types of trees lends itself to enhanced evapotranspiration compared to other vegetation cooling the surrounding air and leading to cooler surface temperatures.
and maples on the University of Michigan's central campus Diag undergraduate researchers and their faculty adviser helped explain an observation that had puzzled insect ecologists who study voracious leaf-munching gypsy moth caterpillars.
The ORNL research team measured more than 11000 proteins in different parts of poplar including mature leaves young leaves roots and stems.
and specifically so we can start to figure out for instance how the protein machinery in a leaf differs from the ones in the trunk Hettich said.
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