#Palmer amaranth threatens Midwest farm economy, researchers reportan invasive weed that has put some southern cotton farmers out of business is now finding its way across the Midwest
Palmer amaranth (Amaranthus palmeri) a flowering plant native to the Sonoran desert and southwest United states has a laundry list of traits that make it a fierce competitor on the farm said Aaron Hager a University of Illinois
Palmer amaranth germinates throughout much of the growing season starts earlier and grows faster than other weeds
As a seedling Palmer amaranth looks a lot like waterhemp another problematic weed that is difficult to control.
and in many areas especially in Georgia it was not uncommon to see cotton fields literally mowed down to prevent this weed from producing seed Hager said.
Preventing a Palmer amaranth takeover also comes at a cost however. In 2010 for example Southeast Farm Press reported that the cost of weed control efforts on Georgia farms had risen from $25 per acre to $60 to $100 an acre in response to Palmer amaranth invasions.
The state spent at least $11 million in 2009 to manually remove Palmer amaranth from 1 million acres of cotton something not normally done the magazine reported.
Adam Davis a researcher with the U s. Department of agriculture Agricultural research service and a professor of crop sciences at the U. of I. reported at a recent agricultural conference that Palmer amaranth can reduce soybean yields by 78 percent
and corn yields by 91 percent. Illinois a state with a $9 billion agricultural commodities market and 80 percent of its land area devoted to farming (mostly corn
So far researchers have confirmed the presence of Palmer amaranth in more than two dozen Illinois counties from the southern tip of the state to Will County about 50 miles south of downtown Chicago.
Some soybean fields in Kankakee County Illinois became so overgrown with Palmer amaranth that the soybeans were barely visible to the eye.
Many farmers think they can use the same techniques that tend to work against other common weeds--a onetime application of glyphosate herbicide for example--to control Palmer amaranth Hager said.
which produced tubers but were thought more often of as a weed than a vegetable crop.
According to Bais the rice blast fungus (Magnaporthe oryzae) attacks rice plants through spores resembling pressure plugs that penetrate the plant tissue.
Once these spores infiltrate the cell wall the fungus eats the plant alive as Bais says.
In order to do its work the spore must produce a structure called the appressorium a filament that adheres to the plant surface like an anchor.
The next step in the research was to sample the rhizosphere the soil in the region around the roots of rice plants growing in the field to reveal the microbial community living there
Additionally increasing the algae blooms would likely wreak havoc by decreasing the oxygen available for other marine life.
and bole char and then ran statistical analyses that compared the relationship between severity measures
Plant-feeding insects are attracted often to odors that are released by damaged plant tissue because these plants are already under attack
and seeds are mobile. However an important caveat that Ellstrand reports in his review is that the relative importance of gene flow can vary tremendously among species
--i e. those foliar fungal pathogens that get into the leaf of the plant to exploit the space between its cells known as the apoplast to retrieve nutrients from the plant.
These include the damaging pathogens that cause septoria leaf blotch on wheat barley leaf blotch apple scab and light leaf spot on oilseed rape.
The ETI concept does not hold for defense against those pathogens that go into the leaf but not into the cells.
They then conducted field trials in a commercial cherry orchard in Southern Tasmania Australia from leaf fall in June until harvest the following February.
Eventually water and nutrients no longer flow to the tips of the branches and the tree dies.
#Straw from oilseed as a new source of biofuelsthe bright yellow fields of oilseed rape are a familiar sight at this time of year but for scientists
Researchers at the Institute of Food Research are looking at how to turn straw from oilseed rape into biofuel.
Straw from crops such as wheat barley oats and oilseed rape is seen as a potential source of biomass for second generation biofuel production.
In the main oilseed rape has been bred to improve oilseed yield and disease resistance without paying much attention to the straw.
whether there are ways of breeding more biofuel-ready varieties of oilseed rape with the same yields of oilseed but with more amenable straw.
A new view of forest fungithe so-called symbiotic relationship between trees and the fungus that grow on their roots may actually work more like a capitalist market relationship between buyers
that the fungi or mycorrhizae that grow on tree roots work with trees in a symbiotic relationship that is beneficial for both the fungi and the trees providing needed nutrients to both parties.
Leaf-tailed Gecko: Look Hard to See This One Saltuarius eximius Location: Australia It's not easy to spot this gecko which has an extremely wide tail that is employed as part of its camouflage.
hard-object feeders (e g. hard fruits seeds) mixed food feeders (e g. fruit) and leaf feeders.
and Turkey suggested that the great ape's diet evolved from hard-shelled fruits and seeds to leaves but these findings only contained samples from the early-Middle and Late Miocene while lack data from the epoch of highest diversity
and seeds at the beginning of the movement of great apes to Eurasia soft and mixed fruit-eating coexisted with hard-object feeding in the Late Miocene
and because Arabidopsis is studied so well there is a reference collection of seeds derived from wild stocks across its native range.
since been maintained under controlled conditions in the seed bank. Johanna Schmitt formerly at Brown University and now a distinguished professor in the UC Davis Department of Evolution and Ecology and colleagues took banked seed samples originally from Spain England Germany and Finland and raised all the plants
in gardens in all four locations. The southern imports do better across the range than locals Schmitt said.
Big algae bloom in Lake erie, very dry 2015 forecastscientists delivered a mostly negative forecast for how climate change will affect Ohioans during the next year or so and well beyond.
and the associated runoff will likely lead to a larger-than-average bloom of harmful blue-green algae in Lake erie this summer.
Jeffrey Reutter director of Ohio Sea Grant revealed that he expects a larger-than-average bloom of harmful blue-green algae this year.
if the 2014 algae bloom could approach the size of the one in 2011--the largest in Erie's history As these blooms move into the Central Basin east of Sandusky they tend to die
An algae bloom not only hinders swimming and boating--it also affects the fishery So tourism and fisheries are both likely to be impacted.
and Maumee Bay where the bloom is likely to be most severe. Some other discouraging news came from Lonnie Thompson Distinguished University Professor in the School of Earth sciences and Senior Research Scientist at BPRC:
The team studied the long-term effects of five'Fuji'strains('Autumn Rose''Desert rose''Myra''September Wonder'and'Top Export'on RN 29 rootstock) on fruit yield and harvest time quality.
#Growing camelina, safflower in the Pacific Northwesta recent study published in Agronomy Journal provides information important to farmers growing oilseed crops.
Oilseed crops produce relatively little residueâ#rganic material such as roots that hold the soil together.
A cooperative study by the USDA-ARS and Washington state University researched the effects of growing oilseed cropsâ#amelina and safflowerâ#n blowing dust emissions.
or when wheat is planted. â#oefarmers will need to protect the soil from wind erosion during the fallow phase after harvest of oilseed cropsâ#says Sharratt.
Thus their caution to farmers is to use techniques to preserve the soil. â#oeeven the undercutter method is too much tillage for fallow after oilseeds in the dry regionâ#say the researchers. â#oeno-till fallow
Much of the uncertainty surrounding clouds'effect on climate stems from the complexity of cloud formation.
and the trees leaf Out in addition Morristown is part of the Northeast Temperate Network (NETN) established by the U s. National park service to monitor ecological conditions in 12 parks located in seven northeastern states as well as six
Each orchid bee species prefers a different type of treewhen releasing their bouquet orchid bees select a tree trunk as the centre of their territory.
The smaller species preferred branches or trunks with a smaller diameter larger species those with a larger diameter.
Generally a smooth surface was more attractive than rough bark. Wind direction appears to be one of the factors that determine where exactly the male perches to distribute his scent.
It can be producing the smaller pole trees that provide wood for the pulp and paper industry.
It could be assuring that enough seedlings are taking root or it could be preserving the forest as a natural recreation location.
However Clay points out the amount of biomass--the stem and leaves--was not significantly different.
#Fossil palm beetles hind-cast 50-million-year-old wintersfifty-million-year-old fossil beetles that fed only on palm seeds are giving Simon Fraser University
caveslowering temperatures for two hours each day reduces the height of corn without affecting its seed yield a Purdue study shows a technique that could be used to grow crops in controlled-environment facilities in caves and former mines.
and seed from escaping into the ecosystem and crossing with wild plants. Cary Mitchell professor of horticulture said the technique could be particularly useful for growing transgenic crops to produce high-value medicinal products such as antibodies for the budding plant-derived industrial and pharmaceutical compounds industry.
Mitchell described corn as a good candidate crop for the industry because of the plant's bounty of seeds and well-characterized genome
The temperature dip dwarfed stalk height by 9 to 10 percent and reduced stalk diameter by 8 to 9 percent without significantly affecting the number and weight of the seeds.
This is a technique you could easily do in a mine or cave Mitchell said. It is an affordable non-chemical means of taking genetically modified crops to harvest maturity without getting any kind of pollen or seed into the ecosystem.
He said that former mines could be prime locations to grow high-value transgenic plants
and hogs in the United states. But too much nitrogen robs water of oxygen resulting in algal blooms and dead zones.
We think the benefit stems from differences in behavior between bee groups in part depending on the weather explains Dr. David Tarpy an associate professor of entomology at NC State
since blueberries bloom in March and April in North carolina Burrack says. That means the weather can swing from great to awful as we saw this year.
#Citrus greening affects roots before leavesalthough citrus greening enters trees through their leaves University of Florida researchers have discovered that the deadly disease attacks roots long before the leaves show signs of damage--a finding that may help
which sucks on leaf sap and leaves behind bacteria that spread through the tree. Johnson said the bacteria travel quickly to the roots where they replicate damage the root system and spread to the rest of the host tree's canopy.
The disease starves the tree of nutrients leaving fruits that are green and misshapen unsuitable for sale as fresh fruit or juice.
but the team's research found that greening causes a loss of 30 to 50 percent of trees'fibrous roots before symptoms are visible above ground.
Based on the work of Dr. Johnson and his colleagues we now know how important roots are in the development of greening disease said Jackie Burns director of the CREC.
We hope further investigations on the role of roots in this disease will lead to future management solutions that help growers remain productive until a permanent solution can be found.
We are still trying to determine how the bacteria are killing the roots Johnson said.
and soil to match the optimum ph for the rootstock (preliminary results show that this improves root density compared to untreated groves) and water more frequently for shorter periods.
(or dipterocarps translating literally to winged seeds) which grow to giant sizes produced wood faster than neighbouring trees of other families or any trees in the Amazonian sites.
Lead author Dr Lindsay Banin from the UK's Centre for Ecology & Hydrology said In Borneo dipterocarps--a family of large trees with winged seeds--produce wood more quickly than their neighbours.
Or they may be trading-off growth of other plant parts. Co-author Professor Oliver Phillips from the University of Leeds said One big question in ecology is
Using a hatchet that is designed to pump fungal spores into the trees the researchers tested the fungus on 14 tree-of-heaven stands in south-central Pennsylvania.
Usually it takes three blows of the hatchet to deposit the entire inoculation of about 30 million spores for each tree.
and then take those spores to another healthy tree which could be miles away. The effect that the fungus has on other plants will be the subject of further research Kasson said.
Stink bugs feed as nymphs and adults on the fruit and pods of plants which maximizes their chances to render a crop unmarketable.
Slender cores were collected from the trunk of more than 1000 ash trees across six counties in southeast Michigan.
This study describes the development of a novel thermogelling hydrogel for stem cell delivery that can be injected into skeletal defects to induce bone regeneration
The new paper digs at the roots not just of crop domestication but of civilization itself says plant agriculture professor Lewis Lukens.
whose seeds resist shattering such as corn whose kernels stay on the cob instead of falling off. Early agriculturalists also shortened flowering time for crops necessary in shorter growing seasons as in Canada.
Because the students were most successful in learning to recognize circling roots codominant trunks and attachments of equal sizes the researchers recommended that these three defects should be introduced the first in sixth grade curriculum.
#Leaf chewing links insect diversity in modern and ancient forestsobservations of insects and their feeding marks on leaves in modern forests confirm indications from fossil leaf deposits that the diversity of chewing damage relates directly to diversity of the insect
The direct link between richness of leaf-chewing insects and their feeding damage across host plants in two tropical forests validates the underlying assumptions of many paleobiological studies that rely on damage-type richness as a means to infer changes in relative
Studies of leaf chewing include observation of the leaves but rarely include all the insects that actually made the marks.
MÃ nica R. Carvalho graduate student Cornell University and Peter Wilf professor of geosciences Penn State and colleagues looked at leaf predation in two tropical forests in Panama to test
for a relationship between the richness of leaf-chewing insects and the leaf damage that the same insects induce.
Using Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute canopy-access cranes and working in the dark at almost 200 feet high in the treetops at new moon during two summers the researchers collected a total of 276 adult
and immature leaf-chewing insects of 156 species . While the largest category of insect was beetles leaf chewers among grasshoppers stick insects
and caterpillars as well as a few ants were collected also. The team also collected fresh leaves of the insects'host plants
The researchers then classified the damage to the leaves into categories in the same way they catalog fossil leaf-chewing damage.
This is the first attempt to compare leaf-chewing damage inflicted by many kinds of living insects on many kinds of plants throughout a large forest area both to the culprit insects
and to the leaf damage we see in the fossil record said Carvalho. We mounted 276 of the insects with their damaged leaves
The researchers also compared the modern leaf data to fossil data from Colombia Argentina the Great plains and the Rocky mountains.
and ancient settings showing a striking consistency in how insects have divided up their leaf resources since at least the end of the age of dinosaurs.
Rejesus says that research into more drought-resistant seeds or other ways of combating sensitivity to drought is necessary
We investigated whether coiling wire around the lower part of the plant stems to reduce the capacity of xylem to transport water to the shoot would result in low shoot moisture conditions
Takahata and Miura's study involved coiling bonsai wire around the stems of tomato seedlings between the cotyledon node and the first leaf node.
Eleven days after treatment the stem diameters immediately above the wire coils were markedly greater in treated plants compared with the corresponding stem regions of control plants they said.
The stems of treated plants were elongated less and developed fewer nodes at 39 and 51 days after treatment than did the control plants.
At 112 days after treatment the shoots and roots of treated plants had weights that were 58%and 32%of those of control plants respectively.
Since basal wire coiling in this experiment markedly suppressed root growth presumably by impeding photosynthate translocation through the phloem to the roots we assume that water absorption was decreased also by this treatment Takahata
Furthermore impeding water transport through the xylem to the upper parts of the plant by this treatment should accelerate a reduction in the moisture content of the shoot.
Two of them produced oospores so they belonged to type A2; specifically they were taken the ones at Arkaute and Iturrieta.
and the formation of oospores in three matings were obtained as the result. These were gathered the strains in Gauna Heredia and Zuazo de San Millã¡
since the spores are able to move considerable distances thanks to the wind or irrigation water.
The lesions then spread across the remaining surface of the leaf and can be seen in the form of dark green grey-brown or black patches.
and then stopping every two meters to measure signs of crab damage on 100 cordgrass stalks.
A conventional plastic container and nine types of biocontainers (bioplastic coir manure peat bioplastic sleeve slotted rice hull solid rice hull straw and wood fiber) were included in the life cycle
'and'Skeena'cultivars on the dwarfing rootstock Gisela 6 at the Pacific Agri-Food Research center in Summerland.
an unamended control a 10-cm wood waste mulch treatment and an annual fertigated application of 20 g of phosphorus (as ammonium polyphosphate) per tree at full bloom.
Several soil management treatments which improved establishment of sweet cherry on Gisela 6 rootstock were continued for three fruiting seasons;
Analyses showed that high-frequency irrigation resulted in higher root zone soil moisture content relative to low-frequency irrigation despite reduced evaporative demand during part of the growing season.
while decreased SSC occurred with delayed harvest maturity in trees receiving phosphorus fertigation at bloom.
Like other insect pests whitefly feed by pushing their long mouthpiece--or stylets--into the leaf until it reaches the plant's main source of nutrients travelling through the phloem.
Measuring the time it took from the insect settling on a plant to accessing the plant sap the team showed that hardly any of the whiteflies exposed to a range of smells started feeding from the phloem within 15 hours from the time of exposure.
Apricots and peaches are most likely to be affected since they bloom earlier than other fruits.
The fruiting canes of thornless blackberries and raspberries were lost so we won't have fruit from those plants this year.
#Getting at the root of mountain pine beetles rapid habitat expansionthe mountain pine beetle has wreaked havoc in North america across forests from the American Southwest to British columbia
Bark beetles change Rocky mountain stream flows, affect water qualityon Earth Week--and in fact every week now--trees in mountains across the western United states are dying thanks to an infestation of bark beetles that reproduce in the trees'inner bark.
Transpiration is the process of water movement through a plant and its evaporation from leaves stems and flowers.
when people threw out the refuse of plant foods including seeds some grew and again set seed and in this way people inadvertently selected species they were eating that also did well in the disturbed and nutrient-rich environment of the dump heap.
Cultivation practices play a huge role in selection said Olsen. Traditionally in Southeast asia many different varieties of rice were grown simultaneously in a given field.
Corn stover--the stalks leaves and cobs in cornfields after harvest--has been considered a ready resource for cellulosic ethanol production.
and other challenges can be found in the trunks of our oldest trees. Results from an analysis of tree rings spanning more than 300000 square miles
and gathering fruits and tubers to cultivating livestock and plants. It seems so straightforward and yet the more scientists learn the more complex the story becomes.
This includes seeds that remain attached to the plant for harvesting (a trait called nonshattering) reduced branching and robust growth of the central stem and bigger fruits seeds or tubers.
For example the gene teosinte branched1 (tb1) converts highly branched teosinte plants into single stalks of corn.
but plants with smaller lateral branches when it is crowded. Again however the effect is not symmetric.
Chimpanzees use tree branches to build beds or nests in trees. They select certain tree species to sleep in more frequently than others
and bending strength of 326 branches from the seven tree species most commonly used by the chimps.
Additionally they measured leaf surface area and determined the structure or architecture of each of the seven species. Of 1844 nests sampled chimpanzees selected Ugandan Ironwood for 73.6%of the nests
and had the greatest bending strength of all the trees tested had the smallest distance between leaves on the branches
and had the smallest leaf surface area. The authors suggest that chimpanzees select trees like the Ugandan ironwood due to these properties as they may provide protection from predators
H7 is able to colonise the roots of both spinach and lettuce. Dr Nicola Holden who led the research says:
and Livelihoods says that In Kenya the majority of traditional medicines are sold as wild plant parts
Oriental beech was the dominant species in the layer of foliage in the forest canopy known as the overstory
and sugars in the tobacco leaf are in fact higher. Traditional tobacco growing allows the plant to develop
Wheat seeds are coated with substances that also form hydrocyanic acid when they react. However the base substances are separated from each other in different layers
and react only when the seeds are bitten by a herbivore. Stark describes the successful research method as imitating nature
Currently around 20 percent of global methane emissions stem from ruminants. In the atmosphere methane contributes to the greenhouse effect--that's why researchers are looking for ways of reducing methane production by ruminants.
The plants'roots would also help anchor the soil and their foliage would help reduce the ability of wind to kick up dust Computer simulations of a hypothetical co-location solar farm in Southern California's San bernardino County by Ravi
and colleagues suggest that these two factors together could lead to a reduction in the overall amount of water that solar farms need to operate.
Most ethanol today is produced at high-temperature fermentation facilities that chemically convert corn sugarcane and other plants into liquid fuel.
Characterizing villainous sporessome of these microbes protect themselves from heat by forming spores Anand explains.
In addition some spore formers produce harmful toxins. Rounding up bad guysfor nearly five years Anand
which when combined with pasteurization has been relatively successful in dealing with vegetative cells of thermoduric sporeformers to a large extent and spores to a less extent he reports.
Damaging equipmentwhen spore formers persist in an environment they can also do irreversible damage to the stainless steel contact surfaces within the milk-processing equipment Anand explains.
at plant stems. While branching has relevance in agriculture it is also very important in bioenergy crop production.
When they administered this labeled CO2 to plant leaves the plants incorporated the radioactive carbon into sugars via photosynthesis. The scientists then tracked the labeled sugars throughout the plant using detectors placed along the plant stem.
The time taken for the 11c-labeled sugars to move between two detectors on upper and lower regions of the stem was used to calculate sugar transport speeds.
His finding that sugars move at 150 cm per hour along the stem is amazing.
because stems represent the bulk of the biomass that we can harvest for biofuels. Understanding the factors that influence branching in the pea plants used in this study may offer valuable insights to help optimize the growth of bioenergy grasses such as switchgrass
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