The trees have been slow to bloom this year due to the inconsistent warm and cold temperatures he says.
Leaf material harvested from the various wheat tests plots was placed immediately on ice and then was dried oven
A fast-forward through more than a decade found Bloom and the current research team able to conduct chemical analyses that were not available at the time the experimental wheat plants were harvested.
which showed that there are several physiological mechanisms responsible for carbon dioxide's inhibition of nitrate assimilation in leaves Bloom said. 3 percent protein decline expectedbloom noted that other studies also have shown that protein concentrations in the grain
and barley--as well as in potato tubers--decline on average by approximately 8 percent under elevated levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
decades Bloom said. While heavy nitrogen fertilization could partially compensate for this decline in food quality it would also have negative consequences including higher costs more nitrate leaching into groundwater
According to the researcher's estimates the majority of these emissions come from the respiration of the roots and the fall and decay of the semiaquatic vegetation in the flood plains.
One of the largest impediments for the pulp and paper industry as well as the emerging biofuel industry is a polymer found in wood known as lignin says Shawn Mansfield a professor of Wood Science at the University of British columbia.
and is a processing impediment for pulp paper and biofuel. Currently the lignin must be removed a process that requires significant chemicals and energy and causes undesirable waste.
and store it in wood and roots making these forests what scientists call carbon sinks.
but using 13 percent less water and reflecting 34 percent more radiation back into space by breeding for slightly different leaf distribution angles and reflectivity.
what leaf arrangements would best do this. The researchers aimed for three specific areas of improvement.
The researchers looked at how the plant's biology changed with varying structural traits such as leaf area distributions how the leaves are arranged vertically on the stalk and the angles of the leaves.
We've shown that by altering leaf arrangement we could have a yield increase without using more water
and it's not very good at dispersing seeds long distance said author Robert Arkle a supervisory ecologist for the USGS Forest & Rangeland Ecosystem Science Center at the Snake river Field Station in Idaho.
Seeds aren't viable very long. Some years they don't reproduce at all without the right spring conditions.
To cover such large areas BLM spreads seed from aircraft or with tractor and rangeland drill seeders usually in the fall or early winter.
In addition these genome sequences will serve as a guide for the assembly of the cultivated peanut genome that will help to decipher genomic changes that led to peanut domestication which was marked by increases in seed number and size.
People with this disease cannot eat food containing wheat rye or barley which is a main source of protein intake in the western diet.
'They examined in detail at daily intervals the growth cycle of the vegetation--identifying physical changes such as leaf cover color and growth.
#Phloem production in Huanglongbing-affected citrus treescitrus Huanglongbing (citrus greening disease) is highly destructive and fast-spreading contributing to a reduction in crop yields in Florida
Citrus trees affected by HLB exhibit a progressive degeneration of the phloem tissue that results in partial or total phloem collapse.
According to the authors of a new study observations of infected citrus suggest that photoassimilate transport takes place in newly developed phloem tissue of young flush and of the older supporting branches and trunk.
At some point after leaf development the phloem eventually collapses and becomes dysfunctional. Craig Brodersen Cody Narciso Mary Reed and Ed Etxeberria from the University of Florida's Citrus Research and Education Center published the results of a study in Hortscience in
which they monitored the progression of phloem production over time in field-grown trees to determine how the trees are capable of sustaining new growth
and then documented the subsequent phloem collapse. The scientists collected fully expanded and developed tissue from HLB-affected trees from 5-year-old'Valencia'orange trees that had been determined previously to be infected with CLAS.
and Education Center using real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) analysis. Symptomatic tissue was characterized by blotchy leaf mottle smaller and misshapen yellow leaves
The data suggested that in HLB-affected trees production of vegetative and reproductive tissues is supported for a limited time by new phloem production during periodic flushes of new growth.
Our study indicates that a systemic wave of cambial activity can take place in stems petioles
and midveins of fully expanded leaves and mature stems affected by HLB said Brodersen. In newly produced vegetative tissue even after leaves had expanded already fully phloem elements contain no signs of deterioration.
The scientists concluded that because of the short window during which the phloem appears healthy the weeks immediately before
and after the spring and summer flush are the most critical from a citrus management perspective.
and use to meet their needs Dong said We originally thought this would look at seeds growing in a cube.
and disposable chips containing seeds that will grow into seedlings. Hundreds of the chips-in-mini-greenhouses can grow thousands of plants at the same time each greenhouse providing different environmental conditions.
As the plants within all those chambers grow a camera attached to a robotic arm takes thousands of images of cells seeds roots and shoots.
The images record traits such as leaf color root development and shoot size giving researchers clues to the relationship between a plant's genotype the growing conditions and the observable traits of its phenotype.
and Madan Bhattacharyya who's studying how fungal pathogens interact with soybean seeds at different moisture levels.
and the carbon isotopes of leaf wax a marker for plant varieties (grasses indicate dry conditions).
carbon isotopes from plant leaf wax. Leaves are covered with a carbon-based wax that protects them from losing too much water to evaporation.
Different plants have different carbon isotopes in their leaf wax. Tropical grasses which are adapted for dryer climates tend to have the C-13 isotope.
The only clues to the spiders'presence visible solely on foggy mornings during four months of the year are spun the threads loosely between tips of palmetto frond.
Sometimes beetles hit the web strands between tips of palmetto fronds and tumble into the denser tangle of threads below catching them in the red widows'webs.
Ants promote the regeneration of these forests by dispersing seeds to safe sites for tree establishment.
The red lipid-rich aril a fleshy pulp surrounding the seeds of Clusia is highly attractive to many animals.
They feed on the nutritious part of the fruits the fleshy aril and defecate the seeds. Ants haul seeds which have fallen to the ground to their nests or leave them intact on their way.
Research has already been conducted on the influence of this so-called secondary seed dispersal but very little is known about its impact in degraded forest ecosystems.
The study reveals that ants reduce seed predation by rodents and increase germination success --which confirms the importance of this ecosystem function for forest regeneration.
The microclimate in the deforested areas is characterized by harsh abiotic conditions that limit seed germination
The researchers deposited 1440 Clusia seeds in 72 depots at six sites. At each site they studied three habitat types:
and hauled away about 60 percent of all seeds says Silvia Gallegos lead author of the study
and a doctoral student at the Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre (Bik-F) and the University of Halle-Wittenberg. 48 hours and again one month after establishing the depots the team searched for the seeds within a 2. 5
meter radius. More than 80 percent of the seeds transported away could be relocated. In most cases the ants removed the aril
which is a benefit for the plants due to a lower risk of fungal infestation and a higher germination rate.
Especially in the degraded habitats we found that seeds which had been removed by ants were predated less often
and germinated more frequently than the unmoved seeds explains Dr. Matthias Schleuning co-author and scientist at Bik-F. Quite often the ants removed the seed aril only in their nests
or on the way there--often leaving the seeds protected by the litter layer. Under the leaf litter the seeds were less likely to be detected by rodents
or other seed predators and benefited from the humid conditions favorable for germination. The effect in the deforested habitats was clearly visible:
one month after the experiment had started establishment of seedlings was about five times higher for dispersed than for non-dispersed seeds.
Dispersal distance had a positive effect as well: The farther the ants had transported the seeds the higher was the chance that Clusia seedlings had established.
Even more important services by ants in the futureants have a clearly positive impact on the dispersal
and establishment of the investigated tree species. This is particularly relevant as other animal and plant species may follow the species that facilitates the establishment of others.
and reduced seed set greatly reducing the crop yield. The impacts on wheat and soybean are likely to be less profound primarily because of the fertilisation effects that elevated levels of CO2 can have on these crops.
Even the source of the vodka--corn wheat rye barley potato berries and cactus--didn't affect peoples'preferences he noted.
#Radiation damage at the root of Chernobyls ecosystemsradiological damage to microbes near the site of the Chernobyl disaster has slowed the decomposition of fallen leaves
Some 15 or 20 years later these tree trunks were in pretty good shape. If a tree had fallen in my backyard it would be sawdust in 10 years or so.
They set out to assess the rate at which plant material decomposed as a function of background radiation placing hundreds of samples of uncontaminated leaf litter (pine needles and oak maple and birch leaves) in mesh bags throughout the area.
A statistical analysis of the weight loss of each leaf litter sample after those nine months showed that higher background radiation was associated with less weight loss.
and in the most contaminated regions the leaf loss was 40 percent less than in control regions in Ukraine with normal background radiation levels.
#Forest corridors help plants disperse their seeds, study showsa forest in South carolina a supercomputer in Ohio and some glow-in-the-dark yarn have helped a team of field ecologists conclude that woodland corridors connecting patches of endangered plants not only increase dispersal of seeds
from one patch to another but also create wind conditions that can spread the seeds for much longer distances.
The idea for the study emerged from modern animal conservation practices where landscape connectivity--the degree to
and seed dispersal in open habitats was published in the March 4 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United states of america and referenced in the February 27 issue of Nature.
and humidity at roughly 20 points throughout the experimental landscape Seed traps sampled seed arrival at many points in
and around the gaps and hundreds of artificial seeds made of black-light fluorescent yarn were released
These very large experimental efforts provided a novel dataset of observations of seed movement and wind in patch-corridors landscapes.
and seeds movement and the forest structure are known. Bohrer ran the dataset through a high-resolution atmospheric model that he had developed on OSC's IBM Opteron 1350 Glenn Cluster.
and seeds that disperse with it through a forest Bohrer said. The model resolves the wind flow
It also represented millions of dispersing virtual seeds. The model calculated the movement of the air and virtual seeds 20 times per second over four hours.
We found that corridors could affect the wind direction and align the wind flow with the corridor that they accelerate the wind
and winter rye planted after corn was harvested in the fall. The research funded by the U s. Department of agriculture used simulated management practices including tillage synthetic fertilizer use and mechanical weed control.
Fusarium spores exist during winter in the plant debris. Even plowing the stubble under does not eliminate the problem
Wind and rain splash carry the spores onto the head when it flowers but the weather conditions must be just right--warm humid and wet.
While diseases such as stem rust want the host to survive Yen says fusarium attacks the wheat
Though the kernel on which the spore has landed will be empty it won't affect the rest of the head he explains.
and vegetable crops which are highly perishable tend to have less regulation than the grains and oilseeds.
or access to the right seeds she said. There has been evidence that major famines weren't due to a lack of food production they occurred
The researchers were thrilled to discover that plants in the reintroduced populations are flowering and setting seed.
and seeds in the field was fantastic. Arenaria cuttings root easily making it relatively straightforward to propagate large numbers of plants in the UCSC greenhouses.
Greenhouses director Jim Velzy will continue to maintain the collection of Arenaria plants to preserve the genetic diversity of the original population
This group the Neotropical bark mantises are incredibly fast runners that live on the trunks and branches of trees said Svenson of The Cleveland Museum of Natural history.
This violates the common perception of praying mantises being slow and methodical hunters. Like most praying mantises they are highly camouflage.
and is very difficult to locate because of their adept mimicry of bark moss and lichen.
In addition some species leap off the tree trunk to avoid capture and play dead after fluttering down to the forest floor
As highly visual predators the bark mantis species appear to be active hunters that pursue prey as opposed to ambush hunters that wait for prey to come close.
Also like a similar bark mantis group from Australia (Ciulfina) this Neotropical group does not appear to exhibit cannibalism
which is an often misunderstood characteristic exhibited by some praying mantis species. The research brings to light a previously unknown diversity of bark mantises.
but humans can't.'Elephants appear to be able to manipulate their vocal tract (mouth tongue trunk and so on) to shape the sounds of their rumbles to make different alarm calls'said Dr Lucy King of Save the Elephants
or up their trunks whilst calves could potentially be killed by a swarm of stinging bees as they have yet to develop a thick protective skin.
DCA looks at the genetic roots of proteins to see how amino acids--the beads in the unfolded protein strands--co-evolved to influence the way a protein folds.
how muscle in general deals with something as complex as climbing a tree with its horizontal and vertical inclines the tiny little branches
and the upright trunks said Kathleen Foster a Ph d. student in Evolution Ecology and Organismal biology who performed the study.
The study found that muscle activity in the green anoles was most consistent on broad vertical surfaces such as tree trunks suggesting that
despite being classified as a trunk-crown ecomorph this species may prefer trunks Foster said. The study has implications also for people who design artificial limbs or robots.
However lignin must be removed for biofuel pulp and paper production-a process that involves harsh chemicals and expensive treatments.
and spreading their seeds especially the seeds of species that are first to recolonise cleared land.
In tropical habitats bat-mediated seed dispersal is necessary for the rapid succession of deforested land
because few other animals than bats disperse seeds into open habitats says Daniel Lewanzik doctoral candidate at the IZW and first author of the study.
Under naturally dark conditions bats produce a copious'seed rain 'when defecating seeds while flying.
By reducing foraging of fruit-eating bats in lit areas light pollution is likely to reduce seed rain he commented.
In many tropical countries light pollution is increasing rapidly as economies and human populations grow.
The characteristic leaf like structure protruding upwards from their nose is believed to be involved in focusing the bats'ultrasonic biosonar beam more precisely.
even dead trunks stayed largely intact for another 1000 years before rotting. One piece of wood they found had rings going back to about 650 B c. These yearly rings change with temperature
These can be read somewhat like tree rings to estimate the abundance of livestock over time via layers of fungal spores that live in the dung of animals;
consequently these small seldom-seen animals may play a significant role in regulating the capture of carbon from leaf litter in forest soils.
predation on invertebrates indirectly affects the amount of leaf litter retained for soil-building where nutrients
and how that influenced leaf litter retention. The study included soil moisture as a covariate and field enclosures on the forest floor to quantify the effects of woodland salamanders.
and give the others a chance to bloom. Where we see a change in light we see a change in diversity said Borer the lead author.
The study Deer Browsing Delays Succession by Altering Aboveground Vegetation and Belowground Seed Banks was published online March 7 in PLOS ONE.
when deer consume native plants the nonnative species are left to flourish dropping seed in the soil.
and reduced plant biomass less recruitment of woody species and relatively fewer native species. And the deer's negative impact on seed banks resulted in significantly decreased overall species richness and relatively more short-lived species
--and germinated the seed. They found the soil cores from outside of the exclosures contained many more seeds from nonnative species. Deer select forests for their trees
but in doing so disrupt forest system growth trajectories concludes the study. It's obvious that the deer are affecting the aboveground species
We are seeing a divergence of seeds contained within the soil from what should be there says Ditommaso We are not seeing the seeds of woody plants.
Instead we're seeing an escalation of nonnative seed and the virtual elimination of woody plant seeds.
In the case of old olive trees in the Mediterranean region it is not at all unusual for dead branches to stay in place for several decades says Paolo Cherubini.
By way of a'blind test'Cherubini recently asked 10 experts in five tree-ring laboratories in various countries to date the same wood samples from olive-tree branches.
1. mixing it in the stamp sand before planting seed; 2. coating seed with bacteria and planting it;
3. germinating seeds and planting them in soil to which bacteria were added; and4. the conventional method immersing the roots of maize seedlings in bacteria
and planting them in stamp sand. After 45 days the team uprooted the plants and measured their dry weight.
All maize grown with bacteria was significantly more vigorous--from two to five times larger--than the maize grown in stamp sand alone.
or as germinated seeds. However when the researchers analyzed the dried maize they made a surprising discovery:
the seed-planted maize took up far more copper as a percentage of dry weight. In other words the smaller plants pulled more copper ounce per ounce out of the stamp sands than the bigger ones.
The usual technique--applying bacteria to seedlings'roots before transplanting--works fine in the lab
and have seeds with less protein and greater oil concentration. The new varieties tend to mature later within these maturity groups
Most of the yield increases are the result of breeders selecting better combinations of genes that can allow plants to take sunlight and produce more seed from that sunlight.
We don't know what genes breeders are selecting that are resulting in these increases for example where in that pathway from the sunlight hitting the canopy to producing seed where this occurs.
but they can penetrate the roots of banana plants by the thousands. Once infected these plants absorb less water
Lesions in the roots also make the plant more susceptible to other diseases. Eventually the roots begin to rot.
In the final stage of the disease the plant topples over its fruit bunch inexorably lost.
It affects the crop cultivar the variety of seed planted the amount and type of fertilizer required
Next a soil moisture profile is developed with the principle of maximum entropy model (POME) which uses prior specific data over a set of trial probabilities to determine which is the most likely outcome.
In fight against parasites, Barberry sacrifices seeds depending on survival chanceplants appear to be able to make complex decisions.
and the University of GÃ ttingen have concluded from their investigations on Barberry (Berberis vulgaris) which is able to abort its own seeds to prevent parasite infestation.
a highly specialized species of tephritid fruit fly whose larvae actually feed on the seeds of the native Barberry was found to have a tenfold higher population density on its new host plant the Oregon grape reports Dr. Harald Auge a biologist at the UFZ.
This led scientists to examine the seeds of the Barberry more closely. Approximately 2000 berries were collected from different regions of Germany examined for signs of piercing
If the larva is able to develop it will often feed on all of the seeds in the berry.
A special characteristic of the Barberry is that each berry usually has two seeds and that the plant is able to stop the development of its seeds in order to save its resources.
This mechanism is employed also to defend it from the tephritid fruit fly. If a seed is infested with the parasite later on the developing larva will feed on both seeds.
If however the plant aborts the infested seed then the parasite in that seed will also die
and the second seed in the berry is saved. When analysing the seeds the scientists came across a surprising discovery:
the seeds of the infested fruits are aborted not always but rather it depends on how many seeds there are in the berries explains Dr. Katrin M. Meyer who analysed the data at the UFZ and currently works at the University of Goettingen.
If the infested fruit contains two seeds then in 75 per cent of cases the plants will abort the infested seeds in order to save the second intact seed.
If however the infested fruit only contains one seed then the plant will only abort the infested seed in 5 per cent of cases.
The data from fieldwork were put into a computer model which resulted in a conclusive picture. Using computer model calculations scientists were able to demonstrate how those plants subjected to stress from parasite infestation reacted very differently from those without stress.
If the Barberry aborts a fruit with only one infested seed then the entire fruit would be lost.
Instead it appears to'speculate'that the larva could die naturally which is a possibility.
Slight chances are better than none at all explains Dr. Hans-Hermann Thulke from the UFZ.
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.
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
Pamela Templer and her co-authors show that soil freezing due to diminishing snowpack damages the roots of sugar maple trees
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
Overtext Web Module V3.0 Alpha
Copyright Semantic-Knowledge, 1994-2011