For seeds and fruit in particular bright color is thought to have evolved to attract the agents of seed dispersal especially birds.
and ultimately release its seeds over a wide geographic area. The fruit of this bastard hogberry plant was scientifically delightful to pick says principal investigator Peter Vukusic Associate professor in Natural Photonics at the University of Exeter.
Vukusic and his collaborators at Harvard studied the structural origin of the seed's vibrant color.
They discovered that the upper cells in the seed's skin contain a curved repeating pattern which creates color through the interference of light waves.
The team's analysis revealed that multiple layers of cells in the seed coat are made each up of a cylindrically layered architecture with high regularity on the nanoscale.
which they cultured in their lab using seeds of the garden-variety rice plant Oryza sativa.
Voles know which acorns have insect larvaeresearchers at the UPM have observed as voles are able to distinguish the acorns containing insect larvae from those that have not.
This fact determines the dispersion and germination of acorns and therefore the regeneration of forests of oaks.
This is the place where researchers at the School of Forestry from the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid have carried out a research on scattering patterns of acorns for voles
when seed are attacked by insects the fact that larva is or not inside of the acorn can modify the dispersion pattern and consequently the regeneration of these types of forests.
The acorns are produced the fruits by oaks holm oaks and cork oaks that perpetuate their species move
and colonize new places. They are autumnal fruits highly valued by wildlife because of its large size its abundance and its high calorie lipid and carbohydrate.
that lay their eggs inside the unripe acorns when they are still growing in the tree.
and feed inside the acorns without altering the external appearance of this fruit. After the acorns fall into the ground
and are reachable for the rest of animals that seek this fruit during the autumn days (wild boar deer and mice among others).
When larva completes its development it drills a small hole out of the acorn and buries itself in the soil
Voles are the main consumers of acorns and they hide this fruit during autumns in order to consume them in winter time.
However many acorns are forgotten in hiding places allowing them a better germination and consequently new trees.
Surprisingly the same acorn is moved usually or stolen by another vole and achieving so a dispersal distance up to hundreds meters with respect to its mother tree
But what do voles do attacked with the acorns by beetle larvae? There is not just an answer
or has stayed in the acorn. Acorns whose larvae had emerged out were rejected rapidly by voles barely touching moving
or storing them. These acorns were exposed on the ground and failed to thrive in a new tree.
However those acorns in which the larva was still inside the fruit were moved and stored by voles.
The study reveals that voles liked these larvae (rich in proteins) and feed on them decreasing the harm produced by these worms over the acorns.
Therefore voles scattered and buried these acorns that finally contributed to generate new plants. The fact that the larva was resulted still inside definitive for the near future of the acorn and therefore the future of oak forests.
The nature maintains its compensation mechanisms and an apparent harmful beetle can be attractive to voles that at the same time releases acorns from this enemy
and help them to thrive thanks to its rich substance what allows them to survive winter
and maintain this favorable relationship between vole and acorn. These results reveal that we do not know ye the behavior of those ecosystems that we aim to preserve.
The knowledge of multiple existing interactions among animals and plants are essential to know what should be protected
Her research also showed that the people who would have benefitted from the shaman's knowledge practiced small-scale farming of maize manioc and arrowroot and collected palm nuts tree fruits and wild tubers.
The diamondback moth (Plutella xylostella) preferentially feeds on economically important food crops such as rapeseed cauliflower and cabbage.
It would make no sense to use the technique on rapeseed. Preventing plants from flowering presents a significant advantage in that no flowering means no production of seeds or pollen.
As a result plants have no way of reproducing which means they cannot spread into the environment in an unplanned way.
This process involves using chemical additives to bring about changes in a seed's DNA sequence.
#Tree seeds offer potential for sustainable biofuelstree seeds rather than biomass or fuel crop plants could represent an abundant source of renewable energy according to research published in the International Journal of Automotive technology and Management.
The study suggests that seeds from the Indian mahua and sal trees have almost as good a thermal efficiency as biodiesel
The use of tree seed oils as a source could have several additional benefits over vegetable seed oils including lower viscosity and greater volatility both
The team points out that vast tonnages of seeds from the deciduous mahua (Madhuca indica) and semi-deciduous sal (Shorea robusta) trees are simply left to waste on the forest floor.
The mahua kernel constitutes 70%of the seed and contains 50%oil which can be extracted at levels of 34 to 37%.
The team has tested now successfully this chemistry on seeds from the mahua and sal trees.
They also demonstrated efficacy with neem seed although suggest the economics of using this species are prohibitive
The mahua takes just ten years to reach seed-producing maturity. Biodiesel production from tree seeds in India will not only reduce the dependence on crude oil imports
but also reduce the environmental impact of transportation and increase employment opportunities the team concludes. Story Source:
The C. M. Rick Tomato Genetics Resource Center here at UC Davis played an important role in this study by providing seed of both cultivated tomato varieties and related wild
#An innovative way to increase flower, seed and fruit productiona scientist from UPM has developed a method to enhance crop yield by the contact of roots aerial parts or even the substratum of the plant fungus'Colletotrichum tofieldiae'.
or weight of its seeds fruits and flower. Â This discovery has been protected by patent and its implementation could lead to cost savings
Researchers have found that by applying a composition that contains Colletotrichum tofieldiae a non-pathogenic fungus for the Arabidopsis thaliana model plant this plant can produce bigger seeds without substantially affecting its vegetative growth.
This method was patented (P201331839-A method to increase the production of flower seed and fruit of plants:
Now scientists have discovered that plants may package their commensal bacteria inside of seeds; thus ensuring that sprouting plants are colonized from the beginning.
whether commensal bacteria could be found in various plant sources including seed supplies said Dr. Lee.
and grow a bacterium that was packaged inside a seed was quite surprising. The researchers first sterilized and tested the outer portion of a sealed whole seed.
When that was determined to be sampled sterile they and plated the interior of the seeds and placed them in bacterial agar
which they incubated. What they found was the new strain of Bacillus pumilus a unique highly motile Gram-positive bacterium capable of colonizing the mung bean plant without causing any harm.
The finding that plant seeds can be colonized pre may be an important mechanism by which a beneficial plant microbiome is established and sustained.
Lodgepole pines are adapted to fire containing two types of seed-carrying cones: those that release seeds as soon as they mature
Beetle-killed trees likely contributed to post-fire seedling establishment too as their seeds remain viable in cones
Only high-reaching char from tall flames reduced the number of seed-spreading cones. The scientists emphasize the results may differ in other forest types or with different lengths of time between beetle outbreaks and fire.
and seed production collect insects survey mammals quantify carbon stocks and flows within the ecosystem take soil samples
and stone fruit. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by University of Adelaide. Note:
#Seeding plant diversity for future generationsoxford researchers have constructed a'hit list'of the plant species most needed to boost the overall diversity of the Millennium Seed Bank
which is storing seeds in its vaults for future generations. The Millennium Seed Bank dries freezes stores
and maintains seeds for future generations to enjoy and use. It aims to save seeds from all the wild plant species of the world
and so far since its founding in 2000 it has banked 14%of them. Scientists from the University of Oxford and the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew which manages the Millennium Seed Bank have shown how by using advanced mathematics they can boost the overall diversity of the seed bank by targeting a'hit list'of particular species
. Their paper also includes maps showing where the species are located so they can be gathered efficiently.
The findings are published in the journal Conservation Biology. The research team constructed a new evolutionary tree of a major family of wild plant species taking the distance between species as a proxy for plant trait diversity.
They calculate that by adding just 10 more carefully chosen species the overall diversity of plant species in the seed bank would be boosted by 10%.
%Furthermore the researchers say that by adding a particular 177 species to the bank the seed vaults would contain almost the entire diversity of the family worldwide (95%.
%More than 150 organisations in 80 countries are involved currently in collecting seeds from wild species. In their study the team from Oxford
if seed priority is determined only by whether they are endangered of economic value or endemic (otherwise known as the 3e approach) this would make the collection significantly less diverse than it could be.
Happily making sure a few carefully chosen species from the'hit list'are collected will keep the diversity of the seed bank high into the future.
The researchers assessed the existing collection of the Millennium Seed Bank by focusing on the legume family.
and beans peanuts clover and lupins--to see how it was represented in the seed bank.
However using the evolutionary tree they found that as the seed bank collection grew in the future
So as the Millennium Seed Bank gets more and more of these conservation priority species the overall diversity of the collection doesn't go up very much.'
you can get more diversity at the cost of getting fewer conservation priority species.'Tim Pearce international coordinator at the Millennium Seed Bank and an author on the study concluded:'
'With the race against time to secure seed before it's gone forever this insight into how best to capture maximum diversity gives us the opportunity to really focus on where in the world we need to target our seed-collecting programmes.'
'John Dickie head of botanical information at the Millennium Seed Bank added:''For a number of years we have been keen to know just how much phylogenetic diversity the total outcome of millions of years of seed plant evolution we have in the vault.
This gene would not allow rye chromosomes to pair with wheat said Gill. We cannot get a single gene transfer into wheat
and make rye and other chromosomes pair with wheat and transfer genes by a natural method into wheat without calling it GMO Gill said.
and other plants in tropical landscapes and then in dispersing their seeds. Having just sparrows in an ecosystem is like investing only in technology stocks:
The larvae of G. permixtana have been reported so far to feed on the seeds and flowers of plant species such as water-plantain eyebright lousewort bitter root
and seeds of the problematic weed can lead to a dramatic decrease of its germination potential.
which is used on strawberries pome fruit and vine to protect against and treat fungal infestation.
and believe it stems from random spatial processes including seed dispersal by animals. The stochastic spatial processes interfere with the classic ecological theory of predictable dependence resulting in de facto independence.
and maintain 28 globally important crops including rice wheat soybean sorghum banana apple citrus fruits grape stone fruits
A single plant can produce 25000 seeds and completes its life cycle in six to eight weeks said Wondi Mersie a Virginia State university professor and principal investigator of the Virginia Tech-led project.
because seeds have a lot of genetic variability and you don't know if a seed will produce the same fruit as the tree that produced it.
It's a gamble. If they simply started grafting it would guarantee the orchard would have the peaches they wanted.
and exchanging crop seeds for harvesting the farmers in each ethnic group maintain varieties which are unique to them.
and exchanging seeds from one harvest to another the importance of the market in such trading etc.
In addition local seed varieties are transmitted traditionally in a very compartmentalized way within the same ethnic group.
and get what we call commercial seed which is the growth of the fungus spores on some wheat or sorghum.
and the number of seeds they set the next year. When Snakes Meet the New jersey Highwayroads are a challenge for northern pine snakes (Pituophis melanoleucus) in the New jersey Pine Barrens based on the findings that Ward will present at the ESA meeting on Aug 15.
either with corn barley wheat soybeans rice beans acai seed brown sugar or starch syrup she says.
or prolific seed production may have higher risk. The researchers believe that the white list provides producers with clearly identified low-invasion risk options
and seeds becoming long and leggy as they reach for the sky. That process begins with the phytochrome
*This study received funding from the International Tree Nut Council Nutrition Research and Education Foundation and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
Gluten a protein is found in grains such as wheat barley rye and triticale a cross between wheat and rye.
Mature trees remained for the acorn harvest but burning also made way for the next generation of trees to ensure a consistent future crop.
and maximize the next acorn crop. Lake thinks that understanding tribal use of these forest environments has context for and relevance to contemporary management and restoration of endangered ecosystems and tribal cultures.
when it comes time for seeds to germinate. Though they have been in the United states--particularly the Southeast
or more pods than current northern cultivars but do not grow as tall. Their reduced height makes them more resistant to lodging a bending or breaking of the main plant stem.
This provides breeders with a perfect genetic marker for identifying semideterminancy in soybean seeds and seedlings he said.
Impacts of invasive ants can include direct effects such as displaced local species and indirect effects on key ecological functions such as frugivory pollination and seed dispersal.
Plants grown from neonicotinoid-treated seed have the pesticide in all their tissues including the nectar and pollen.
and brown and had some seeds we thought we'd be able to germinate but they weren't any good.
The Cottage Lane students hope to determine how long the plant takes to germinate in microgravity while the Florida group looks at the frequency of lettuce seed germination in space.
Brennan and Leap evaluated the effectiveness of three secondary tillage implements for soil incorporation of broadcast cover crop seed compared with drilled seed using legume-rye cover crop mixtures.
and broadcast plus disc) and point implements (seeder seeder plus rototiller seeder plus cultivator and seeder plus disc) for planting rye mixed with either purple or common vetch
The experiments were conducted in Salinas California with winter-and spring-sown cover crops for establishing rye mixed with either purple
because the broadcasting methods all used a second pass to incorporate the seed. According to the authors drilled cover crops had greater uniformity
When fruit goes in one end seeds come out the other. Though some seeds are destroyed during digestion most reemerge
and are potentially able to germinate. Pringle and Tarnita developed a mathematical model to conduct a sort of cost-benefit analysis of how the Sodom apple's ability to proliferate is affected by being eaten.
The model weighed the cost to the plant of being consumed partially against the potential benefit of having healthy seeds scattered across the countryside in an animal's droppings.
The model showed that to offset the damage an elephant wreaks on a plant 80 percent of the seeds the animal eats would have to emerge from it unscathed.
On top of that each seed would have to be 10-times more likely to take root than one that simply fell to the ground from its parent.
while feeding and also spread a lot of seeds in their dung. Of the seeds eaten by an impala only 60 percent would need to survive
and those seeds would have to be a mere three times more likely to sprout than a seed that simply fell from its parent.
A model allows you to explore a space you're not fully able to reach experimentally said Tarnita who uses math to understand the outcome of interactions between organisms.
The enzymes increase the antioxidant activity from the grape seeds and skins. New uses could include food additives or nutritional supplements.
and an Ecological Society of America SEEDS Undergraduate Research Fellowship (funded by the National Science Foundation).
It was developed from rapeseed at the University of Manitoba in the 1970s. Canola oil contains only 7 per cent saturated fat less than half that of olive oil widely touted for its health benefits.
But researchers in the Virginia Tech College of Agriculture and Life sciences have found an effective way to kill poison ivy using a naturally occurring fungus that grows on the fleshy tissue surrounding the plant's seed potentially giving homeowners and forest managers the ability to rid
Jelesko noticed that not only were some of the seeds failing to germinate but on the seedlings that did germinate there was a blight wiping out the young seedlings.
and the seeds that didn't germinate. The fungus caused wilt and chlorophyll loss on the seedlings just by placing it at the junction of the main stem and root collar of the plant at three weeks post-inoculation.
and birds eat the seeds all to no ill effects. Jelesko and Kasson have filed for a patent disclosure of their current findings
This function allows the plant to partition cadmium away from the edible portions of plants including seeds (grain.
Examples for such a combination of two genomes called allopolyploidy are found abundantly in both wild plants and crops like wheat rapeseed and cotton.
It could happen with new plant-breeding toolsince the first plant genome sequence was obtained for the plant Arabidopsis in 2000 scientists have sequenced gene everything from cannabis to castor bean.
Imagine if you didn't have to plant seeds for crops --if crops were just like your flowers
They aerate the soil cycle nutrients and play a role in plant defense and seed dispersal.
one to join with the egg cell to produce the embryo and one to join with a second cell to produce the nutrient-rich endosperm inside the seed.
Interestingly DAZ1 and DAZ2 perform their role by cooperating with a well-known'repressor'protein called TOPLESS that acts as a brake on unwanted gene activity that would otherwise halt sperm and seed production.
The drones also may be deployed in the battle against Palmer amaranth an invasive weed that is spreading across the Midwest
Palmer amaranth is becoming increasingly resistant to herbicides and spreads so prolifically that it could drastically reduce farmers'yield potential in affected fields.
#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.
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
These include the damaging pathogens that cause septoria leaf blotch on wheat barley leaf blotch apple scab and light leaf spot on oilseed rape.
#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.
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.
#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
#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
and reduced stalk diameter by 8 to 9 percent without significantly affecting the number and weight of the seeds.
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.
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