The scientists were able to establish that the pesticide induced an average risk of loss that rose from 3%to 26
and percent cover of grasses rose from 1 to 3 percent. Tree seedlings jumped from about 2 percent to about 13 percent of total plant cover a finding that suggests
It is a concept for producing edible plants during long-term missions to destinations such as Mars. Heather Hava who is working on a doctorate in aerospace engineering sciences explains that the goal is to have robots do much of the monotonous tasks saving time
#Earth-Kind roses analyzed for salt toleranceearth-Kindâ roses are favorites with gardeners and landscapers.
and pests as well as their outstanding performance in landscapes Earth-Kindâ roses can thrive in most environments even with limited care.
and growers researchers at Texas A&m University evaluated 18 popular varieties of Earth-Kindâ roses for salt tolerance.
Their findings were published in Hortscience (May 2014. The rose cultivars were tested in greenhouses in College Station and El paso Texas in response to two salinity levels at electrical conductivity:
Identifying and using salt-tolerant garden roses is important in landscapes where soil salinity is high
Moth attacks in sparse woods cause extensive changes in ground vegetation--the dwarf shrub heath disappears
Fauna changes as wellwhen the ground vegetation changes from heath to grass there are impacts on the animal life.
or impalas devouring dozens of its fruits at a time the shrub easily conquers the landscape. Just as the governments of nations such as Kenya prepare to pour millions into eradicating the plant the findings present a method for controlling the Sodom apple that is cost-effective for humans
because they belong to a class of herbivores known as browsers that subsist on woody plants and shrubs many species
While elephants ate an enormous amount of Solanum seeds they also often destroyed the entire plant ripping it out of the ground and stuffing the whole bush into their mouths.
LMU biologist Professor Susanne Renner and her research group have looked now at the effects of this warming trend on the timing of leaf emergence (leaf-out in a broad range of shrubs and trees.
and shrubs says Renner. As Director of Munich's Botanic Garden she was in a position to remedy this situation.
At the Arnold Arboretum in Boston some gooseberry and honeysuckle shrubs start leafing out Mid-march
and early April and evergreen rhododendrons and pine trees don't start leafing out until two to three months later in late May or even June.
The study showed that shrubs leafed out on average 10 days before trees and deciduous plants leafed out on average 17 days before evergreens.
And certain groups of plants--such as honeysuckles willows lilacs and apples--tended to leaf out early while other groups--such as oak beeches honey locusts and grapes--tended to
In a recent study scientists used ARID to predict crop yields by quantifying water loss for cotton soybeans corn
When the lots are left unmowed the common perennial plants that replace ragweed include goldenrod milkweed Kentucky bluegrass chicory and aster.
and cassava a tuber that is the third-largest source of carbohydrates in the tropics.
Already some sections have been reduced to grassland littered with shrubs he noted. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by South dakota State university.
Examples for such a combination of two genomes called allopolyploidy are found abundantly in both wild plants and crops like wheat rapeseed and cotton.
During the last 15 years expansion of agriculture in the state has helped Brazil become one of the world's top producers of soy corn cotton and other staple crops.
Jasmine Saros associate director of the Climate Change Institute at UMAINE and professor in UMAINE's School of Biology & Ecology;
researchers reportan invasive weed that has put some southern cotton farmers out of business is now finding its way across the Midwest
In other parts of the U s. this species has devastated cotton production 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.
Some growers who failed to recognize the threat lost their farms as a result he said.
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.
and soybean growers in Illinois should take a tip from Georgia cotton farmers and do everything possible to remove the plants he said.
#Genetic basis of pest resistance to biotech cotton discoveredan international team led by scientists at the University of Arizona
what happens on a molecular basis in insects that evolved resistance to genetically engineered cotton plants.
Their findings reported in the May 19 issue of the journal PLOS ONE shed light on how the global caterpillar pest called pink bollworm overcomes biotech cotton
Scientists from the UA and the U s. Department of agriculture worked closely with cotton growers in Arizona to develop
and implement resistance management strategies such as providing refuges of standard cotton plants that do not produce Bt proteins and releasing sterile pink bollworm moths.
As a result pink bollworm has been eradicated all but in the southwestern U s. Suppression of this pest with Bt cotton is the cornerstone of an integrated pest management program that has allowed Arizona cotton growers to reduce broad spectrum insecticide use by 80
which grows the most Bt cotton of any country in the world. Crops genetically engineered to produce proteins from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis
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.
while'September Wonder'and'Desert rose'had more red color. The authors deemed'Desert rose'a good choice for a late-maturing'Fuji'strain based on the apple's excellent color great storability and shape.'
'Myra'was particularly desirable for its attractive pink color resembling bagged'Fuji'without the expensive cost of labor associated with bagging Fallahi said.
The authors recommend against planting'Autumn Rose 'because the strain produces muddy colored fruit under growing conditions like those in the study.
and a team of two research associates and a soils expert planted plots of velvetleaf alone corn with velvetleaf and corn kept weed-free.
when velvetleaf was grown by itself versus among corn plants. The velvetleaf alone was shorter and stouter Clay explains.
In addition specific genes that influenced photosynthesis and other important plant responses differed in expression. Another study compared the corn's growth and yield in response to weeds lack of nitrogen or shade.
In one indication of the swiftness by which the devices have been embraced in the U s. youth ever use of the devices rose from 3. 3 percent in 2011 to 6. 8 percent the following year;
in Korea youth ever use of e-cigarettes rose from. 5 percent in 2008 to 9. 4 percent in 2011.
To reduce the corn's height the researchers borrowed a trick used by the greenhouse industry to dwarf Christmas poinsettias.
These bugs have been documented to feed on many of our important agricultural crops including apples peaches grapes soybean peppers tomatoes corn and cotton.
Save threatened species by giving them treated cotton for nestswhen University of Utah biologists set out cotton balls treated with a mild pesticide wild finches in the Galapagos islands used the cotton to help build their nests killing parasitic
if treated cotton is placed only in the habitats of endangered finches not others. Knutie and Clayton conducted the study with University of Utah doctoral students Sabrina Mcnew and Andrew Bartlow and with Daniela Vargas now of the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain.
and Clayton say their method might help the endangered mangrove finches with only 60 cotton dispensers needed to cover the less than half a square mile inhabited by the birds on Isabela Island.
if mangrove finches will collect cotton balls from dispensers. There are other species of birds that are hurt by parasites
and so if the birds can be encouraged to incorporate fumigated cotton into their nests then they may be able to lessen the effects of the parasites Knutie says.
Knutie says permethrin-treated cotton has been used in the Northeast to get mice to incorporate it in their nests to kill Lyme disease-carrying ticks.
if finches could be encouraged to pick up treated cotton to fumigate their own nests located in tree cacti and acacia trees.
The biologists built wire-mesh dispensers for the cotton. They tried processed cotton balls treated with 1 percent permethrin solution
and as a control unprocessed cotton balls treated with water. Processed and unprocessed cotton balls appear slightly different so researchers could distinguish treated or untreated cotton in nests.
In a preliminary experiment Knutie showed the birds had no preference for collecting treated versus untreated cotton or for processed or unprocessed cotton.
In another preliminary test the researchers showed that the finches which are territorial travel no more than 55 feet from their nests to collect nest-building material.
Collecting Cotton Balls and Killing Maggotsduring the key experiment Knutie and colleagues set up two lines of 15 cotton dispensers--one line on each side of a road
in arid scrub woodland. In each line dispensers alternated between treated and untreated cotton and dispensers were 130 feet apart--more than twice 55 feet making it likely each nesting finch had a favorite dispenser.
That was confirmed: none of the nests were found to have both types of cotton. The researchers searched for active finch nests weekly within 65 feet of each dispenser using a camera on a pole to check each nest
and confirm breeding activity. They found cotton balls were collected by at least four species of Darwin's finches:
the medium ground finch (Geospiza fortis) small ground finch (Geospiza fuliginosa) small tree finch (Camarhynchus parvulus) and vegetarian finch (Platyspiza crassirostris.
and separated all the nest materials including cotton. The Utah biologists found 26 active nests of which 22 (85 percent) contained cotton:
13 nests had treated permethrin cotton nine had untreated cotton and four had no cotton. Regardless of treatment the amount of cotton in nests and the percent of the nest made of cotton didn't vary significantly.
The researchers write that their study found self-fumigation had a significant negative effect on parasites killing at least half the fly maggots.
The 13 nests with treated cotton averaged 15 maggots give or take 10. Nests with untreated cotton averaged 30 maggots give or take eight.
The amount of untreated cotton in a nest was unrelated to the number of maggots; but the more treated cotton the fewer the parasites.
Of eight nests with at least 1 gram of cotton (one 28th of an ounce) seven had no maggots
and one nest had four. If the birds insert a gram or more of treated cotton--about a thimbleful--it kills 100 percent of the fly larvae Clayton says.
A separate follow-up experiment--and earlier studies by others--showed killing the parasites with sprayed permethrin increases baby bird survival.
The researchers did not study survival of offspring in nests with cotton balls because that requires repeatedly climbing to nests
so birds can be weighed and banded which might disrupt the birds from self-fumigating their nests with cotton balls.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by University of Utah. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Journal Reference e
#Tomato turf wars: Benign bug beats salmonella; tomato eaters winscientists from the U s. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have identified a benign bacterium that shows promise in blocking Salmonella from colonizing raw tomatoes.
Their research is published ahead of print in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology. When applied to Salmonella-contaminated tomato plants in a field study the bacterium known as Paenibacillus alvei significantly reduced the concentration of the pathogen compared to controls.
This ratio proved to be a robust marker for prognosis said MD Anderson co-author Anil Sood professor of gynecologic oncology and reproductive medicine and co-director of the Center for RNA Interference and Non-Coding RNA.
or even some sort of small fruit bush that was in flower it very likely could have killed the fruit buds said Ward Upham Kansas State university extension agent in horticulture.
which give way to fields of grass and shrubs. The area of forest degradation is increasing posing serious threats to certain species
Olsen studies rice and cassava and is interested currently in rice mimics weeds that look enough like rice that they fly under the radar even
--and trying to grow'cash crops'such as cotton and coffee that are highly susceptible to global price fluctuations.
those that grow cash crops such as coffee and cotton; those with'marginal'farms of less than one hectare;
Across most U s. distributors sales of specialty coffee rose more than 75 percent by economic value from 2000 to 2008.
Examples include true yams cassava breadfruit and malangas. Their preparation such as fried mashed or boiled was also important.
and promotions appealing said lead author Samir Soneji Phd Norris Cotton Cancer Center researcher and assistant professor at the Geisel School of medicine at Dartmouth and the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical
Norris Cotton Cancer Center prevention experts recommend stricter security for websites and increased enforcement for direct-to-consumer marketing.
The above story is provided based on materials by Norris Cotton Cancer Centerdartmouth-Hitchcock Medical center. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
and cassava guided by similar computational approaches with the end goal of making more productive and sustainable crops.
The sagebrush ecosystem is adapted not to frequent fires like some forests in California and the central Rockies and fires have increased in frequency and in size over the last half century.
The most common species big sagebrush doesn't re-sprout from the stump. After it burns it's dead
Managers are now seeing sagebrush country burn every 20 years in parts of the Great Basin fueled by drought and vigorous nonnatives like cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum.
and shrub seeds to the site. In recent years BLM has moved to using native species when possible.
Arkle and his colleagues found little sagebrush cover at burned sites whether treated or not.
We did not see a trend of increasing sagebrush cover with time so time is not the limiting factor in this 20 year window.
If not time then what does need sagebrush to recover? The limiting factor could be related to climate or prevalence of nonnative plants.
and colleagues found preferring a sagebrush steppe environment featuring very little human development and dwarf sagebrush (Artemisia arbuscula A. nova or A. tripartita) but not cheatgrass or other nonnative plants.
The outlier ESR sites preferred by sage grouse had healthier sagebrush and shared common climate and post-treatment weather conditions.
Sagebrush recovery fared better in more northerly higher elevation sites with relatively cool moist springs.
Spring weather has big role in successful germination and growth of sagebrush during the crucial first growing season.
Sagebrush biology and physiology can be the biggest hurdle for restoration managers. To Arkle's mind the study results argue for maintaining
But the factors that ultimately determine the survival of the sagebrush ecosystem may be out of managers'control.
The study and another tracking the recovery of mountain big sagebrush (A. tridentata subsp. vaseyana) at high elevation suggest that climate may play a role in the failure of big sage germination and establishment in hotter locations.
Norris Cotton Cancer Center researchers take a look at what we know about e-cigarettes and health.
The above story is provided based on materials by Norris Cotton Cancer Centerdartmouth-Hitchcock Medical center. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length h
years old according to a new study by Dartmouth-Hitchcock Norris Cotton Cancer Center. In research published on March 31 2014 in JAMA Pediatrics Dartmouth researchers found that one-half to one-third of children did not identify milk
Control Research Program at Norris Cotton Cancer Center. The advertisement would be deceptive by industry standards yet their self-regulation bodies took no action to address the misleading depiction.
The above story is provided based on materials by Norris Cotton Cancer Centerdartmouth-Hitchcock Medical center. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Agroforestry is integrated an land-use management technique that incorporates trees and shrubs with crops and livestock on farms.
and the hidden nature of their webs which are built in palmetto shrubs. Red widows conceal their funnel-shaped retreats in unopened palmetto leaves making them difficult to spot.
and in May 2003--have enough webs been located to study the dietary habits of these elusive spiders.
and the extension of coca plantations the forests are fragmented highly. The forest relicts are surrounded by an open largely degraded cultural landscape.
which are surrounded by coca fields and degraded fallows covered with fern and shrub vegetation. The microclimate in the deforested areas is characterized by harsh abiotic conditions that limit seed germination
and recruitment and hence inhibit the re-establishment of forest trees. The researchers deposited 1440 Clusia seeds in 72 depots at six sites.
In addition to soybeans coffee beans and shirts if made from cotton consume lots of water from the growing process to processing to shipping--with most of that water consumption resulting from evaporation
Carbon balances showed that under the current climate lightly grazed dwarf-shrub-dominated tundra were a stronger carbon sink than heavily grazed graminoid-dominated tundra.
#Soil microbes shift as shrubs invade remnant hill prairiesperched high on the bluffs of the big river valleys in the Midwest are some of the last remnants of never-farmed prairie grasslands.
These patches edged by forest are slowly being taken over by shrubs. A recent University of Illinois study examined the soil microbes on nine patches also called balds that had varying degrees of shrub invasion
and found an interesting shift in the composition of the microbial community. When we looked at the soil samples from a lightly encroached hill prairie remnant it was very clear that there was a set of fungi that look like grassland fungi a set of fungi that look like tree fungi
and the shrubs between the two have some features of both said U of I microbial ecologist Tony Yannarell.
As the degree of shrub encroachment increased the amount of change in the fungal communities also increased
and as the degree of shrub encroachment increased that shrub fungi joined the forest group to become one big woody community.
You get this shift toward woody fungal communities that mirror how much shrub density you have in the hill prairie he said.
The microbes in the shrub soil tend to be different but different parts of the microbial community change in relationship to the shrub to the forest to the prairie.
The shrub bacteria are more like what they found in open prairie than in the forest.
But the shrub fungi looked a lot more like the forest fungi. We think what we found is the signature of these early changes these early shifts of microbial communities toward a woody fungal community Yannarell said.
if there are shrub diseases. We're also interested in knowing if the shrubs have changed these microbes
because that could have an effect on a landowner's ability to restore a heavily encroached hill prairie Yannarell said.
If you cut down all of the shrubs you haven't changed the microbial communities that live in the soil that the shrubs created.
and now native shrubs such as dogwood sumac shrubby black locust and eventually red cedar move in. We don't know yet what kind of long-term impact this could have on the environment Yannarell said.
The shrubs could be driving out grass-loving fungi in favor of shrub-loving fungi.
Influence of Shrub Encroachment on the Soil Microbial Community Composition of Remnant Hill Prairies was published in the February 2014 issue of Microbial Ecology.
and shrubs with crops and livestock on farms--could be a win-win solution to the seemingly difficult choice between reforestation
and may also enhance agricultural productivity. In a special issue of Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability scientists say that in most parts of Africa climate change mitigation focuses on reforestation
But why asked the chair of Soil science is there a protective blanket of sage brush orchard grass wild rye
and shrubs and then new trees eventually take root. Expanding deer populations in the Northeast however stall forest development
and promote the growth of thorny thickets of buckthorn viburnum and multiflora rose bushes. If deer leave the forests alone such trees as cottonwood locust
and sumac can sprout and grow unimpeded. The researchers found that the impacts of deer grazing on vegetation were resulted severe
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.
The European barberry or simply Barberry (Berberis vulgaris) is a species of shrub distributed throughout Europe. It is related to the Oregon grape (Mahonia aquifolium) that is native to North america
and that has been spreading through Europe for years. Scientists compared both species to find a marked difference in 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
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.
If the Barberry aborts a fruit with only one infested seed then the entire fruit would be lost.
But how does the Barberry know what is in store for it after the tephritid fruit fly has punctured a berry?
The Oregon grape that is closely related to the Barberry has been living in Europe for some 200 years with the risk of being infested by the tephritid fruit fly
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.
and cotton plants genetically engineered to produce proteins from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). These proteins kill some key pests
In 2013 Bt corn and Bt cotton were planted on 187 million acres worldwide and accounted for 75%of all cotton
and 76%of all corn grown in the U s. Recognizing that resistance is not all
and cotton based on monitoring data from five continents for nine major pest species. Emerging resistance of the western corn rootworm to Bt corn exemplifies the urgent need for well-defined
In both experiments researchers used four diets in weanling pigs including a control diet and three additional diets that included garlic botanical extracted from garlic turmeric oleoresin extracted from ginger or capsicum
Heath warning labels on cigarette packs are an important medium for communicating about the serious health effects caused by tobacco products said Dr. Cohen director of the JHSPH Institute for Global Tobacco Control.
or refuges where there were brushy shrubs and even trees such as spruce birch willow and alder.
and shrubs that was very different than the open grassy steppe. It was an area where people could have had lived resources
But if there were these shrub-tundra refugia in central Beringia that provided a place where isolation could occur due to distance from Siberia O'Rourke says.
For a long time many of us thought the land bridge was a uniform tundra-steppe environment--a broad windswept grassland devoid of shrubs
and along the Alaskan coast--the now-submerged lowlands of Beringia--found pollens of trees and shrubs.
but a patchwork of environments including substantial areas of lowland shrub tundra O'Rourke says.
These shrub-tundra areas were likely refugia for a population that would be invisible archaeologically
Many smaller animals birds elk and moose (which browse shrubs instead of grazing on grass) would have been in the shrub tundra he adds.
Although most such sites are underwater some evidence of human habitation in shrub tundra might remain above sea level in low-lying portions of Alaska and eastern Chukotka (in Russia.
and high nitrogen-fixing legume that can be intercropped with corn cotton and other crops in many countries including the U s. Zhang said.
You don't find mesquite trees growing in Canada and you don't find spruce or fir trees growing in Texas. If
I find mesquite pollen in a honey sample I know it didn't come from Canada or if
He contributed an enzyme from the burning bush plant that performed the final step in the synthesis process essentially turning plants into pheromone production factories.
and then applied the methodology to data from gardenia production in a Georgia nursery. The most convenient method (of calculating profitability) is converting all revenues and costs to constant periodic payments;
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