Russian scientists have verified that several plants grown aboard the International Space station are safe to eat Russian news agency RIA Novosti reports.
The plants have been developed very absolutely normal and did not differ a lot from the plants grown On earth she told the radio station.
And yes cosmonauts have given them a munch. We have gotten also experience with the astronauts and cosmonauts eating the fresh food they grow
Caring for a plant every day provides vital psychological relief giving astronauts a small remembrance of Earth NASA project scientist Howard Levine told Modern Farmer in a 2013 feature about space veggies.
They also check the modules and the plants'leaves for contaminants which may come from the space station's environment.
The information that lies within the genome could mean a more efficient plant breeding process
The study was funded by research organizations but also quite a few agribusiness companies that hold interest in plant breeding such as Monsanto Syngenta Hortigenetics among others. o
Zhang who worked at a cacao research center in Peru for a decade decided to use the seed coat of the cacao bean to extract the DNA needed to make a positive identification of the plant's origins.
He found that there is little risk of genetically modified genes cross-pollinating with plants of other species
Rising temperatures lead to new patterns of extreme weather which in turn cause major changes in plant communities say the study's authors.
and whether juvenile fish and commercially valuable shellfish will remain abundant in the changing plant communities.
and can lead to misidentification species identification based on the composition of short DNA sequences-the so-called DNA barcodes-has proven to be the safest way to reach this goal both in animals and in many groups of plants.
To overcome such an issue an international team of scientists examined a small region of CHLOROPLAST DNA looking for a potential barcode for this group of plants.
A new invasive plant parasitic nematode in Europefollowing its recent synonymisation with Meloidogyne ulmi a species known to parasitize elm trees in Europe it has become clear that M. mali has been in The netherlands for more than fifty years.
According to this current article it has also been associated with several other plant species from a survey conducted in The netherlands.
Many studies later on associated this nematode species with several plant species including Elms. In Europe however it was for years only known to parasitize Elms.
During this study M. mali was tested on some more plant species which were found to be hosts to this nematode species. The authors compounded a list of about 44 different plant species currently recognized as host to M. mali.
It is highly probable that this root-knot nematode has even a wider host range than
While the architecture of these compact bushy plants allows mechanical harvesters to reap the crop the early end of growth means that each plant produces fewer fruits than their home garden cousins.
But what if commercial tomato growers could coax plants into producing more fruit without sacrificing that unique and necessary bushy plant shape?
Their research has revealed one genetic mechanism for hybrid vigor a property of plant breeding that has been exploited to boost yield since the early 20th century.
In these plants longer flowering time substantially raises fruit yield. First identified at CSHL by George Shull in 1908 hybrid vigor--or heterosis as biologists call it--involves interbreeding genetically distinct plants to generate offspring more robust than either inbred parent.
It has been used for decades to improve agricultural productivity but scientists have debated long how and why it works.
They found that bushy plants with a mutation in one of the two copies of the florigen gene producing half as much florigen as plants without the mutation do postpone the moment
Lippman's team also studied florigen mutants in another plant the crucifer weed known as Arabidopsis that is a cousin of crops like broccoli and cauliflower.
Although they did not see the same increase in yield they did observe similar changes in plant architecture because of florigen dosage sensitivities.
#Clues to how plants evolved to cope with coldresearchers have found new clues to how plants evolved to withstand wintry weather.
and leaf and stem data for thousands of species the researchers were able to reconstruct how plants evolved to cope with cold as they spread across the globe.
The results suggest that many plants acquired characteristics that helped them thrive in colder climates--such as dying back to the roots in winter--long before they first encountered freezing.
Plants that live in the tundra such as Arctic cinquefoil and three-toothed saxifrage can withstand winter temperatures below minus 15 degrees Celsius.
Unlike animals most plants can't move to escape the cold or generate heat to keep them warm.
It's not so much the cold but the ice that poses problems for plants. For instance freezing and thawing cause air bubbles to form in the plant's internal water transport system.
Think about the air bubbles you see suspended in the ice cubes said co-author Amy Zanne of the George washington University.
If enough of these air bubbles come together as water thaws they can block the flow of water from the roots to the leaves and kill the plant.
The researchers identified three traits that help plants get around these problems. Some plants such as hickories and oaks avoid freezing damage by dropping their leaves before the winter chill sets ineffectively shutting off the flow of water between roots
and leaves--and growing new leaves and water transport cells when warmer weather returns. Other plants such as birches and poplars also protect themselves by having narrower water transport cells
which makes the parts of the plant that deliver water less susceptible to blockage during freezing and thawing.
Still others die back to the ground in winter and re-sprout from their roots or start growing as new plants from seeds when conditions are right.
To compile the plant trait data for their study the researchers spent hundreds of hours scouring
and merging multiple large plant databases containing tens of thousands of species largely with the support of the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in North carolina and Macquarie University in Australia.
When they mapped their collected leaf and stem data onto their evolutionary tree for flowering plants they found that many plants were equipped well for icy climates even before cold conditions hit.
Plants that die back to the ground in winter for example acquired the ability to die and come back when conditions improve long before they first experienced freezing.
Similarly species with narrow water transport cells acquired a finer circulatory system well before they confronted cold climates.
This suggests that some other environmental pressure--possibly drought--caused these plants to evolve this way
and replace their leaves seasonally--these plant groups didn't gain the ability to drop their leaves during winter until after they encountered freezing Beaulieu added.
As a next step the researchers plan to use their evolutionary tree to find out how plants evolved to withstand other environmental stresses in addition to freezing such as drought and heat.
#91 new species described by California Academy Of Sciences in 2013in 2013 researchers at the California Academy of Sciences discovered 91 new plant
The new species previously unknown to science include 38 different ants 12 fishes 14 plants eight beetles two spiders one reptile and one amphibian.
More than a dozen Academy scientists along with several dozen international collaborators described the newly discovered plants and animals.
This year Academy scientists were able to identify 38 previously unknown ant species seven new plants and two new spider species from Madagascar.
New species unearthed close to homewhile researchers from the California Academy of Sciences are spanning the far reaches of the globe to find new plants animals
and other life forms there are still many things to discover closer to Home in 2013 Academy scientists discovered two new plant species and eight new beetles from Mexico.
and sheep production are 19 to 48 times higher (on the basis of pounds of food produced) than they are from producing protein-rich plant foods such as beans grains or soy products.
DNA of storied plant provides insight into the evolution of flowering plantsthe newly sequenced genome of the Amborella plant addresses Darwin's abominable mystery--the question of why flowers suddenly proliferated On earth millions of years ago.
The plant is a small understory tree found only on the main island of New caledonia in the South Pacific.
This work provides the first global insight as to how flowering plants are genetically different from all other plants On earth Brad Barbazuk of the University of Florida said
Most plants show evidence of recent bursts of this mobile DNA activity But Amborella is unique in that it does not seem to have acquired many new mobile sequences in the past several million years stated Sue Wessler of the University of California-Riverside.
Resequencing of individual Amborella plants across the species'range reveals geographic structure with conservation implications plus evidence of a recent major genetic bottleneck noted Pam Soltis of the University of Florida.
when they feed on plants expressing Bt toxins he said. Yet a drawback to using these hybrids has been the high cost of purchasing the seeds
During September of each season they assessed corn borer damage on 400 random plants at each site.
and found a new bacterium Burkholderia australis that promotes plant growth through a process called nitrogen fixation.
Bacteria are used widely in sugar cane production as well as with other crops where they help to break down organic matter in the soil to make vital nutrients available to the growing plants
which is given unsurprising the complexity of biological processes in and around the plant root. This variability means that the success of bacterial fertilizers might depend on developing tailor-made versions for different crop cultivars and environments.
and went looking for bacteria that were present in large numbers around the roots of thriving sugar cane plants.
While two of the most abundant bacteria did not have noticeable effects on plant growth Burkholderia australis was doing quite well in competition with other soil bacteria in the environment
and turned out to be particularly good for the plants. The team tested the bacteria checking that they were happy living amongst the roots of growing sugarcane seedlings
and sequencing the genome to confirm that they had the genetic ability to turn nitrogen into plant food.
Restoring forests should bring especially high carbon returns in areas where plants grow fast and to big sizes but where past disturbances such as deforestation fires and degradation have resulted in much of the vegetation being destroyed because the difference between
Combining it with data on environmental factors that affect plant growth such as climate and soil they could model the maximum amount of carbon that could be stored in vegetation across tropical Africa.
with other centres and plant breeders. Sugar beet accounts for nearly 30%of the world's annual sugar production according to FAO and provides a source for bioethanol and animal feed.
But what perhaps may result amazing is that this sugar is probably sourced from a plant very similar to spinach or chard but much sweeter:
In fact this plant accounts for nearly 30%of the world's annual sugar production according to the Food and agriculture organization for the United nations (FAO.
Not in vain for the last 200 years has it been a crop plant in cultivation all around the world because of its powerful sweetener property.
This group encompasses other plants of economic importance like spinach or quinoa as well as plants with an interesting biology for instance carnivorous plants or desert plants. 27421 protein-coding genes were discovered within the genome of the beet more than are encoded within the human genome.
Sugar beet has a lower number of genes encoding transcription factors than any flowering plant with already known genome adds Bernd Weisshaar a principle investigator from Bielefeld University who was involved in the study.
which has shaped the plants'genomes. Additionally gene numbers varied between different sugar beet cultivars which contained up to 271 genes not shared with any of the other lines as Juliane Dohm
The researchers also performed an evolutionary analysis of each sugar beet gene in order to put them into context with already known genes of other plants.
This analysis allowed them to identify gene families that are expanded in sugar beet compared to other plants
Sugar beet will be an important cornerstone of future genomic studies involving plants due to its taxonomic position the authors claim.
Hungry agoutis plant trees but may never see the fruit of their labor--a fascinating feedback loop.
and plants their high strength light weight and resilience have now been shown to have the stiffness of steel.
Cellulose could come from a variety of biological sources including trees plants algae ocean-dwelling organisms called tunicates
unfit for crop production and the stovers and other residues of plants left on croplands after harvesting.
#Nitrogen deposition poses threat to diversity of Europes forest vegetationunless nitrogen emissions are curbed the diversity of plant communities in Europe's forests will decrease.
In particular the coverage of plant species adapted to nutrient-poor conditions has reduced. However levels of nitrogen deposition in Finnish forests remain small compared to Southern and Central europe.
unless nitrogen emissions are curbed the diversity of plant communities in Europe's forests will decrease.
Although deposition has affected not yet markedly species numbers within plant communities most new species spreading into forests during the monitoring period have been types that favour nitrogen.
and shading by plants benefiting from nitrogen deposition. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE.
The book describes the changing ways in which various wild plants and animals were regarded controlled and exploited by England's human inhabitants
Above all globalization and perhaps climate change bring not only more foreign plants and invertebrates to these shores but also--more worrying by far--new pests and diseases especially of trees such as the recent ash chalara.
and wetlands are required certainly simply to ensure healthy populations of birds like the stone curlew as well as to sustain a wide range of endangered plants.
Dean Gabriel a plant bacteriology specialist with UF/IFAS helped sequence and map the genome of the most prevalent form of the disease in Florida
Gabriel's team's work will be outlined in a research paper that will be published in February in the journal Molecular Plant-Microbe Interaction.
According to Mcelrone the data from this surface renewal measuring system allows researchers to determine how much water in soil is used actually by plants
Among the numerous variables involved in the calculation process the system measures wind temperature and speed soil temperature fluctuation and a process called evapotranspiration or water evaporation through soil and the surfaces of plants.
and allows fire-resistant plants to regrow he said. The study also found that fire originated by the Xavante Indians is managed well and contained.
yieldscientists at the Donald Danforth Plant science Center have made several scientific discoveries demonstrating the significant roles Heterotrimeric G proteins play in plant development and yield.
Pandey and collaborators showed that G proteins occur in a wide range of land plants and algae.
This discovery was published in the October 2013 issue of Plant Physiology. G proteins alpha beta and gamma are important
because they play critical roles in plants'development including fruit and seed size and production defense against pests and pathogens and response to abiotic stresses such as drought and ozone Pandey said.
when G proteins quantities were elevated in Camelina sativa the plant produced more seeds which were also bigger in size.
The discovery which could lead to improved crops that require less nitrogen-containing fertilizer was published in Plant Physiology in May 2013.
and how biochemical reactions involving G proteins evolved in plants. The research we've completed to date is just the tip of the iceburg said Pandey.
and then apply to improve agricultural plant productivity. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Donald Danforth Plant science Center.
#Toxic substances in banana plants kill root pestsbananas are a major food staple for about 400 million people in the tropical and subtropical regions of Asia Africa and Latin america.
Dirk HÃ lscher from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena Germany and an international team of researchers have discovered that some banana varieties accumulate specific plant toxins in the immediate vicinity
This local accumulation is crucial for the plant's resistance to this pest organism. The toxin is stored in lipid droplets in the body of the nematode and the parasite finally dies.
It attacks the roots of banana plants causing slower growth and development of the plant and fruit.
In the final stage of the disease plants topple over often when already bearing an immature fruit bunch.
Research and Infection Biology and the Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technology in Jena have taken now a closer look at the plant-nematode interactions in the context of resistance versus susceptibility.
The plants accumulated so-called phenylphenalenones only in infected regions of their roots but not in healthy tissues.
The concentration of the most active compound anigorufone however was much higher in the immediate vicinity of lesions on the roots of resistant bananas in comparison to infected root tissues of the nematode susceptible banana plants.
The production of the toxin alone is not responsible for the banana plant's resistance to nematodes.
By using imaging techniques the researchers were able to visualize the plant toxin within the body of the roundworm.
The scientists will now try to find out how resistant banana plants biosynthesize and translocate the defense compounds on a molecular level.
In 2012 Daust noticed a weird disease on the plants. Rather than shrug off the finding Daust followed his curiosity.
but nobody knew what effect it had on the plant. Daust aged fifteen at the time decided he would answer that question.
Daust photographed the leaves of plants with different levels of infection and checked back on the plants as the season progressed.
He found that plants with higher levels of infection produced berries that were infected undeveloped and had less sugar than uninfected plants'berries.
He dug deep into historical records and found an interesting pattern: the fungus may attack Highbush cranberry the most after wet spring weather.
Wet springs are predicted to become more common in Daust's region of B c . which does not bode well for local berry pickers or wildlife.
This year there is tons of rust on the plants and there are hardly any berries Daust explained.
Worldwide today approximately 5000 pesticides are utilized as substances for plant protection and for pest control.
In combination with bioenergy this results in carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere (owing to the previous carbon uptake of plants through photosynthesis)
Our findings show that the FOCUS predictions do not protect plant and animal life in surface waters nor do they predict properly the level of fungicide concentrations actually found later in surface waters explains Prof Dr. Ralf Schulz of the Institute for Environmental sciences Landau of the University of Koblenz-Landau.
and peppers in addition to frozen foods containing plant products. But UF/IFAS scientists emphasize that less than 1 percent of supermarket produce contains salmonella
Bonny Best is an heirloom variety often used as a control variety in plant pathogen experiments he said.
Creating permanent plant cover on erosion-sensitive areas such as steep slopes where nutrients are leached easily is a relatively low cost means of nutrient abatement.
Grapes are also inherently low in potassium possessing 3-10 times less potassium than the most common plants occurring on the islands.
This is also critical to evaluate the roles of primates within forest food webs particularly as seed dispersers for tropical forest plants.
The wasp belongs to the Hymenoptera superfamily known as Chalcidoidea which parasitize other insects spiders and some plants.
and its ovipositor first adapted to a plant or fruit that was around long before the fig later found a use in figs.
Comparing insect fossils with living organisms offers new insights into the natural history of insects the plants they pollinate
University of Illinois plant biology and Institute for Genomic Biology professor Stephen P. Long who led the study founded
In addition to causing direct injury to the plant feeding can also provide the opportunity for infection by rot-inducing bacteria and fungi.
The study also has implications for understanding the effects of climate change on plant pollination.
Mountainous environments provide an ideal natural experiment to understand the potential effects of changing climatic conditions on plant-pollinator interactions
Research undertaken by Plant & Food Research and the University of Otago has identified the gene controlling bulb development the first step in discovering genetic markers that can be used as tools to screen conventional breeding programmes for new onion varieties with the right genetic
By understanding how these plants control development of the bulb we can support the breeding of new cultivars that have the right genetic profile to respond to specific growing conditions ensuring each plant produces a bulb for sale on the market.
and temperature to form a bulb says John Mccallum of Plant & Food Research. Around 90 million tonnes of onions are produced globally each year
Researchers from the Foundry Institute of the RWTH Aachen University in Germany and Plant Biomechanics Group of the University of Freiburg Germany have developed an aluminum hybrid that could be used to optimize technical components and safety materials.
Longer-term strategies focus on introducing genes to the Chinese oilseed rape plants to build disease resistance.
and often inhabited by only a few scattered individuals--unlike our native European conifer forests that cover large areas says Dr Patrick Knopf from the RUB Department of Evolution and Biodiversity of Plants.
At the Botanical garden's Pfizer Plant Research Laboratory they worked with Garden scientist Dr. Damon Little to generate DNA barcodes for all of the individuals
Known as Bt corn because the proteins are derived from a bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis these plants have been grown widely by farmers.
which tunnels in the stem of the plant and less so against the rootworm which attacks the roots.
If the stand has experienced high mortality caused by bark beetles it can be thinned more heavily without sacrificing timber biomass or volume increment and plant diversity.
#How scavenging fungi became a plants best friendglomeromycota is an ancient lineage of fungi that has a symbiotic relationship with roots that goes back nearly 420 million years to the earliest plants.
More than two thirds of the world's plants depend on this soil-dwelling symbiotic fungus to survive including critical agricultural crops such as wheat cassava and rice.
and frequently colonizes many plants important to agriculture and forestry. Glomeromycota also called arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) play a vital role in how phosphorus
and bacteria be sequenced to inform research on perennial plant growth ecosystem function and plant microbe interactions.
They form dense clusters of branched structures--called arbuscules--in root cells much like a tight many-fingered handhold The arbuscules are the main route of nutrient exchange between plants and fungi.
Unable to live on their own AMF are entirely dependent on their plant hosts for the sugars they need for food.
They have established carefully their relationship with host plants keeping them alive while sapping nutrients from them.
and is often the limiting factor for how quickly a plant grows. Scientists theorize that the benefits these fungi provided enabled ancient plants to evolve during the Paleozoic era about 250 to 500 million years ago.
Over time plants adapted their essentially rootless primordial form and developed deeper and stronger roots to take advantage of the nutrients that underground AMF fed them.
In exchange plants provided nutrients the fungi couldn't obtain themselves. Analysis of the R. irregularis genome also revealed several surprising details.
The research team found that the genome is among the largest fungal genomes sequenced weighing in at 153 million base pairs (Mb.
They also have an abundance of genes for communication between cells via signaling proteins including small secreted effectors highly expressed during symbiosis. Plant roots send out a plethora of chemical signals
and these genes probably help AMF interact with plants picking up the signals plants pump out.
while still living in harmony with its host plant. Though it has nearly 30000 protein-encoding genes R. irregularis has lost also hundreds of genes as a result of its close association with plants.
For example it can't make most of the toxins other plant-interacting fungi release probably the researchers speculate to avoid setting off the host plant's immune system.
It has also cast off most of its genes for breaking down plant cell walls a critical ability for free-living fungi that feed off dead organic matter in soils.
Teasing apart the complex relationship between soil fungi and plants is likely to have an impact on improving biofuel production from plant biomass.
and conditions critical for a sustainable growth of bioenergy plants but also staple crops a prerequisite to help feeding the world said Martin. Story Source:
Wang Project Manager at BGI Our work also demonstrate that trans-omic approach to study salt-tolerant plants is applicable on both herbaceous plant
and woody plant providing new insights into the comprehensive understanding of plants'salt tolerance and drought resistance.
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