#Without plants, Earth would cook under billions of tons of additional carbonenhanced growth of Earth's leafy greens during the 20th century has slowed significantly the planet's transition to being red-hot according to the first study to specify the extent to which plants have prevented climate change
Although a greenhouse gas and pollutant carbon dioxide also is a plant nutrient. Had Earth's terrestrial ecosystems remained a carbon source they would have generated
Previous research has focused on how plants might offset carbon in the future but overlooked the importance of increased vegetation uptake in the past she said.
There is surely some limit to how long increasing carbon dioxide can continue to promote plant growth that absorbs carbon dioxide Saleska said.
While models typically take into account how plants and microbes affect the carbon cycle they often underestimate how much animals can indirectly alter the absorption release
and because the total biomass of animals is vastly lower than the plants that they rely upon
which eventually led to about 80 percent of the ecosystem to burn annually releasing carbon from the plants
This natural hormone protects the plants against pests. Juvik's team wanted to determine which GSS
and to breed even more healthful broccoli plants. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by American Chemical Society.
and will soon test their design in plants embedding their lab on a chip in the stems of grape vines for example.
In soil or when inserted into a plant stem the chip is fitted with wires that can be hooked up to a card for wireless data transmission
and then the chip may be inserted in a plant stem or in the soil where it through a nanoporous membrane exchanges moisture with its environment and maintains an equilibrium pressure that the chip measures.
The researchers seek to understand how values gathered from sensors inside a plant and in soils relate to plant growth
#Genetically modified tobacco plants are viable for producing biofuelsin her Phd thesis Ruth Sanz-Barrio an agricultural engineer of the NUP/UPNA-Public University of Navarre
thioredoxins) as biotechnological tools in plants. Specifically she has managed to increase the amount of starch produced in the tobacco leaves by 700%and fermentable sugars by 500%.
%We believe that these genetically modified plants she explained could be a good alternative to food crops for producing biofuels
and m in tobacco as biotechnological tools not only to increase the starch content in the plant
which helps to extract it from the plant and lowers the costs involved in this process.
-modified control plants. Ruth Sanz explained that this was also new since up until now both Trxs were thought to act in the same way
We saw that the leaves of the genetically modified tobacco plants were releasing 500%more fermentable sugars.
Existing air quality regulations and trends in clean energy technology are expected to reduce the amount of harmful nitrogen oxides (NOX) emitted by coal plants and cars over time.
Jaswinder Singh of Mcgill s Department of Plant science has identified a key gene that acts as a switch to determine how a particular plant will respond to high humidity
It s a bit like the plant s brain#says Singh.##oealthough in the past scientists have identified it as the pathway that regulates the way a variety of genes are expressed until now no one had made the link with PHS.#
More than 8000 different phenolic compounds have been identified in plants. Polyphenols have antioxidant antiinflammatory anticarcinogenic etc. effects.
Besides nonrenewable reserves alternative phosphate resources include municipal wastewater and agricultural organic residues such as livestock manure or digestate from biogas plants.
However according to the lead author of the study Luke Mander a former postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Illinois professor of plant biology Surangi Punyasena the limitations imposed by these descriptive rather than numerical methods have kept researchers from classifying pollen
Lateral roots as the name implies are secondary roots that grow laterally out of a plant's main root much like branches grow out of the trunk of a tree.
The presence and strength of each of these signals act as a cue to the plant
and signaling molecule in both plants and animals and plays an important role in root system formation.
Numerous studies have found this molecule to be required for lateral root development in plants such as tomatoes rice corn lupine and Arabidopsis.
To understand how lateral root initiation is controlled in different groups of plants including crops under different environmental conditions we need a simple and reliable method for analysis and comparison.
A previous study led by Dubrovsky proposed a method termed the lateral root initiation index for quantifying the initiation of lateral roots in plants.
This index can be used for any crop plant and although not a panacea we hope that the scientific community will recognize its value and ease of use.
In wild strawberries it also serves to lure the animals which the plant exploits to spread its seeds.
Dr. Thilo Fischer Privatdozent at The chair of Plant Biochemistry and Physiology at LMU and Professor Wilfried Schwab of the Center for Life and Food Sciences Weihenstephan at the Technische Universitã¤t
Egamberdieva group leader at the National University of Uzbekistan at Tashkent has isolated salt-tolerant bacterial strains that live in salt-degraded soils where they help the rooting process in plants.
After the selection of potentially root-colonizing bacteria she has tested them in experimental settings on plants'roots obtaining 10-15%yields increase.
which weaken the plants and lower the yield. Salt inhibits nodulation the development of tiny nodules on plants'roots where nitrogen fixation occurs.
Nitrogen is a critical element limiting plant growth and specific bacteria convert the atmospheric nitrogen absorbed by plants into a more usable form (ammonia).
Uzbekistan has 4. 4 million hectares to use for agricultural purposes but more than half are under-productive due to excessive saline content from the Aral sea basin.
Egamberdieva has been studying soil bacterial communities for more than 10 years. She has noticed that salty soils discourage bacterial growth
In her investigation Egamberdieva has spotted beneficial soil salt-resistant bacteria that help plants grow better causing no harm to men.
These bacteria are found around the roots of plants. We found that bacteria from the Pseudomonas family in particular Pseudomonas extremorientalis are salt-resistant
On the contrary pathogenic bacteria cannot actively colonize the plants'roots. Here Pseudomonas produce antibiotics that plants use to defend themselves against fungi trigger the rooting process
and produce nodulation-promoting factors thus giving the vegetation better chances to fix nitrogen and grow bigger.
As an exchange for these favours plants secrete exudates useful for the bacteria. To better exploit these useful bacterial strains the Uzbek microbiologist has come up with a technique that allows the selective enrichment of Pseudomonas strains.
and activity of microorganisms in the soil which form complex biological communities involving plants and animals.
#Aggressive fungal pathogen causes mold in fruits, vegetablesa research team led by a molecular plant pathologist at the University of California Riverside has discovered the mechanism by
This pathogen can infect more than 200 plant species causing serious gray mold disease on almost all fruits
and achieve infection of the host plant. To date almost all the pathogen effectors studied or discovered have been said proteins lead author Hailing Jin a professor of plant pathology and microbiology.
In the case of Botrytis cinerea small RNAS silence the expression of host defense genes resulting in the host plant cells being less able to resist the fungal attack.
and a plant host that serves as an advanced virulence mechanism Jin said. RNA interference or RNAI is conserved a gene regulatory mechanism that is guided by small RNAS for silencing
The researchers found that the four main forms of Se in plants--selenate selenite methylselenocysteine
In areas of Se contamination honey bees may be at risk because of the biotransfer of the metal from Se-accumulating plants.
Also better management of weedy plant species that are known to be Se-accumulators can prevent them from becoming a route of exposure.
It can be absorbed by roots used by the plants to grow and released back to the atmosphere.
The reuse of gray water for agriculture can decrease the amount of blue water withdrawn from stores and increase the green water available for plants to use.
not only to be strong repellents but also found naturally in fruits plants or animals. The algorithm predicted nearly 200 natural DEET substitutes;
and plant pests Ray explained. Our findings could lead to a new generation of cheap affordable repellents that could protect humans animals and in the future our crops as well.
and plants can make or break an agricultural season. Too early and the leaves might be blasted by the last frost.
But as climate change brings warmer-than-usual winters to the U s. the plants may be more vulnerable to imprecise timing
How do we do a better job of seeing the climate the way the plants see it?
Unseasonal warming during that late-winter/early-spring period has more effect on the plant's timing than at any other time of the year Clark said.
because the plants aren't seeing the average. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Duke university.
But just like all wild plant species these crop wild relatives (CWR) are also at risk of decline and extinction due to habitat loss pollution and climate change.
and protect the wild relatives of domesticated crop plants around the globe. The presentations are part of the American Society of Agronomy (ASA) Crop science Society of America (CSSA) and Soil science Society of America (SSSA) International Annual Meetings Nov 3-6 in Tampa Florida.
Scientists estimate that 30 percent of plant species are now of conservation concern in just the United states alone.
and conserve these plants are ramping Up on Wednesday Nov 6 at 1: 05 pm Nora P. Castaã eda of the International Center for Tropical agriculture (CIAT) in Cali Colombia
Colin Khoury of CIAT and Wageningen University in The netherlands will discuss a recently completed inventory of CWR in the United states as well as plans for protecting these plants both in gene banks and in the wild.
Although North america isn't known as a hotspot for crop plant diversity the inventory uncovered nearly 4600 CWR in the United states including close relatives of globally important food crops such as sunflower bean sweet potato and strawberry.
Flowering plants evolved from extinct plants related to conifers ginkgos cycads and seed ferns. The oldest known fossils from flowering plants are pollen grains.
This implies that these plants occurred a broad ecological range. The pollen's structure suggests that the plants were pollinated by insects:
most likely beetles as bees would not evolve for another 100 million years. Story Source:
Gillespie explained that fungi is great at breaking down lignin in plants and bacteria can help break down the rest
Specifically we found less plant-type compounds in soils receiving nitrogen. In addition we found that among the different nitrogen treatments manure-enriched soil had the highest amounts of compounds related to microbial turnover said Gillespie.
Eric Post a Penn State university professor of biology and Jeffrey Kerby a Penn State graduate student have linked the melting of Arctic sea ice with changes in the timing of plant growth on land
Post began his observations on the relationship between the timing of caribou calving and the start of the plant-growing season in Greenland 20 years ago.
Post added that as his observations have continued the data have revealed an increasingly earlier start to the plant growing season a change that has not been matched by correspondingly earlier calving by caribou in the area.
and the associated advancement of the growing season for plants at the study site and so we set out to test that hypothesis Post said.
In late May to early June caribou typically arrive from their west-to-east migratory journey in search of young plants to eat around the time caribou give birth.
Since plants are emerging earlier in the year they tend to be older and past their peak nutritional value
while plants respond to warmer temperatures and other changes in climate simply by adjusting the timing of their growth caribou
when plants are most nutritious and the timing of when animals are most dependent on them for nutrition Kerby said.
and the timing of plant growth to hindcast trophic mismatch to 1979 which they then compared to their more-recent findings.
and Clausen suggest a high state of trophic match associated with later onset of the plant growing season.
Sea ice is part of a broader climate system that clearly has important effects on both plants and animals.
#Biochar quiets microbes, including some plant pathogensin the first study of its kind Rice university scientists have used synthetic biology to study how a popular soil amendment called biochar can interfere with the chemical signals that some microbes
The class of compounds studied includes those used by some plant pathogens to coordinate their attacks.
and Technology is the first to examine how biochar affects the chemical signaling that's routinely used by soil microorganisms that interact with plants.
A potted plant may look tranquil but there are actually a lot of conversations going on in that pot said study co-author Joff Silberg associate professor of biochemistry and cell biology and of bioengineering at Rice.
In the lone exception a soil fungus that was typically beneficial to plants began growing so rapidly that it impeded plant growth.
Microbes talk to plants. Plants talk to microbes. And they each make decisions about their behavior based on those conversations.
When we started talking about these results my first thought was'You're probably interfering with a conversation.'
Silberg added Some microbes help plants and others are harmful. That means there's good communication
#First step to reduce plant need for nitrogen fertilizer uncoverednitrogen fertilizer costs U s. farmers approximately $8 billion each year
When the bacteria interact correctly with a crop the bacteria receive some food from the plant and simultaneously produce nitrogen that most plants need.
We're working to transfer this trait to other plants like corn wheat or rice
since these other plants recognize the bacteria. It's a good first step. When legumes like soybeans sense a signal from the bacteria they create nodules where the bacteria gather
and produce atmospheric nitrogen that the plants can then use to stimulate their growth. This reaction doesn't happen in other plants.
There's this back and forth battle between a plant and a pathogen said Yan Liang a co-author of the study and postdoctoral fellow at MU.
Rhizobia eventually developed a chemical to inhibit the defense response in legumes and make those plants recognize it as a friend.
Meanwhile corn tomatoes and other crops are still trying to defend themselves against this bacteria.
In the study Stacey and Liang treated corn soybeans tomatoes and other plants to see how they responded
They found that the plants did receive the signal and like legumes inhibited the normal plant immune system.
However soybeans corn and these other plants don't complete the extra step of forming nodules to allow the bacteria to thrive.
The important finding was that these other plants didn't just ignore the rhizobia bacteria Stacey said.
Our next step is to determine how we can make the plants understand that this is a beneficial relationship
spread of invasive plant species by changing soil chemistryinvasive species are among the world's greatest threats to native species and biodiversity.
Once invasive plants become established they can alter soil chemistry and shift nutrient cycling in an ecosystem.
This can have important impacts not only on plant composition diversity and succession within a community but also in the cycling of critical elements like carbon and nitrogen on a larger potentially even global scale.
Clearly both native and exotic plants form intimate relationships with bacteria in the soil that facilitate the extraction and conversion of elements to biologically usable forms.
Yet an unanswered question with regard to plant invasions remains: could the changes in soil biogeochemistry be due to an advantage that invasive plants get from interacting with their microbiome?
When alien species invade and take over communities they may not come alone--many plant species are host to a whole suite of microorganisms that not only live in plant cells
but also in the soil surrounding the plants'roots. These microbes form close often mutualistic associations with their plant hosts.
Some convert atmospheric nitrogen into bioavailable forms that are exchanged then for carbon from the plant.
Bioavailable nitrogen is frequently limiting in soils yet many invaded ecosystems have more carbon and nitrogen in plant tissues and soils compared with systems dominated by native plants.
Since changes in the soil nitrogen cycle are driven by microbes could bacteria associated with invasive species not only be observed responsible for the changes in soil nutrient concentrations
but also for enabling the continued growth and persistence of the invader species? These were the kinds of questions that started percolating for Marnie Rout (University of North Texas Health Science Center) after she drove by a remnant tallgrass prairie in North Central Texas as a beginning graduate student.
The plant looked like it was invading in a military fashion forming this distinct line that was clearly visible.
if the microbes she and her colleague Tom Chrzanowski (The University of Texas Arlington) discovered in invasive Sorghum might be providing similar benefits to this invasive plant.
Things attributed to plant-plant interactions like competition and facilitation are likely under more microbial regulation than we have been giving them credit Rout commented.
Studying disruptions to ecosystems like those seen in plant invasions provides a window into something--specifically the process of co-evolution--that we normally don't get to observe in a single human lifetime.
Rout and colleagues first confirmed that the invaded soils of the prairie did indeed have higher levels of nitrogen phosphorous and iron-derived chemicals compared with the non-invaded prairie soils still dominated by native plants.
All three are associated important elements with plant growth; however some were produced in excess of what would be needed for plant growth.
Indeed perhaps somewhat alarmingly the amount of iron that was produced reached levels that are toxic to many crops
--and may even inhibit establishment of native species. Furthermore the authors were able to show that not only can this invasive plant acquire microbes from the environment
of this species. These findings give us a new understanding of how an invasive plant can acquisition soil biota to its own advantage altering the environment
or eliminate the existing native species. This research shows that macro-scale observations such as plant trait expression
she is currently exploring them from a genetic perspective to better understand the complex communication between the microbiome and the plant.
With the growing human population and concerns for meeting the global food crisis in the coming decades invasive plants
and many experts believe it is just a matter of time before the disease appears full force in California said plant molecular biologist Abhaya Dandekar lead author on the study.
or enzymes that would destroy plant cell walls or specialized secretion systems associated with citrus HLB Dandekar said.
which are the backbone of the plant innate immune response. And they found that infected trees also had changes in the metabolism of important amino acids that serve as a reservoir for organic nitrogen in many plants.
The nitrogen is required to stimulate the plant immune response. Cause for hope: The researchers anticipate that these discoveries will lead the way to new tests for detecting the bacteria and thus the presence of HLB in orchard trees.
They also suggest that it may be possible to develop several short-term treatments for infected trees.
Panoramic, very-high-resolution, time-lapse photography for plant and ecosystem researchever wonder what plants do
when you're not around? How about an entire forest or grassland? Not even the most dedicated plant researcher can be continuously present to track environmental effects on plant behavior
and so numerous tools have been developed to measure and quantify these effects. Time-lapse photography has been used to study many aspects of plant behavior
but typically only a few plants can be captured with a single camera at the desired level of detail.
This limitation has confined for the most part such observations to the laboratory. Recently however researchers have maximized both the scale
and resolution of time-lapse photography with the use of a novel robotic camera mount and software--enabling the detailed visualization of plant movements across a wide panoramic view.
This system greatly improves the utility of time-lapse photography by capturing interactions between the environment and a plant population in a single sequence.
The beauty of time-lapse is that we can make observations in the plant's time scale.
Changes in the habitat can be correlated with changes in the plant itself notes coauthor Janet Steven.
view to that of an individual plant. Environmental responses can be seen across a large population with the additional advantage of examining individual responses within the same population using one time-lapse sequence.
The indoor setup created a panorama three photos high by seven photos wide of a time-lapse sequence of a quick-growing variety of Brassica rapa plants.
Changes among the plants can be seen as they respond to cabbage white butterfly caterpillars and stinkbugs introduced during the experiment.
The helical movements or circumnutation of the plants is also evident. The outdoor setup was powered by solar panels
As Steven emphasizes The technique has amazing potential to study the importance of the environment on plant phenology and behavior.
Time-lapse photography has advanced the analysis of landscape change phenological responses and plant movement. Current research using the Gigapan system is investigating processes including plant response to grazing and precipitation patterns.
This new technique will be a powerful tool to allow researchers to simultaneously examine environmental influence over time across a population as well as at a high-resolution on a single plant and to do so with a minimum of manpower.
Additionally it will be useful in a number of other disciplines including geology archaeology biodiversity glaciology and rangeland ecosystem research.
The researchers advocate that using a diverse group of edible plants such as that in a silvopastural landscape promotes healthy soil with better water retention
Additionally shrubs and trees with edible leaves and shoots along with pasture plants produce more food for animals per unit area of land than pasture plants alone.
Such planting of'fodder trees'has already been successful in several countries including the plant Chamaecytisus palmensis
When ruminants such as cows goats and sheep are consuming the plants from a silvopastoral system researchers have seen an increase in growth and milk production.
#Chinas synthetic gas plants would be powered greenhouse giantscoal synthetic natural gas plants being planned in China would produce seven times more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional natural gas plants
As part of the largest investment in coal-fueled synthetic natural gas plants in history the central Chinese government recently has approved construction of nine large-scale plants capable of producing more than 37 billion cubic meters
Private companies are planning to build more than 30 other plants capable of producing as much as 200 million cubic meters of natural gas each year--far exceeding China's current natural gas demand.
These plants are coming online at a rapid pace. If all nine plants planned by the Chinese government were built they would emit 21 billion tons of carbon dioxide over a typical 40-year lifetime seven times the greenhouse gas that would be emitted by traditional natural gas plants Jackson said.
If all 40 of the facilities are built their carbon dioxide emissions would be an astonishing 110 billion tons Jackson said.
if the gas produced by the new plants is used to generate electricity the total lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions would be 36 percent to 82 percent higher than pulverized coal-fired power.
If the synthetic natural gas made by the plants were used to fuel vehicles the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions would be twice as large as from gasoline-fueled vehicles.
The increased carbon dioxide emissions from the nine government-approved plants alone will more than cancel out all of the reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from China's recent investments in wind
The study notes that the plants would also emit hydrogen sulfide and mercury which if not properly scrubbed
Excessive water consumption by the plants is also a concern. Producing synthetic natural gas requires 50 to 100 times the amount of water you need to produce shale gas Yang said.
The nine plants approved by the government--most of which are located in desert or semidesert regions in Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia--will consume more than 200 million tons of water annually
when the fuels are burned is balanced fully by the carbon dioxide uptake that occurs as the plants grow.
because the plants used to make biofuels--including corn soybeans and sugarcane--are already pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere through photosynthesis said Decicco a research professor at the U-M Energy Institute and a professor of practice at the School of Natural resources and Environment.
Plants used to make biofuels do not remove any additional carbon dioxide just because they are used to make fuel as opposed to say corn flakes Decicco said.
His paper concludes that for now it makes more sense to enable plants to soak up carbon dioxide through reforestation
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