This modification method enhances a plant s own growth control mechanism essentially making it grow faster#an attractive trait in crops
whether this method of enhancing plant growth could be developed for any crop. We want to know
It s probably because the pathway regulated by this gene is so important to the plant.#
The weed-killer glyphosate sold under the brand name Roundup kills plants by inhibiting a growth-related pathway activated by the epsps gene.
Biotech companies have inserted mutated forms of a similar gene from microbes into crop plants producing#oeroundup Ready#corn
But in this study the researchers used a different method boosting activation of the native epsps gene in rice plants#a process called overexpressing#to give the plants enough strength to survive an application of herbicide.
taking the plant s own gene and ramping it up#Snow said.##oewe don t know yet
#To overexpress the native gene in rice the scientists attached a promoter to it giving the plant an extra copy of its own gene
The researchers conducted tests in rice and four strains of a relative of the same species weedy rice a noxious plant that infests rice fields around the world.
In regulated field experiments the hybrids containing the overexpressed gene produced 48 percent to 125 percent more seeds per plant than did hybrid plants with no modified genes.
if a gene gives you a lot more seeds per plant compared to controls it s likely to increase the plants fitness
#oewith most types of herbicide resistant genes there s no benefit to a wild plant unless the herbicide is sprayed.
A lot of transgenes in crop plants are either selectively neutral in wild plants or if they have a benefit it depends on environmental factors like insects diseases
or herbicides being present.##Snow has a history in this area of research. She has found that genes from crop plants can persist in related weeds over many generations.
In 2002 she led a study that was the first to show that a gene artificially inserted into crop plants to fend off pests could migrate to weeds in a natural environment
and make the weeds stronger. She also has served on national panels that monitor and make recommendations about the release of genetically engineered species into the environment.
Patrick Brown an assistant professor in plant breeding and genetics said having a complete characterization of the locations (loci) affecting specific traits will speed up the adaptation of sorghum and other related grasses to new production
and crossing exotic lines with temperate-adapted lines to create lines that were photoperiod-insensitive for early maturity as well as shorter plants that could be harvested machine.
Getting a complete map of the traits researchers are interested most in--plant height and maturity--will help researchers unlock the diversity in the exotic lines
The case I always make is that over here we have grain sorghum where we've done almost all the plant breeding
Bt maize and resistance developmentgenetically engineered maize is created by introducing a gene into the plant genome that expresses a toxic protein from a bacterium i e.
which destroys the gut of any moth larvae eating the plant. The technique is effective and unlike wide spectrum pesticides it only targets larvae of moths.
but farmers may soon have a chemical-free way to protect their plants from these voracious pests by turning their natural growth cycle against them.
#Plant community plays key role in controlling greenhouse gas emissions from carbon rich moorlandsdifferent moorland plants particularly heather
and from land management techniques that alter plant diversity. But the study found that the make-up of the plant community could also play a key role in controlling greenhouse gas emissions from these carbon rich ecosystems as not all vegetation types respond in the same way to warming.
The research supported by a Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) grant took place at Moor House National Nature Reserve high up in the North Pennines a long-term ecological monitoring site for the UK Environmental Change Network.
Setting up this experiment allowed us to test how greenhouse gas emissions are affected by a combination of changes in climate and changes in plant communities.
By taking gas samples every month of the year we were able to show that the types of plants growing in these ecosystems can modify the effects of increase in temperature.
It seems that the identity of the plants present in these landscapes will exert a strong influence on the effect of climate warming on soil CO2 emissions back to the atmosphere.
and plants into your landscape be sure they aren't the worst offenders. While everyone's allergies are different these are typically safe:#¢
Apple Dogwood Pear Plum Begonia flower#¢Plants and Flowers: Daffodil Lilac Magnolia Rose Sunflowerbe Quick to Clean--Mold and pollen can collect on fallen leaves.
While there is concern about plants taking up lead from soils research suggests that they actually take up very little.
Direct ingestion of soil containing lead is a bigger threat than plant uptake. Soils can be ingested directly
Likewise when vapor pressure deficits are higher plants have to use more water creating moisture stress
Urban gardens then provide a natural laboratory for studying how these climatic and atmospheric changes will affect plants and crop yields in the future.
Through carbon credit sales from avoided deforestation the Makira REDD+Project will finance the long-term conservation of one of Madagascar's most pristine remaining rainforest ecosystems harboring rare and threatened plants and animals
and thousands of plant varieties including many found nowhere else on earth. WCS which has worked in Makira
Animals plants and fungi are all eukaryotes; that is they have complex cells with organelles such as a nucleus and mitochondria.
We thought that flame cultivation would cause damage to cranberry plants and that damage would increase with increasing exposure duration
more control over plant growthas water use and runoff regulations become more stringent and concerns about dwindling water supplies become more of an issue finding ways to increase the efficiency of water use for horticultural operations is crucial.
but that BMPS do not account for water requirements of plants. Soil moisture sensors can be used
and at the University of Georgia Tifton Campus. Bayer explained that the studies were conducted in two different U s. Department of agriculture hardiness zones (Tifton 8b Watkinsville 8a) to compare plant responses under different
We found that plant growth increased with increasing water content threshold in both greenhouse and nursery settings the authors said.
The experimental results revealed that the effect of substrate volumetric water content threshold on dry weight plant height
and compactness shows the potential for commercial nurseries to utilize sensor-controlled irrigation systems to control plant growth
As a nutrient nitrogen is essential for plant growth but tropical soil is short on nitrogen and surprisingly non-nutritious for trees.
The rhizobia move into the root cells of the host plant and--in exchange for carbohydrates the tree produces by photosynthesis--convert nitrogen in the air into the fertilizer form that plants need.
Excess nitrogen from the legume eventually creates a nitrogen cycle that benefits neighboring trees. By nurturing bigger healthier trees that take up more carbon legumes have realized a newly importance
and developed a reliable method for detecting the nitrification inhibitor coming from plant roots. Scientists at CIAT then validated the BNI concept in the field demonstrating that Brachiaria grass suppresses nitrification
though sewage treatment plants are designed not to remove tiny amounts of pesticides they do an excellent job of dealing with the most widely used family of home
Based on these results we do not expect the trace amounts of pyrethroids in sewage treatment plant effluent to be toxic to even the most sensitive aquatic life.
and colleagues to check on the effectiveness of advanced sewage treatment processes in removing pyrethroids from wastewater from a sewage treatment plant.
and tulip trees in 1975 in Kansas. Dilcher and Peter Crane now the dean of the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale university published information about the fossils and named the plant Archaeanthus.
But the relationship between the fossils and any living plant species remained a mystery until Dilcher met
The researchers used advanced technologies of light scanning electron and polarizing microscopy to develop a more detailed picture of the Archaeanthus flowers fruits and seeds and compare them with the flowers fruits and seeds of contemporary plants.
Fossils similar to Archaeanthus have been found in the Southeastern United states. Were there other similar plants
A profusion of tree and plant species as well as one third of Peru's mammal bird and frog species make their home in these perennially wet regions located along the eastern slopes of the Andes mountains.
and plant species have been discovered. This massive array of underexplored biodiversity will face an unprecedented threat before the end of the century.
Stuck in a Hot Placethe habitats of most Andean plants-and therefore the habitats of the organisms that use them for food and shelter-are determined largely by temperature.
This means the vast majority of trees and plants only can live in a range that extends a few hundred meters.
Silman says plants are going to have to migrate around 3000 feet to remain in equilibrium with the warming climate by 2100.
Cotton bollworm a pest that attacks crop plants was more sensitive to OAIP-1 than termites and mealworms
Alternately the authors suggest the genes encoding these peptides could be used to engineer insect-resistant plants
It adds to a growing body of evidence including a 2011 study by the same Duke team that climate-driven migration is occurring much more slowly than predicted and most plant species may not be able to migrate fast enough to stay one step ahead of rising temperatures.
At Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Professor David Jackson studies naturally occurring mutations in plants to obtain insights about how plants regulate their growth.
Contrary to prior assumptions based on examples in mammals and yeast the new research suggests that in plants GÎ
but generally in plants Jackson says. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
#New cell component important to tea and wine-makingscientists have discovered where plants build tannins complex chemicals used by plants for defence and protection.
The source is the tannosome a newly discovered organelle that is found in most land plants.
e g. chloroplasts in plant cells which are involved in photosynthesis mitochondria in both animal and plant cells engaged in respiration
and ribosomes that are essential for protein synthesis. Each organelle also produces a range of chemicals for the cell.
After several trials we considered that chloroplasts were not the only green objects in plants.
People could see them stored in the vacuole another organelle in the plant cell but couldn't work out how they got there.
'More seriously plant tannins have been used since the Neolithic times to prevent spoilage of animal skins and therefore first to manufacture leather laces and soles protecting feet of rough ground.
Aside from their protective roles in plants tannins are also important in making tea and red wine taste the way they Do it isn't every day that a new organelle is identified
which fulfill the function of helping the plant development and protect it from the attack of pathogenic microorganisms
. In addition the specialist stresses that the plant with myccorrhizal fungi perform photosynthesis in a more efficient way using less water than those who don't have the association.
Brown and her students based at Mississippi State university now have identified more than 40 microbes living in the guts of giant pandas at the Memphis Zoo that could make biofuel production from plant waste easier and cheaper.
and other plant material not used for food production would be better sources of ethanol.
However that currently requires special processing to break down the tough lignocellulose material in plant waste and other crops such as switchgrass grown specifically for ethanol production.
Without bees to spread pollen from the male parts of plants to the female parts fruit may not form.
and to do so in a way that accurately traces a plant's emissions back to each individual product he said.
Even in the same plant such as a tomato canning plant different products are responsible for different amounts of emissions.
because drought and water shortages in the American southwest and in other arid parts of the world are using water recycled from municipal sewage treatment plants to irrigate food crops as the only option Water from toilets
or effluent from most sewage treatment plants clean enough to drink. Traditionally however sewage treatment plants simply discharge the water into rivers or streams.
The effluent still may contain traces of impurities including the remains of ingredients in prescription drugs antibacterial soaps cosmetics shampoos
Wu and Gan said the findings are a first step toward a full understanding of the potential human health effects of PPCPS in sewage treatment plant effluent recycled for irrigation.
Resistant plants thrive despite multiple soakings with glyphosate and a single plant may produce almost 1 million seeds to perpetuate the menace.
Young said that growers are responding to such challenges by integrating alternative herbicides into their weed control programs herbicides that work a different way
But those plants and others have quietly become sources of a new generation of natural food colorings that are replacing traditional synthetic colors
and beverages natural colorings add natural plant-based antioxidant compounds that may have a beneficial effect on health.
A'not-so-glamorous'experimentto quantify the benefit birds provide to plantations the researchers first calculated coffee bean yield--the amount of healthy beetle-free beans that could be harvested--of infected plants that were housed in bird-proof cages
versus yield from infected plants in the open where birds were eating the beetles. Next they needed to confirm
and improve wastewater treatment plants introduced enforceable standards to protect the health of farmers and consumers and continues to focus on this sensitive situation given the importance of regional and international trade.
because it provides a low-cost source of plant nutrients. Wastewater use in the region is given particularly important that the shortages in supply of phosphate
The increasing demand for plant nutrients in Asia provides an incentive for farmers and public officials to develop safe methods for distributing
A new research study from University of Florida Institute for Plant Innovation scientists Jessica Gilbert Michael Schwieterman Thomas Colquhoun David Clark and James W. Olmstead
and disease said Andrew Barkley professor of agricultural economics and lead researcher of a multi-disciplinary team that included agronomists and plant pathologists.
The Mediterranean diet a diet high in plant foods (e g. fruits nuts legumes and cereals) and fish with olive oil as the primary source of monounsaturated fat (MUSF) and low to moderate intake of wine as well as low intake of red meat poultry
--which tends to increase plant growth--tree growth and physiology declined for the majority of the 20th century
and the area around Kangerlussuaq (Søndre Strã¸mfjord) already have the potential to become much greener with a forest flora corresponding to that occurring during former interglacial periods.
With the expected climate change by 2100 scientists expect that such flora should be able to grow in large parts of the ice-free areas in the southern half of Greenland.
and plants but could also be beneficial to the Greenlanders. Forests like the coastal coniferous forests in today's Alaska and western Canada will be able to thrive in fairly large parts of Greenland with trees such as Sitka spruce and lodgepole pine.
However the researchers'analysis shows that most plants have not yet utilised the Greenlandic countryside following the last Ice age
and that the man-made climate change will rapidly create further opportunities for the plants. Taking advantage of this will be a slow process on their own however.
People often plant utility and ornamental plants where they can grow. I believe it lies in our human nature.
Microbes are essential partners in all aspects of plant physiology but human efforts to improve plant productivity have focused solely on the plant says Ian Sanders of University of Lausanne chair of the colloquium that produced the report.
Optimizing the microbial communities that live in on and around plants can substantially reduce the need for chemical fertilizers pesticides and herbicides.
The report How Microbes can Help Feed the World is based on the deliberation of a group of scientific experts who gathered for two days in WASHINGTON DC in December 2012 to consider a series of questions regarding how plant-microbe interactions
%Improved understanding of plant-microbe interactions has the potential to increase crop productivity by 20
These estimates rest on the recognition that all plants rely on microbial partners to secure nutrients deter pathogens
and agriculture including why plants need microbes what types of microbes they need how they interact
New technologies are making plant-microbe ecosystems easier to study and investment in this area of research could have dramatic benefits says Marilynn Roossinck Pennsylvania State university who helped organize the colloquium.
The spread of plants and animals throughout Europe between 6000 and 4000 BC involved a complex interplay between indigenous Mesolithic hunter-gatherers and incoming Neolithic farmers but the scale of the interaction and the extent to
#Creating plants that make their own fertilizersince the dawn of agriculture people have exercised great ingenuity to pump more nitrogen into crop fields.
or saltpeter from Chilean mines and plowed in glistening granules of synthetic fertilizer made in chemical plants.
If they succeed the chemical apparatus for nitrogen fixation will be miniaturized automated and relocated within the plant
in St louis. Engineering with biological partsalthough there is plenty of nitrogen in the atmosphere atmospheric nitrogen is not in a form plants can use.
or converted into compounds that make the nitrogen available to plants. Much of modern agriculture relies on biologically available nitrogenous compounds made by an industrial process developed by German chemist Fritz Haber in 1909.
His idea is to put the apparatus for fixing nitrogen into plant cells the same cells that hold the apparatus for capturing the energy in sunlight.
In effect the goal is to convert all crop plants not just the legumes into nitrogen fixers.
and edited the descriptions of all the bamboos of China for the Flora of China Project of Academia Sinica
If carbon is first taken up by plants as carbon dioxide then emitted in the same format by the cows eating the plants then the effect of plants passing through cattle will be small in terms of global warming.
Plants grown in the coal waste with added biofertiliser achieved nearly twice the weight and yield of those grown in garden soil
which are essential to growth available for uptake by the plants. As the organic waste in the mixture decomposes it produces ammonium ions
which is essential for plant nutrition. The biofertiliser also helps plants develop dense root systems which stabilise the soil against erosion.
In addition to the coal waste the team is working with marginal soils such as those in desert climates
and chemical fertilisers in order for plants to grow. Control experiments have shown that water held in the zeolite increases the moisture content of soil in desert conditions.
Plants grown with the biofertiliser achieve greater weight and in the case of fruits and vegetables a better taste than those grown with chemical fertilisers.
Bumblebees are among the most important pollinators of many food crops and wild plants. The next stage of the research is to use mathematical models to produce a bees'eye view of the landscape.
The near-infrared wavelength bounces off of healthy plant cells and so sends back a strong signal to the Landsat detector that isn't present over burned areas explained Jeff Masek Landsat program scientist with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt Md.
and other plant-based nutrients though studies suggests that fruit eating is likely to yield nutritional rewards for crocodilians.
If these plants are adapted for dispersal by a set of animals that has been missing from Earth's fauna for tens of thousands of years then how can they still be around today?
A new study proposes that the clumped dispersal mechanism these ancient plants most likely relied upon still serves them well today.
But when it comes to plants there is a bit of a subconscious assumption that the purpose of seed dispersal is to simply spread seeds as far and as evenly as possible across the broadest possible area.
when it comes to the spatial ecology of plants could it be useful to think of some plant species as also forming
By tagging ten large seeds from the single cone of 12 plants with a small steel bolt the authors were able to track how many of the seeds were removed from the parent cycad
only a few were moved beyond the vicinity of the parent plant and in all cases they were found less than 5 meters away.
Yet these plants seem to be doing well by sprouting up near the adults and forming mono-dominant stands.
Moreover Hall points out that cycad plants are born all either male or female and rely completely on host specific insect pollinators--so a lone cycad that dispersed a long way from others of its kind would probably be disadvantaged rather than advantaged in terms of reproduction.
and thus these plants may be adapted to grow in groves--an aspect that plays to their favor today despite the loss of these megafauna dispersers.
and echo the ecology of dinosaur-plant interaction he concludes but of course we now enter into the realm of speculation.
Hall's interest in the spatial ecology of'colony'forming plants does not stop at cycads;
he is currently planning to explore these ideas in other plants and landscapes especially in forest understories.
and cloned a gene in wheat named PHS that prevents the plant from preharvest sprouting.
Equally important this system makes isobutanol from inedible plant materials so fuel production won't drive up food costs.
The fungus Trichoderma reesei is already very good at breaking down tough plant material into sugars.
During drought periods they fed on a restricted mixture of plants including more than 30%of shrubs and trees.
Surprisingly gemsbok diet also consisted of up to 25%of Damara milk-bush (Euphorbia damarana) an endemic large succulent plant
When food was plentiful gemsbok specialised exclusively on grasses and more ephemeral succulent species. In contrast springboks fed on a higher proportion of shrubs and trees than grasses and succulent plants irrespective of environmental conditions.
Gemsbok seem to be well adapted to the toxic effects of special plants growing in dry regions
As a result the use of pesticides and their effect on humans animals and plants have become more important.
For example the fossil reveals teeth that were adapted to gnawing plants and animals alike as well as ankle joints that were highly adept at rotation.
The fossil--particularly its dentition which reveals teeth designed for shearing plant matter--confirms a 2012 analysis of tooth types that suggested multituberculates consumed an animal-dominated diet for much of their existence later diversifying to a plant-dominated one.
pathway of lignin a major component of plant secondary cell walls that limits the conversion of biomass to energy.
or plastics a basic knowledge of a plant's cell wall is needed. A plant cell wall mainly consists of lignin and sugar molecules such as cellulose.
Cellulose can be converted to glucose which can then be used in a classical fermentation process to produce alcohol similar to beer or wine making.
and thereby gives firmness to plants. Thanks to lignin even very tall plants can maintain their upright stature.
Unfortunately lignin severely reduces the accessibility of sugar molecules for biofuel production. The lignin cement has to be removed via an energy-consuming and environmentally unfriendly process.
Plants with a lower amount of lignin or with lignin that is easier to break down can be a real benefit for biofuel and bioplastics production.
A new enzymefor many years researchers have been studying the lignin biosynthetic pathway in plants. Increasing insight into this process can lead to new strategies to improve the accessibility of the cellulose molecules.
Using the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana an international research collaboration between VIB and Ghent University (Belgium) the University of Dundee (UK) the James Hutton Institute (UK) and the University of Wisconsin (USA) has identified now a new enzyme in the lignin biosynthetic pathway.
As a result the direct conversion of cellulose to glucose from un-pretreated plant biomass increased fourfold from 18%in the control plants to 78%in the cse mutant plants.
and historical environmental conditions while mechanistic models are built on the physiological understanding of how the plant grows
Satellite images from 1982 to 2011 revealed how much light plants in an area absorb so that they can perform photosynthesis. From this they were able to determine how much biomass the ecosystem in question accumulates during or after an extreme weather event.
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