It is also vital that investigators are aware of potential unexpected crossreactive allergic responses upon the consumption of plant products as we found in the non-transgenic peas.
or fuel crop plants could represent an abundant source of renewable energy according to research published in the International Journal of Automotive technology and Management.
The team of researchers have collaborated with experimentalists at the University of Cambridge to create a mathematical model of a plant's petals to help us learn more about iridescence in flowering plants
and is seen also in some plants. Iridescence in flowers may act as a signal to pollinators such as bumblebees
Understanding how petals produce iridescence to attract pollinators is a major goal in plant biology. An estimated 35 per cent of global crop production depends on petal-mediated animal pollination
Flowers and the animals that pollinate plants interact at the petal surface. The surfaces of many petals have produced regular patterns from folds of the waterproof cuticle layer that covers all plant surfaces.
These patterns can interfere with light to produce strong optical effects including iridescent colours and might also influence animal grip.
Iridescence in plants is produced by nanoscale ridges on the top of the cells in the petal's epidermal surface.
The study was initiated by the Mathematics in the Plant Sciences Study Group an annual UK-based workshop organised by The University of Nottingham's Centre for Plant Integrative Biology which kick-starts collaborations between plant scientists and mathematicians.
which is taking over marshes in the upper St johns river basin UCF students helped plant hundreds of willow seedlings
but plants above the waterline grew and flowered one year later. The biologists confirmed the importance of water fluctuation using experimental ponds on UCF's main campus. Willow seedlings
and flooded the plants for several months. At the same time control plants just above the waterline grew over 3 feet tall.
Once plants become larger willows can survive droughts and tolerate floods and are very difficult to eradicate Fauth said.
The discovery Tour said could be a boon in the cleanup of contaminated sites like the Fukushima nuclear plants damaged by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
Plant biomass was chosen as the raw material for the project since it contains lignocellulosic biomass which is an abundant raw material.
there are a total of 15 plants being constructed in Europe The americas and Asia. Lignocellulosic biomass use will substantially expand the market for industrial enzymes.
New information on enzymes and activities that break down hemicellulose vital for the efficient exploitation of plant biomass was obtained also during the project.
when upgrading plant biomass. The Dutch company Dyadic is currently commercialising the enzymes developed in the project.
What he's found so far suggests that it's not a simple as saying too many insects spell death for a host plant.
Instead his research suggests a complex interplay between insects plant growth and the overall stress of the marsh environment.
A number of endangered plants and animals call this salt marsh home. One of them is the light-footed clapper rail a cinnamon-and-gray long-legged wading bird that lives only in Southern California and the northern Baja Peninsula.
They let the scale insects go about their usual business on another set of plants. After 20 weeks they compared the normally-infested plants with the brushed-off ones.
We saw major negative effects from the scale insects Long said. Plants with scale insects were weighed shorter less
and died off earlier in the season than did brushed the-off cordgrass. This makes sense Long said as scale insects sap the cordgrass of sugars and nutrients.
and plants like cordgrass have to expend energy filtering and excreting the salt. So he performed a second experiment in the lab growing the cordgrass with and without scale insects in either fresh water or seawater.
Compensating for consumptionthere's an idea in plant biology called the'compensatory continuum hypothesis 'whereby plants can compensate for grazing by growing more
but this ability changes with environmental stress Long said. As for why the cordgrass seemed to overcompensate in fresh water
when these plants aren't stressed they can compensate for their grazing by scale insects by growing more Long said.
Back in the salt marsh he raised the salinity of select locations of cordgrass by adding locally sourced salt then repeated his toothbrush experiment in these locations brushing off the insects from some plants but not from others.
the plant grows the same either way. Salt of the earthputting the results from all three experiments together Long concluded that salinity is a key factor in
These plants are always trying to deal with infestation by overcompensating and growing more he said.
But when the plant gets too stressed by the salt it doesn't care about the insects anymore.
This plant provides a bunch of functions he said. It helps to capture carbon dioxide. It prevents erosion.
and revealed new pathways and information about how plants fix carbon. The findings published in Comparative analyses of C4
in plants like maize to C3 photosynthesis in plants like rice. C4 crops including maize sorghum switchgrass
The technologies that our team developed to identify regulatory genes that enhance photosynthesis in C4 crops can be extended to identify control points for other processes including nitrogen and phosphate efficiency as well as a plant's response to environmental stresses like heat
and genomes for a variety of significant crops using model plants. The regulatory genes that impact photosynthesis are critically important for enhancing growth
and the UAH suggests that foliar fertilization could be used as a tool to produce plants for high quality reforestation.
and precisely control the nutrition of plants. This technique has not been tested in the forestry area
but its application for nursery production can provide solutions to improve plant quality produced for afforestation.
The foliar feeding caused an increase of the plant nitrogen content in the oak and the pine studied and all the products used.
as a result of the stimulating effect they have on the take-up of nutrients by plants phytohormone production and phytopathogen control.
what is more they produce hormones that stimulate plant growth and encourage root development. Another of their advantages is that they even combat other microorganisms in the soil that cause plant diseases.
In this respect the bacteria used in biofertilizer formulations encourage plants to absorb on their own a greater quantity of nutrients
which even if they are naturally present in the soil on occasions cannot be assimilated by plants because they are in an insoluble form.
Plant diversity is good for wildlife diversity says Blank. Our study suggests diverse bioenergy crop fields could benefit birds more so than less diverse fields.
and to plant breeders for their ability to provide plants with natural resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses.
Plant breeders know that the best source for improvement of a crop plant is often its wild species. Wild species retain allelic (trait) diversity which is lost during domestication and breeding.
and slack flows and a holistic look at the plants fish fungi birds and other life inhabiting the river its banks and its marshes.
what can be seen of these plants above the ground. Root systems are essential to gathering water and nutrients but understanding
what's happening in these unseen parts of the plants has depended until now mostly on lab studies and subjective field measurements.
and analyzing the root systems of mature plants. The technique believed to be the first of its kind uses advanced computer technology to analyze photographs taken of root systems in the field.
We've produced an imaging system to evaluate the root systems of plants in field conditions said Alexander Bucksch a postdoctoral fellow in the Georgia Tech School of Biology and School of Interactive Computing.
We can measure entire root systems for thousands of plants to give geneticists the information they need to search for genes with the best characteristics.
The research is supported by the National Science Foundation's Plant Genome Research Program (PGRP) and Basic Research to Enable Agriculture Development (BREAD) the Howard Buffett Foundation the Burroughs Wellcome Fund and the Center for Data analytics at Georgia Tech.
The research was reported as the cover story in the October issue of the journal Plant Physiology.
Beyond improving food crops the technique could also help improve plants grown for energy production materials and other purposes.
and vary widely even among plants of the same species. Analyzing critical root properties in field-grown plants has depended on manual measurements
In contrast automated measurements have the potential to provide enhanced statistical information for plant improvement.
and Penn State researchers uses digital photography to provide a detailed image of roots from mature plants in the field.
Individual plants to be studied are dug up and their root systems washed clean of soil. The roots are photographed then against a black background using a standard digital camera pointed down from a tripod.
We went out to the field to see the plants under realistic growing conditions. Developing the digital photography technique required iterative refinements to produce consistent images that could be analyzed using computer programs.
In collaboration with a research team led by Jonathan Lynch a professor of plant sciences at Penn State the system has been evaluated in South africa with cowpea and maize plants.
and collaborated with leading plant root biologists from the Lynch group to study complex root structure under field conditions said Weitz.
For instance certain genes may help plants survive in nitrogen-poor soils or in areas where drought is a problem.
The overall goal is to develop improved plants that can feed increasing numbers of people
Integral to this change will be understanding plants and how they provide us with food and alternative materials.
One example is in the so-called sporophyte factory farms on land where to begin with the algae are sown on the ropes.
When miniature plants (sporophytes) have been formed they sink and are able to grow in the sea.
so using natural plant breeding methods not transgenics said Rocheford the Patterson Endowed Chair of Translational Genomics for Crop Improvement.
and the U s. Identifying the genes that determine carotenoid levels in corn kernels will help plant breeders develop novel biofortifed corn varieties for Africa
Having this smaller list of genes to select for means that we can make the improvement of carotenoid levels in corn a simpler faster process for plant breeders she said.
Discovery on how fungi avoid immune responses of plants leads to new generation of fungicidesplants that come under attack from pathogens have an automatic immune response.
Fungi get around this plant immunity by injecting proteins into the host plant cells. These'effector proteins'enable the fungi to escape the plant's immune system
and allow the fungal cells to enter the plant unrecognised. Exeter scientists have shown now that signalling organelles known as'early endosomes'act as long distance messengers in the fungi.
They travel rapidly along long tubelike cells between the plant-invading fungal cell tip and the fungal cell nucleus.
This rapid communication between the point of invasion and the fungal cell nucleus enables the fungus to produce the effector proteins that help evade the plant's immune response from the moment the fungus enters the host tissue.
This signalling mechanism occurs very early in the fungal infection process at a time when the fungi are most accessible to fungicide treatment.
Disabling the process could result in a new generation of fungicides that are able to act before the fungus has damaged the plant.
and overcomes the plant defence. In order to efficiently protect crops we must better understand molecular mechanisms like these that occur in the very earliest stages of infection.
#An innovative way to increase flower, seed and fruit productiona scientist from UPM has developed a method to enhance crop yield by the contact of roots aerial parts or even the substratum of the plant fungus'Colletotrichum tofieldiae'.
'A new method developed at the Centre for Plant Biotechnology and Genomics (CBGP UPM-INIA) has shown that by the contact of a plant with a strain of the Colletotrichum tofieldiae microorganism previously isolated this plant can increase the number size
or weight of its seeds fruits and flower. Â This discovery has been protected by patent and its implementation could lead to cost savings
n from CBGP focuses her work on these microorganism-plant symbiotic relationships. Researchers have found that by applying a composition that contains Colletotrichum tofieldiae a non-pathogenic fungus for the Arabidopsis thaliana model plant this plant can produce bigger seeds without substantially affecting its vegetative growth.
In other words the application of this microorganism can produce an efficient usage of the plant resources.
This method can help increase crop yields its application is similar to use a fertilizer but having better results
Thus its application in agriculture horticulture forestry plants ornamental plants or any other plant with commercial interest would represent a significant environmental and economic saving.
This method was patented (P201331839-A method to increase the production of flower seed and fruit of plants:
pageac=patente. jsp&idpatente=812) and there is an exclusive commercial patent license agreement with Plant Response Biotech S l. a spin-off company from the Universidad Politã cnica de Madrid created in 2008 that focuses
#Herbivores play important role in protecting habitats from invasive speciesherbivores (species that eat plants; e g. caterpillars) consume more nonnative (introduced from other places) oak leaf material in areas with diverse native plant communities than in less diverse communities.
Why diverse plant communities tend to resist invasion by nonnative plants remains uncertain. Researchers from the Illinois Natural history Survey and the Morton Arboretum have been examining the potential role of herbivores on the invasion of nonnative plant species in diverse plant communities.
The researchers examined herbivore damage on leaves of nonnative oak trees in arboreta across the United states. They found that nonnative oaks in regions with high oak species diversity showed more leaf damage than those in regions with low diversity.
Ian S. Pearse lead author on the study in the current issue of the Royal Society journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B says that competition for resources has often been thought to limit invasions in diverse plant communities
but herbivory could also limit these invasions. While native oaks still suffered more leaf damage than nonnative oaks overall in the absence of native oaks nonnative oaks showed even less leaf damage.
Pearse conjectures Diverse plant communities are more likely to contain herbivores that are able to consume a nonnative species which may help to explain why diverse communities are able to resist invaders
As the introduction of nonnative species increases protection of intact plant communities and their associated herbivores may become critical to guarding against the nonnative species invaders.
or a meadow most people would probably begin with the plants the species diversity or the color of the foliage.
During a 3-year study researchers found that removing these small animals from the soil of a replicated Scottish sheep meadow altered the plant species that grew in the ecosystem reduced overall productivity
and produced plants that were less responsive to common agricultural management such as fertilization. The results reflect the long-term ecological impacts of land use changes such as the conversion of forests to agricultural land researchers say.
Each of the models included the 10 most common plant species but the researchers introduced earthworms slugs and other small creatures to only some of the systems.
During the first six months the researchers found that removing the animals did not affect plant yield or the rate of carbon dioxide loss from the system.
But when we ran it out through 500 days we did actually find huge changes in the ecosystem processes including productivity of the plants Bradford says.
Quality is measured by the concentration of proteins in the plants. Bradford says the experiment differed from earlier research in two important ways:
In this case the loss of soil animal diversity eventually changed the dominant plant species in the meadow ecosystems
Plants and trees are also feeling the change but they can't move out of the way.
but things like plants and trees are rooted in the ground and must withstand climate change or die.
and other plants we see she said. The nation's food cities clean air and water and economy are all dependent on healthy fertile soils
You can walk across Central park. The types of plants and animals that are able to live in a particular biome like the desert are determined largely by the climate.
We found all these community types just within Central park. Belowground biodiversity doesn't follow the same rules as the plants
Organic carbon in soil includes dead plant and animal tissue and makes up most global soil carbon.
#Plants prepackage beneficial microbes in their seedsplants have a symbiotic relationship with certain bacteria. These'commensal'bacteria help the pants extract nutrients
Now scientists have discovered that plants may package their commensal bacteria inside of seeds; thus ensuring that sprouting plants are colonized from the beginning.
The researchers from the University of Notre dame presented their findings at the 5th ASM Conference on Beneficial Microbes.
Plants play host to a wide variety of bacteria; the plant microbiome. Just as in humans the plant microbiome is shaped by the types of bacteria that successfully colonize the plant's ecosystem.
Most of these bacteria are symbiotic drawing from and providing for the plant in ways such as nitrogen-fixing and leaf-protection.
Pathogenic bacteria may also colonize a plant. Pathogens can include viruses and bacteria that damage the plant itself or bacteria like the Shiga-toxin producing E coli O104:
H4. In 2011 Germany France and The netherlands experienced an outbreak of E coli that was traced ultimately to the consumption of contaminated sprouts
which was thought to be caused by feral pigs in the growing area. Such opportunistic contamination is hard to guard against as most growing takes place in open outdoor spaces with little opportunity for control.
The hypothesis behind this research is that the best way to defend against pathogenic contamination is with a healthy microbiome colonized by bacteria provide protection from invasive pathogens.
whether commensal bacteria could be found in various plant sources including seed supplies said Dr. Lee.
What they found was the new strain of Bacillus pumilus a unique highly motile Gram-positive bacterium capable of colonizing the mung bean plant without causing any harm.
Dr. Lee and his colleagues theorize that their findings could have a wide impact both on our understanding of plants
The finding that plant seeds can be colonized pre may be an important mechanism by which a beneficial plant microbiome is established and sustained.
The five-year grant for nearly $660000 will support research to identify the plant mechanisms that direct and coordinate formation of the soybean nodule.
Making usable nitrogenwhile nitrogen is abundant in the atmosphere it is not in a form plants can use Subramanian explained.
The plant houses the bacteria in a structure where the biochemical conditions are conducive for the bacteria to fix nitrogen Subramanian said.
The plant provides the bacteria with carbohydrates and gets nitrogen in return The bacteria called Rhizobium enter the root cells of young plants
and trigger the formation of nodules to house the bacteria he explained. Within the nodules two distinct zones--one that fixes the nitrogen
and another that transports it to the plant--are formed from the same preexisting root cells.
These interactions affect the plant's nodule development and its subsequent ability to fix nitrogen.
therefore a model organism to investigate how symbiosis evolved between plants and fungi. Truffles are also useful to study fungal smell and flavour.
Additionally the Tree Bumblebee preferred to forage on a set of flowering plants different to the sets of plants favoured by the other bumblebee species being more likely to use some species of flowering trees
Today 19 genetically engineered plant species are approved for use in the United states including the major crops used extensively in animal feed:
#Goats better than chemicals for curbing invasive marsh grassherbivores not herbicides may be the most effective way to combat the spread of one of the most invasive plants now threatening East Coast salt marshes a new Duke university-led
In addition to restoring views the controlled grazing allowed native plant species to reestablish themselves in the test plots over time.
and favor a more diverse native plant system he said. Silliman said the re-emergence of native marsh plants could happen even faster
Plants use defenses against pests, but they dont always worksugars are usually known as energy storage units in plants
and the insects that feed on them. But sugars may also be part of a deadly game of tag between plant and insect according to scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology.
Grasses and crops such as maize attach sugars to chemical defenses called benzoxazinoids to protect themselves from being poisoned by their own protective agents.
Then when an insect starts feeding a plant enzyme removes the sugar to deploy the active toxin.
After the plant removes the sugar the insect reattaches it but in the opposite stereochemical configuration.
In contrast to the original plant compound the new substance can no longer be cleaved by the plant enzyme to generate the toxin.
which explains the success of Spodoptera species. Plants usually defend themselves against insect feeding by producing toxins or deterrents.
Like all cereals and other members of the grass family maize plants defend themselves with chemistry.
Leaves of young maize plants contain large amounts of a benzoxazinoid called (2r)- DIMBOA-glucoside.
The plant also produces an enzyme active in caterpillar guts which cleaves DIMBOA-glucoside to release the sugar.
so that the plant enzyme cannot remove it a second time. The scientists found out about this clever mechanism
Modern and highly sensitive mass spectrometry and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy methods showed that the benzoxazinoid identified in the larval frass was no longer identical to the substance in the plant leaves.
and the original plant compound was simply the stereochemical configuration of one atom. The crucial change however is the fact that the insect metabolite is no longer reactive to the plant enzyme
and the toxic DIMBOA cannot be formed any more. The elegance of such a mechanism comes from its simplicity yet it saves the insects from being poisoned said Felipe Wouters who performed the experiments for his doctoral thesis at the institute summarizing the results.
According to a Reuters report this summer Brazilian farmers are complaining that Bt is not protecting the plants against the fall armyworm any longer.
The increasing resistance of pest insects to Bt is another reason to look deeper into the natural insect adaptations against plant defenses.
Plant-insect interactions involve very complex and dynamic metabolic processes. The importance of the three-dimensional structure of molecules and the stereospecificity of chemical reactions is overlooked often.
The scientists propose that where ecosystem carbon is unprotected such as at the surface in plant debris its decomposition
and plant growth did increase which means that the capacity of tropical ecosystems to retain carbon will depend on the balance of changes within each ecosystem.
when it is digesting plant matter Cann said. When searching a database for similar genes in other organisms the researchers found them in microbes from the human gut.
but new research says the aroma also summons beneficial insects to the rescue. â#oewhen there is need for protection the plant signals the environment via the emission of volatile organic compounds which are recognized as a feeding queue for parasitic wasps to come to the plant that is being eaten
and lay eggs in the pest insectâ#said Dr. Michael Kolomiets Texas A&m Agrilife Research plant pathologist in College Station.
The research stems from a look at the function of a large family of lipid-derived molecular signals that regulate differential processes in humans animals and plants according to Kolomiets
whose research was published in The Plant Journal. In an effort to better understand these signals the U s. Department of agriculture is granting Kolomiets $490000 in 2015 to study how the signals may also impact drought tolerance.
The molecular signals are understood less in plants than in animals and humans he noted. â#oepeople take certain drugs such as aspirin to suppress the activity of these signals
and pain and all sorts of disordersâ#Kolomiets said. â#oeitâ##s the same group of metabolites that are produced by the plants
but we know so little about them. â#Yet a plant does â#oecommunicateâ #when attacked â
Jasmonic acid one of perhaps 600 oxylipin molecules identified in plants is known to have diverse functions.
To test how it functions in plant during insect attacks Kolomiets and his team used a mutant corn plant that could not produce the green leaf volatiles mown-grass smell when cut or torn.
And thatâ##s when they observed that the parasitic wasps didnâ##t pay attention to plants without the green leaf volatile. â#oethere are actually two roles for this moleculeâ#he said. â#oefirst it activates the jasmonate hormone
which involves activation of defenses against insects on the plant. Then this molecule since it is a volatile attracts parasitic wasps.
They come to the plant that is being chewed up by insect herbivores and lay eggs in the caterpillarâ##s body. â#oewe have proven that
We have provided genetic evidence that green leafy volatiles have this dual function â#in the plant they activate production of insecticidal compounds
when thereâ##s enough insect pressure then the plants are more susceptible to insect damage
We have found that this gene is required for many many different physiological processes such as drought toleranceâ#he said. â#oewe observed that mutant plants are drought susceptible as well as susceptible to insect feeding.
and how it works. â#Such findings may help plant breeders know how to develop new varieties that are more resistant to insects and drought he noted.
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