which crop breeders are selectively breeding plants with the genetic material responsible for leaves with a longer shelf-life.
Growing crops on photovoltaic farmsgrowing agave and other carefully chosen plants amid photovoltaic panels could allow solar farms not only to collect sunlight for electricity
The plants'roots would also help anchor the soil and their foliage would help reduce the ability of wind to kick up dust Computer simulations of a hypothetical co-location solar farm in Southern California's San bernardino County by Ravi
But there is one valuable plant that thrives at high temperatures and in poor soil: agave. Native to North and South america the prickly plant can be used to produce liquid ethanol a biofuel that can be mixed with gasoline
or used to power ethanol vehicles. Unlike corn or other grains most of the agave plant can be converted to ethanol Ravi said.
The team plans to test the co-location approach around the world to determine the ideal plants to use
and to gather realistic estimates for crop yield and economic incentives. Sujith's work is a great example of how thinking beyond a single challenge like water
Most ethanol today is produced at high-temperature fermentation facilities that chemically convert corn sugarcane and other plants into liquid fuel.
Milk cheese milk powder and environmental samples were collected from 10 dairies in eastern South dakota and three processing plants outside the state.
Seven plants across the state process milk with another set to begin operation in Brookings this year.
Researchers at the U s. Department of energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory who are co-authors on this paper conducted critical radiotracer studies that support the new theory that plant sugars play a dominant role in regulating branching
at plant stems. While branching has relevance in agriculture it is also very important in bioenergy crop production.
Brookhaven plant biologist Benjamin Babst and Brittany Wienclaw who was a summer intern as part of the DOE Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internship program at Brookhaven
while working on her degree at the University of New Haven conducted an essential experiment to verify that sugars play a key role in apical dominance and the regulation of plant bud growth.
if sugars produced in leaves via photosynthesis move downward through plants in greater quantities when shoot tips are removed
When they administered this labeled CO2 to plant leaves the plants incorporated the radioactive carbon into sugars via photosynthesis. The scientists then tracked the labeled sugars throughout the plant using detectors placed along the plant stem.
The scientists also monitored how much sugar accumulated at different positions including where previously dormant buds began to sprout in response to clipping the plants'apical shoots.
We found that upon decapitation of the plant there is a rapid increase in sugar delivery to the buds
The Brookhaven experiment further supports the idea that the demand for sugar in intact actively growing apical shoots limits the availability of this nutrient to the rest of the plant
which has an ongoing interest in furthering understanding of plant functions that have relevance to generating bioenergy.
For example said Babst Branching has a big impact on the display of a plant's leaves to capture sunlight like arrays of solar panels.
or hurt the performance of plants growing amongst competitors. And the amount of branching also influences how much biomass a plant has--of particular interest
because stems represent the bulk of the biomass that we can harvest for biofuels. Understanding the factors that influence branching in the pea plants used in this study may offer valuable insights to help optimize the growth of bioenergy grasses such as switchgrass
and sorghum--where because the buds and shoot tips are inaccessible without damaging the plant
The assimilation or processing of nitrogen plays a key role in the plant's growth and productivity.
because plants use nitrogen to produce the proteins that are vital for human nutrition. Wheat in particular provides nearly one-fourth of all protein in the global human diet.
Many previous laboratory studies had demonstrated that elevated levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide inhibited nitrate assimilation in the leaves of grain and non-legume plants;
however there had been no verification of this relationship in field-grown plants. Wheat field studyto observe the response of wheat to different levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide the researchers examined samples of wheat that had been grown in 1996 and 1997 in the Maricopa Agricultural Center near Phoenix Ariz.
A fast-forward through more than a decade found Bloom and the current research team able to conduct chemical analyses that were not available at the time the experimental wheat plants were harvested.
Genetic modificationthe genetic modification strategy employed in this study could also be used on other plants like grasses to be used as a new kind of fuel to replace petroleum.
introducing genes to make both the male and female trees or plants sterile; and harvesting trees before they reach reproductive maturity.
Trees and plants have enormous potential to contribute carbon to our society. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by University of British columbia.
Plants have evolved to outcompete other plants--for example shading out other plants or using water and nutrients liberally to the detriment of neighboring plants.
However in an agricultural setting the plants don't need such competitive measures. Our crop plants reflect many millions of years of evolution in the wild under these competitive conditions said U. of I. plant biology professor Stephen P. Long also a co-author on the study.
In a crop field we want plants to share resources and conserve water and nutrients so we have been looking at
what leaf arrangements would best do this. The researchers aimed for three specific areas of improvement.
The researchers looked at how the plant's biology changed with varying structural traits such as leaf area distributions how the leaves are arranged vertically on the stalk and the angles of the leaves.
thus increasing the plant's bean-producing power. A less dense canopy uses less water without affecting productivity.
And changing the angle of the leaves can let the plant reflect back more solar radiation to offset climate change.
We have a very unique modeling capability where we can model the entire plant canopy in a lot of detail.
what these plant canopies can do in a future climate so that it will still be valid 40 or 50 years down the line.
Once the computer predicts an optimal plant structure then the crop can be selected or bred from the diverse forms of soybeans that are already available--without the regulation
This kind of numerical approach--using realistic models of plant canopies--can provide a method for trying many more trait combinations than are possible through field breeding Drewry said.
This approach then can help guide field programs by pointing to plants with particular combinations of traits already tested in the computer
By examining plants using detailed computer models and optimization we have the potential to greatly expedite the development of new types of agricultural plants that can tackle some of the greatest challenges facing society today related to the need to produce more food in a more variable and uncertain climate system
Drewry said. Kumar also is affiliated with the department of atmospheric sciences. Long also is a professor of crop sciences and a faculty member in the Institute for Genomic Biology.
BLM's Emergency Stabilization and Rehabilitation (ESR) program is designed to reestablish perennial plant cover following wildfire preventing erosion
We have this problem with nonnative plants coming in changing the fire cycle and promoting more frequent fires.
The limiting factor could be related to climate or prevalence of nonnative plants. It is a question the researchers hope to address in the future.
and colleagues found preferring a sagebrush steppe environment featuring very little human development and dwarf sagebrush (Artemisia arbuscula A. nova or A. tripartita) but not cheatgrass or other nonnative plants.
Controlling nonnative plants with herbicides and fungal infections has been tried with mixed results. But the factors that ultimately determine the survival of the sagebrush ecosystem may be out of managers'control.
There is potential for sites to move into a new plant community state said Arkle. It's possible that some have gone past a threshold.
A new study in the March issue of The Plant Genome demonstrates a potentially more powerful approach to answering them.
The method can be applied to any plant or crop Hoekenga says. We've made something fundamentally useful that anyone can use
That's because pinpointing offspring that carry the right genes is often faster and easier than examining plants for the trait itself.
The new peanut genome sequence will be available to researchers and plant breeders across the globe to aid in the breeding of more productive and more resilient peanut varieties.
and build more secure livelihoods said plant geneticist Rajeev Varshney of the International Crops Research Institute for Semiarid Tropics in India who serves on the IPGI.
While peanuts were bred successfully for intensive cultivation for thousands of years relatively little was known about the legume's genetic structure because of its complexity according to Peggy Ozias-Akins a plant geneticist on the UGA Tifton campus who also works with the IPGI
and is director of the UGA Institute of Plant Breeding Genetics and Genomics. Until now we've bred peanuts relatively blindly as compared to other crops said IPGI plant geneticist David Bertioli of the Universidade de Brasã lia.
We've had less information to work with than we do with many crops which have been researched more thoroughly and understood.
Knowing the genome sequences of the two parent species will allow researchers to recognize the cultivated peanut's genomic structure by differentiating between the two subgenomes present in the plants.
Being able to see the two separate structural elements also will aid future gene marker development-the determination of links between a gene's presence and a physical characteristic of the plant.
While the sequencing of the peanut can be seen as a great leap forward in plant genetics
and plants and are renowned globally for fly fishing an industry worth more than £4m on the Rivers Test and Itchen (Hampshire) alone.
It's a surprise to find methane is such a big source of energy in these gin-clear waters famed for their luxuriant plant growth said co-author Professor Mark Trimmer Head of the Aquatic Ecology Group at Queen Mary
and trees and plants shaded the riverbed. The rapid growth of aquatic plants during the summer months prevents light from reaching the river bed
Spengler conducted the paleoethnobotany laboratory work at WUSTL under the directorship of Gayle J. Fritz Phd professor of archaeology and expert in human-plant relationships.
or released to the atmosphere as methane a gas that has a warming potential 20 times larger than carbon dioxide said John Melack a professor at the University of California Santa barbara. Researchers will measure plant growth
Traditionally scientists have believed that different sets of genes regulated plants'responses to biotic and abiotic stress.
and Identify Candidate Genes for Broad Resistance in Rice published in the January edition of Plant Physiology.
Healthy plants convert light to energy via photosynthesis but chlorophyll also emits a fraction of absorbed light as fluorescent glow that is invisible to the naked eye.
The magnitude of the glow is an excellent indicator of the amount of photosynthesis or gross productivity of plants in a given region.
Research in 2013 led by Joanna Joiner of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt Md. demonstrated that fluorescence from plants could be teased out of data from existing satellites
Corn plants are very productive in terms of assimilating carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This needs to be accounted for going forward in trying to predict how much of the atmospheric carbon dioxide will be taken up by crops in a changing climate.
Plant-based diets in general have also been linked to greater longevity less cancer lower cholesterol lower blood pressure
First we wanted to show proof-of-concept demonstrating that tobacco plants can be used to manufacture large and complex MAB-based therapeutics.
Chen's group has been a pioneer in producing MABS as therapeutic candidates in plants including tobacco and lettuce plants.
For Chen this also gives promise to his team developing a plant-based system to dramatically reduce the costs of commercial manufacturing of MABS.
This study is a major step forward for plant-based MABS and also demonstrates for the first time the capacity of plants to express
and assemble large complex and functional tetravalent MAB complexes said Chen. MABS are a hot
Until now tetravalent MABS had never been made in a plant system before. To make the potential therapeutics the group is able to use young tobacco plants
For the study MABS were produced rapidly in tobacco plants in as little as ten days giving promise to change the image of scourged product that causes lung cancer into a manufacturing system for societal benefits against infectious diseases.
Such changes may have consequences for the sustainability of the plants themselves as well as species which depend on them and ultimately the climate through changes to the carbon cycle.
Professor Hidetoshi Saze of the OIST Plant Epigenetics Unit is leading a new research project to develop a new strain of rice that produces digestion-resistant starch to prevent these diseases.
He is also using plant incubators in his unit to shorten the vegetation period of the new rice.
This is the first time that scientists have investigated how goats learn complex physical cognition tasks which could explain why they are so adaptable to harsh environments and good at foraging for plants in the wild for example.
environment on plant traitslet's say plant scientists want to develop new lines of corn that will better tolerate long stretches of hot dry weather.
How can they precisely assess the performance of those new plants in different environmental conditions? Field tests can provide some answers.
But how can plant scientists get a true picture of a plant's growth and traits under a wide variety of controlled environmental conditions?
He calls his instrument a transformative leap in the study of plant phenotypes--the look size color development and other observable traits of plants.
We are building resources to benefit plant biology researchers and hopefully the new instrumentation will create a paradigm shift in the plant phenomics area by placing powerful data analysis capability in the hands of researchers.
The project started nearly two years ago with a $119500 seed grant from Iowa State's Plant sciences Institute
The research project has produced already a technical paper Plant chip for high-throughput phenotyping of Arabidopsis published online
If it's a plant's first 10 days we can make parts of the instrument smaller.
Hundreds of the chips-in-mini-greenhouses can grow thousands of plants at the same time each greenhouse providing different environmental conditions.
As the plants within all those chambers grow a camera attached to a robotic arm takes thousands of images of cells seeds roots and shoots.
The images record traits such as leaf color root development and shoot size giving researchers clues to the relationship between a plant's genotype the growing conditions and the observable traits of its phenotype.
The system will largely facilitate plant phenotyping experiments that are impossible by current techniques Dong said.
Furthermore tomato fruits on plants near the traps housed more stink bugs than tomato fruits on plants that were away from the traps.
-and-kill stink bug trap near a plant may actually result in greater abundance of stink bugs on the fruit the researchers wrote.
but the effect on earthworms living in the soil under the plants is devastating new research reveals:
When crops are sprayed with fungicide only a small part of the chemical is absorbed by the plant.
and the carbon isotopes of leaf wax a marker for plant varieties (grasses indicate dry conditions).
carbon isotopes from plant leaf wax. Leaves are covered with a carbon-based wax that protects them from losing too much water to evaporation.
Different plants have different carbon isotopes in their leaf wax. Tropical grasses which are adapted for dryer climates tend to have the C-13 isotope.
Many of the plants and animals found on these ridges including the red widow spider are restricted to these high dry areas.
#Excessive deer populations hurt native plant biodiversitytoo much garlic mustard growing in the forests of Pennsylvania?
A new study published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concludes that an overpopulation of deer is the primary reason garlic mustard is crowding out native plants such as trillium
and invasion by nonnative plant species says Carol Horvitz professor of ecology in the University of Miami College of Arts
Similar links maybe found in other ecosystems between disrupted fauna and declining diversity of flora.
Our findings imply that management of overabundant grazing animals would be beneficial for conservation of plant biodiversity says Horvitz who is also a founding member of UM's Institute of Theoretical and Mathematical Ecology.
The project takes a long view on why invasive garlic mustard plants thrive to the detriment of native species. Garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata) is a plant native to Europe
and British columbia achieving the dubious distinction of being one of very few nonnative plants to successfully invade forest understories.
This means that native plants as a group can successfully compete against invaders. If the native plants are allowed to thrive rather than being consumed by deer the combined natural competitive advantages of those plants--including trillium--allow them to repel the outsiders.
When people walk in the woods where deer are overabundant they don't realize what's missing Kalisz says.
#Ants plant tomorrows rainforesttropical montane rain forests are threatened highly and their remnants are surrounded often by deforested landscapes.
which is a benefit for the plants due to a lower risk of fungal infestation and a higher germination rate.
and plant species may follow the species that facilitates the establishment of others. We may use our knowledge to stimulate the establishment of Clusia in degraded habitats
and plant species and accelerate the regeneration of the mountain rain forest ecosystem. Schleuning concludes: Drought frequencies in the Andes are likely to increase in the future.
and understand the evolution and diversity of plants. But the enormous size of the pine's genome had been an obstacle to sequencing efforts until recently.
Instances of extreme temperatures brought about by a large increase in global mean temperature can be detrimental to crops at any stage of their development but in particular around anthesis--the flowering period of the plant.
In plants CO2 is central to the process of photosynthesis--the mechanism by which they create food from sunlight CO2 and water.
When there is more CO2 in the atmosphere the leaves of plants can capture more of it resulting in an overall increase in the biomass of the plant.
In addition plants are able to manage their water use much more efficiently in these conditions resulting in better tolerance to drought episodes.
however the increases are projected to be significantly offset by the effects of heat waves as these plants are still vulnerable to the effects of extreme temperatures.
They are one of the most important pollinators visiting many types of plants including some 700 species of orchids that are pollinated exclusively by these bees.
and other plant matter in the area according to a study just published in the journal Oecologia.
They set out to assess the rate at which plant material decomposed as a function of background radiation placing hundreds of samples of uncontaminated leaf litter (pine needles and oak maple and birch leaves) in mesh bags throughout the area.
and fungi that decompose plant matter in healthy ecosystems are hindered by radioactive contamination. They showed a smaller effect for small invertebrates such as termites that also contribute to decomposition of plant biomass.
According to Mousseau slower decomposition is likely to indirectly slow plant growth too given that the products of decomposition are nutrients for new plants.
The team recently reported diminished tree growth near Chernobyl which he says likely results both from direct radiation effects and indirect effects such as reduced nutrient supply.
and this was an opportunity for broadening our range of interests to include the plant and microbial communities.
and the plant biomass Mousseau says. That would end up moving radio-cesium and other contaminants via smoke into populated areas.
#Forest corridors help plants disperse their seeds, study showsa forest in South carolina a supercomputer in Ohio and some glow-in-the-dark yarn have helped a team of field ecologists conclude that woodland corridors connecting patches of endangered plants not only increase dispersal of seeds
from one patch to another but also create wind conditions that can spread the seeds for much longer distances.
if similar interventions might aid plants that rely upon wind currents. The study How fragmentation and corridors affect wind dynamics
Benefits included increased carbon and nitrogen in soils erosion prevention more mycorrhizal colonization--beneficial soil fungus that helps plants absorb nutrients--and weed suppression.
study suggestsecologists at Plymouth University in a study published this week have shown the most common species of bumblebee are not fussy about a plant's origin when searching for nectar and pollen among the nation's urban gardens.
But other species--and in particular long-tongued bees--do concentrate their feeding upon plants from the UK and Europe for
By growing a variety of plants from around the world gardeners ensure that a range of food sources is available for many different pollinators.
whether bumblebees preferentially visited plants with which they share a common biogeographical heritage with researchers conducting summer-long surveys along a typical residential street.
and northern Asia) and non-Palaearctic garden plants bees simply visited plants in proportion to flower availability. Indeed of the six most commonly visited garden plants only one--Foxglove--was a British native and only three of Palaearctic origin.
However if native plants were to disappear completely from our towns and cities the long-term survival of some of our common pollinators--like the'garden bumblebee'--could be in jeopardy.
In addition to growing truly native plants like foxgloves where possible gardeners can help native pollinators by setting aside a small area to allow native brambles vetches dead nettles
Fusarium spores exist during winter in the plant debris. Even plowing the stubble under does not eliminate the problem
In the susceptible wheat the disease makes the plant drop this gene expression so the fungus can get established.
Teresa Saura and Ramon Vallejo from the Department of Plant Biology of UB and Santiago Sabatã from the Department of Ecology of UB and the Centre for Ecological Research and Forestry Applications (CREAF.
Professor Eduardo Mateos affirms that postfire management practices must consider the strong relationship between animal and plant communities.
#Reintroduction experiments give new hope for plant on brink of extinctiona critically endangered plant known as marsh sandwort (Arenaria paludicola) is inching back from the brink of extinction thanks to the efforts of a UC
Santa cruz plant ecologist and her team of undergraduate students. Ingrid Parker the Langenheim professor of plant ecology and evolution at UC Santa cruz got involved in the marsh sandwort recovery effort at the request of the U s. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS.
Although it used to occur all along the west coast from San diego to Washington state this wetland plant with delicate white flowers had dwindled to one population in a boggy wetland in San luis Obispo County.
Federal biologists wanted to reintroduce the plant to other locations but they weren't sure where it would be likely to thrive.
When you have a species that's only known from one place how do you figure out where it could live?
Her team which included undergraduate students and greenhouse staff at UCSC as well as USFWS biologists propagated cuttings from the last remaining wild population studied the plant's tolerance for different soil conditions in greenhouse experiments
and conducted field experiments to identify habitats where the plant could thrive. They published their findings in the April issue of Plant Ecology (available in advance online.
Surprisingly the plants tolerated a much wider range of soil moisture and salinity than biologists had expected.
This really brought home to me the importance of experiments to help guide conservation Parker said.
The one place where this species is found in San luis Obispo County is a freshwater bog where the plants are in standing water.
A key finding was the discovery that a relatively common plant can serve as a useful indicator of good habitat for the endangered marsh sandwort.
Water parsley (Oenanthe sarmentosa) is a native plant that grows in wet areas along the west coast of North america.
but within the range of coastal habitat this plant likes planting it alongside water parsley is likely to be said successful Bontrager.
The researchers were thrilled to discover that plants in the reintroduced populations are flowering and setting seed.
Seeing plants not only surviving but producing flowers and seeds in the field was fantastic. Arenaria cuttings root easily making it relatively straightforward to propagate large numbers of plants in the UCSC greenhouses.
Greenhouses director Jim Velzy will continue to maintain the collection of Arenaria plants to preserve the genetic diversity of the original population
in case it ever goes extinct in the wild. For the field studies Bontrager and coauthor Kelsey Webster another UCSC undergraduate worked closely with coauthor Mark Elvin a U s. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist.
and made regular visits to check on the plants and measure characteristics of the habitats where they were planted.
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