Bioethanol which is made from the remains of plants after other parts have been used as food or other agricultural products and therefore termed second generation is seen as a strong potential substitute candidate
Cellulose is found everywhere in nature in rich quantities for example in the stems of the corn plant.
Cellulose is organized in long chains in the plant's cell walls and they are hard to break down.
He is particularly proud that all levels in this new way of producing bioethanol are environmentally friendly and accessible for all The catalyst acid is made â#rom readily available plant left overs
and the bioethanol is produced from cellulosic plants that cannot otherwise be used for anything else. Cellulose is the most common biological material in the world so there is plenty of it he adds.
and sorghum--two of the most productive crop plants known--into even more productive oil-generating plants.
because for example with soybean once you've pressed the oil out it's fairly easy to convert it to diesel said Stephen P. Long a University of Illinois professor of plant biology and leader of the initiative.
Sugarcane and sorghum are exceptionally productive plants and if you could make them accumulate oil in their stems instead of sugar this would give you much more oil per acre he said.
and later with sugarcane the team introduced genes that boost natural oil production in the plant.
The scientists did not inoculate any plants but waited for races circulating in the UK to blow in.
Non-transgenic Desiree plants were infected 100 by early August while all GM plants remained fully resistant to the end of the experiment.
There was also a difference in yield with tubers from each block of 16 plants weighing 6-13 kg
while the non-GM tubers weighed 1. 6-5 kg per block. The trial was conducted with Desiree potatoes to address the challenge of building resistance to blight in potato varieties with popular consumer and processing characteristics.
The introduced gene from a South american wild relative of potato triggers the plant's natural defense mechanisms by enabling it to recognize the pathogen.
The emphasis on genetic diversity is a relatively new concern in ecosystem restoration projects where there has been an understandable urgency to move plants and animals back into an area as quickly as possible.
The researchers then examined genetic fingerprints called microsatellites from the plants to measure the genetic diversity in each new crop.
#Pond-dwelling powerhouses genome points to biofuel potentialduckweed is a tiny floating plant that's been known to drive people daffy.
Now the genome of Greater Duckweed (Spirodela polyrhiza) has given this miniscule plant's potential as a biofuel source a big boost.
of S. polyrhiza and analyzed it in comparison to several other plants including rice and tomatoes.
It's among the fastest growing plants able to double its population in a couple of days under ideal conditions.
For example unlike plants on land duckweeds don't need to hold themselves upright or transport water from distant roots to their leaves so they're a relatively soft and pliable plant containing tiny amounts of woody material such as lignin and cellulose.
Removing these woody materials from feedstock has been a major challenge in biofuel production. Also although they are small enough to grow in many environments unlike biofuel-producing microbes duckweed plants are large enough to harvest easily.
S. polyrhiza turns out to have one of the smallest known plant genomes at about 158 million base pairs and fewer than 20000 protein-encoding genes.
That's 27 percent fewer than Arabidopsis thaliana--which until recently was believed to be the smallest plant genome--and nearly half as many as rice plants.
The most surprising find was insight into the molecular basis for genes involved in maturation--a forever-young lifestyle said senior author Joachim Messing director of the Waksman Institute of Microbiology at Rutgers University.
But where other plants develop other kinds of leaves as they mature S. polyrhiza's never progresses
Many of the genes responsible for cellulose and lignin production in land dwelling plants were missing
Moreover despite the reduced number of total genes S. polyrhiza has more copies of genes for enzymes involved in nitrogen absorption and metabolism than in other plants.
This is probably linked to the plant's ability to utilize excess nitrogen in contaminated waters.
and a new milestone in plant molecular biology and evolution as previous studies were either classical botany
less pollutionas every gardener knows nitrogen is crucial for a plant's growth. But nitrogen absorption is inefficient.
and assimilated by the plant to become part of DNA proteins and many other compounds. Uptake is controlled by a number of factors including availability demand
and the plant's energy status. But there is much about the transport proteins involved in the process that isn't understood.
and regulation of suspected nitrogen transporters in living plant roots which otherwise are impossible to study Frommer said.
Their method is applicable to any transporter from any organism thereby enabling the otherwise exceptionally difficult analysis of transport processes in the tissues of plants and animals.
and early spring so they donâ##t plant winter wheat on unprotected bottomlandsâ#he said. â#oeconsequently there was no crop loss outside the levees in April and May of 2011.
In this stage nutrient uptake capacity of the young plants is very low and down leaching of nitrates to the deeper parts of the vadose zone
It's especially rare to have so many exquisite plant fossils preserved at ancient ape sites.
Why do small plants and animals mature faster than large ones? Why has chosen nature such radically different forms as the loose-limbed beauty of a flowering tree and the fearful symmetry of a tiger?
Seeing this formula as a mathematical expression of an evolutionary fact the team suggests that plants
In this new paper the researchers propose that the shapes of both plants and animals evolved in response to the same mathematical and physical principles.
By working through the logic underlying Kleiber's mathematical formula and applying it separately to the geometry of plants
Plant and animal geometries have evolved more or less in parallel said UMD botanist Todd Cooke. The earliest plants and animals had simple
and quite different bodies but natural selection has acted on the two groups so the geometries of modern trees
You have these two lineages plants and animals that are very different and they arrive at the same conclusion.
The researchers found that plant diversity in natural ecosystems creates more stable ecosystems over time because of less synchronized growth of plants.
The researchers collected plants from each of the sites then sorted dried and weighed them to monitor the number of species of plants
and total amount of plants or biomass grown over time. They used this information to quantify species diversity and ecosystem stability.
Says Hautier: It was really striking to see the relationship between diversity and stability and the similarities to data collected from artificial grasslands as part of a research effort called Biodepth indicating that the results from natural grasslands of the Nutrient Network could be predicted from the results of artificial grasslands.
and types of plant species. This study placed measured amounts of fertilizer on a portion of their research sites
This the researchers found was synchronized due to more growth of plants eliminating the portfolio effect. This study was made possible due to the formation of the Nutrient Network also known as Nutnet.
Nutnet scientists collected data for this study for three years measuring plant growth in 41 sites on five continents so the researchers feel confident that their results have global applications.
The group ultimately wants to continue experiments for at least ten years to gather information about long-term trends in plant species diversity and ecosystem stability extinctions species invasions and many other important changes in the world
and supervision costs while a more intimate knowledge of the local soil plants and animals enables smallholders to maximize output.
and soil insects such as wire worms and white grubs and get the plants off to a good healthy start.
While often called cocoa beans cocoa plants actually are colored large brightly pods filled with many seeds.
Despite our omnivorous diet humans aren't well equipped to eat complex plant matter; for this we rely on our gut bacteria.
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. The Makira forest spans nearly 400000 hectares (more than 1500 square miles) making it one of the largest remaining intact blocks of rainforest in Madagascar.
-and wildlife such as the Blue-banded Kingfisher and Whitehanded Gibbons as well for its rare and beautiful flora like Rafflesia's--known to hold some of the largest flowers on earth.
and other flora and fauna present in the Ton Pariwat Wildlife Sanctuary. The unique species composition high diversity and relatively intact forest structure underscore the importance of strengthening ongoing and future conservation measures at Ton Pariwat Wildlife Sanctuary as a key element of wider
***Seaweed could be next new biofuelnew research to turn seaweed into liquid biofuel aims to overcome two main barriers to the plant becoming a major source of renewable energy.
The plant a macroalga turns sunlight into chemical energy three times more efficiently than land plants. Current biofuels may not be sustainable says Dr John Milledge Research Fellow at Greenwich and an expert in the commercialisation of algae.
which to study the plant's properties. At the moment Dunaliella is used only commercially for its high beta-carotene content.
Turns out that M. campanulae was occasionally replacing plant resins with polyurethane-based exterior building sealant such as caulking in its brood cells--created in a nest to rear larva.
Jack Juvik a U of I crop sciences researcher explained that the combined application of two compounds both are extracted natural products from plants increased the presence of cancer-fighting agents in broccoli
The researchers first used methyl jasmonate (Meja) a nontoxic plant-signal compound produced naturally in plants) to increase the broccoli's anticancer potential
which has been shown to interfere with receptor proteins in the plant that are receptor-sensitive to ethylene.
Like Meja 1-MCP is also a nontoxic compound naturally produced in plants although Juvik said synthetic forms can be produced.
Because the herbicides typically target broadleaf plants such as wildflowers they are not as harmful to grasses Egan said.
In the study the researchers found grasses eventually dominated the field edge test site that was once a mix of broadleaf plants and grass.
Using large wheat variety trials provided by Kalyx Australia the team looked at yield loss of different cultivars (plants chosen for breeding because of desirable characteristics)
Previously geneticists would infect plants that were progeny of crosses between relatively resistant and relatively susceptible parents before doing the QTL (quantitative disease-resistance gene) mapping.
Within the improvement program the researchers established an experimental test with eucalypt plants from Ethiopia and Spain in order to compare their potential productivity in local conditions.
The Spanish plant that had a certain rate of improvement showed a growth and survival rate between 27%and 35%a rate higher than the Ethiopian plants.
The Spanish plant use broadens the genetic layout in the Ethiopian highlands that was limited historically very.
The eucalypt research was possible thanks to a nursery setting for the production of eucalypt and its native plant.
and many other crop plants thrive in the shade of banana trees and other tall trees.
and bats had access to the plants there was almost a ten percent higher fruit set. â#oewe believe that this is due to the fact that the animals eliminate pests that would
if sensors detect a relatively small amount of red light--absorbed in abundance by plants for photosynthesis
in addition to pollen from many wild plant species. The pollen came from crops near the bee colonies in several small apiaries.
and the University of California Berkeley has discovered that a process that turns on photosynthesis in plants likely developed On earth in ancient microbes 2. 5 billion years ago long before oxygen became available.
Plant and microbial biology professor emeritus Bob B. Buchanan co-led the research and co-authored the paper.
When plants die some of their biomass is trapped in areas that are devoid of oxygen such as the bottom of lakes.
which other organisms convert to carbon dioxide--a product that can be used by plants. This natural process for producing methane forms the basis for treating municipal and industrial wastes helps reduce pollution
Herbivorous mammals are able to digest plant materials extremely efficiently thanks to certain microorganisms in their gastrointestinal system.
so we can make better decisions about policies on plant movement. The medieval RNA from Qasr Ibrim gives us a vital clue to unlock the real age of the Barley Stripe Mosaic virus.
New method to extract PLANT DNA from grasshopper guts sheds light on plant-insect interactionsgrasshoppers may be small
Although they pose a major threat grasshopper populations play a positive role in cycling nutrients from decomposing plant matter back into the soil.
A new method to investigate their feeding patterns could be the key to a better understanding of the impact of grasshoppers on plant communities.
The main problem with current control methods is done the damage to non-target plant and insect species says University of Cincinnati researcher Alina Avanesyan who developed the new protocol while studying grasshopper leaf tissue consumption.
Accurately determining the feeding preferences of grasshoppers can help us to understand the magnitude of plant damage
According to Avanesyan With this protocol a researcher can focus on a variety of research questions such as detecting plant-insect interactions determining how long the food has been digested estimating the prevalence of different plants in insect guts exploring the sequence of multiple plant species consumed
It also includes a new technique to divide the gut into sections enabling researchers to track the step-by-step movement of plant matter through each gut compartment.
We can follow plant food movement during its consumption record the sequence of food digested
(what plant was chosen to consume first) or the time needed for food digestion in each compartment
To demonstrate the utility of the protocol Avanesyan successfully amplified the DNA of a noncoding region of a plant chloroplast gene
They often did not switch between grasses during feeding but instead consumed different plant species sequentially.
whether there is a difference in digestibility between native and exotic plants which are morphologically and physiologically similar says Avanesyan who plans to continue to use the protocol to investigate plant defenses against insect herbivores.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by American Journal of Botany. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
and invasive plants at times can function so well in new environments. Plants are moved often away from their natural provenance
and sometimes they become stronger competitors in their new habitat. This may be welcomed by agriculture and forestry while an introduced plant spreading uncontrollably in nature can become a major concern.
The reason why plants sometimes function very differently in a new environment is a question that many researchers are currently focusing on.
Michael Gundale and his colleagues from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) have focused on
By conducting a series of experiments on young plants the researchers have shown that the growth of the lodgepole pine is affected greatly by
A first greenhouse trial indicated that the plants grew much better in soil samples from the areas in northern Sweden where the lodgepole pine has been introduced compared with the soil samples from its original habitat in Canadian British columbia.
One plausible explanation is that plants growing in Canadian soil are exposed to antagonistic microorganisms that are specialised to lodgepole pine
what could be done to protect the plants. The lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta) originates from western North america. In the north of Sweden the lodgepole pine has been planted on hundreds of thousands of acres.
and the native plants they grow on are difficult to culture in the laboratory he said.
#Herbicides may not be sole cause of declining plant diversitythe increasing use of chemical herbicides is blamed often for the declining plant biodiversity in farms.
Our approach was to compare the herbicide tolerances of plant species that are common and plant species that are rare in an intensively farmed region.
We found that rare and common plant species had roughly similar tolerances to three commonly used herbicides.
This could mean that herbicides may not have a persistent effect in shaping plant communities. The researchers who report their findings in the online version of the journal Environmental Toxicology
While the findings are preliminary the approach could be effective in clarifying the implications of herbicide pollution for plant conservation Egan said.
But for the objective of plant species conservation other strategies like preserving farmland habitats including woodlots pastures
Egan worked with David Mortensen professor of weed and applied plant ecology and Ian Graham an undergraduate student in plant science.
in cooperation with a multidisciplinary group of nutrition scientists cereal scientists and technologists plant breeders flour milling specialists and experts in regulatory affairs from throughout Europe.
Nearly every animal and plant species requires travelling some distance for nutrition reproduction and genetic diversity but few conservation or climate mitigation strategies take the connections between conserved lands into account.
Intriguingly the teosinte plants grown under past conditions exhibit characteristics more like corn: a single main stem topped by a single tassel a few very short branches tipped by female ears and synchronous seed maturation.
After the Industrial revolution carbon dioxide rose to today's 405 parts per million the level in the control chamber where teosinte plants look like plants in the wild today--tall with many long branches tipped by tassels and seed maturation taking place
Co-author Klaus Winter usually studies the effects of rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels on tropical plants as a senior staff scientist at STRI.
Piperno and Winter devised a scheme to essentially travel back in time by comparing plants grown in modern conditions with plants grown in the early Holocene chamber.
when in the Holocene teosinte became the plant very distinctive from maize in vegetative architecture
This is one of the first studies to examine the influence of these processes on plant domestication.
studies showa large body of literature has shown that genetically-modified plants that produce proteins from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) to protect themselves from insect pests have little to no effect on a wide range of nontarget insects.
In an article in the February 2014 issue of Environmental Entomology called Using Resistant Prey Demonstrates that Bt Plants Producing Cry1ac Cry2ab
and big-eyed bugs (Geocoris punctipes)--for two generations and compared them to another group of predators that consumed caterpillars fed on non-Bt plants.
and fertility of the insect predators in both groups were similar regardless of whether they consumed caterpillars that fed on Bt plants or non-Bt plants.
Together these two studies add to the scientific literature demonstrating that Bt plants can control targeted insect pests
A total of 8771 arthropod individuals comprising 288 morphospecies were collected from 480 plants sampled from Bt maize and non-Bt maize fields over a two-year period.
More recently surveys of arthropod and plant beta-diversity inside and adjacent to maize fields have been completed during
which 30000 arthropods and 15000 plant individuals were surveyed along a 1000 kilometer transect. It seems that maize field diversity is homogenized
In order to preserve ancient cities'local character and biodiversity researchers are looking to native plant species that can withstand the low water environments that are necessary in lightweight green roof design.
sparse (5 or 7 days in shallow and deep substrate respectively) and normal (3 or 5 days in shallow and deep substrate respectively) and recorded plant growth from May to October.
Results showed that all three of the plant species were established successfully on the green roof under all experimental treatments
although Artemisia absinthium generally showed the greatest growth as indicated by the final diameter and height of the plants.
With A. absinthium grape marc compost-amended substrate produced taller plants and larger plant diameter compared with peat-amended substrate deep substrate produced larger plant
and normal irrigation produced taller plants compared with sparse irrigation the researchers said. In both Helichrysum species we found there were interactions of the main factors in almost all growth parameters;
therefore the only conclusion we drew concerning factor effects was that irrigation frequency did not affect the diameter and the dry weight of H. italicum plants.
or even bigger plant growth of all plant species compared with deep peat-amended substrate with normal irrigation.
and the reduction of substrate depth without restriction of plant growth at the establishment phase and the first period of drought Papafotiou said.
Evidence suggests that at least some changes in plant water deficits occur as a result of cold temperatures and not dry soil noted Robert Ebel lead author of the study.
Our study was conducted to characterize changes in plant relations of citrus plants with soil moisture carefully maintained at high levels to minimize drought stress.
The citrus plants were exposed to progressively lower nonfreezing temperatures for 9 weeks. During the experiments trees were watered twice daily--three times on the days data were collected--to minimize drought stress.
Results of the experiments showed that soil moisture was higher for plants in the cold compared to plants in the warm chamber
Our modern understanding of plant water relations has evolved mainly from studying growing plants at warm temperatures
and function in plants--is essential for plant growth and development. According to Hagai Yasuor of the Gilat Research center in Negev nitrogen deficiency has been studied on the majority of horticultural crops
and drip-irrigated the greenhouse plants with solutions containing four different nitrogen concentrations. They then measured fruit yield quality and nutritional value of all plants.
We found that maximum yields occurred when peppers were irrigated with N at 56.2 mgâ L-1 Yasuor said.
while the 56.2-mgâ L-1 concentration was almost completely taken up and used by the plants.
and plant health explained Borisova. Borisova and Useche recommend development of a comprehensive evaluation approach for water use programs that includes evaluation of actual water use reductions
 Foraged products consisted of whole plants (or fungi) or were derived from a variety of native and nonnative species above-and belowground parts:
and tomatoes today evolved to target other plants. The study published today in the journal Science is the first to show how pathogens switch from targeting one species to another through changes at the molecular level.
They found that each pathogen species secretes specialised substances to shut down the defences of their target hosts'Plants have called these enzymes proteases that play a key role in their defence systems'said Dr Renier van der Hoorn co-author of the study from Oxford university
'When a plant becomes infected proteases help plants to attack the invading pathogens and trigger immune responses.
'The effectors secreted by P. infestans are less effective against proteases in other plants such as the four o'clock as they do not fit well into the'locks'.
'We looked at specialisation in the blight pathogens'secret weapon a key family of effectors called'EPIC'that can pass through plants'defences undetected to disable the proteases.
'If we could breed plants with proteases that can detect these stealthy EPIC effectors we could prevent them from'sneaking in
'and thus make more resistant plants. Within the next decade we plan to exploit the specialised nature of these effectors to develop proteases that are resistant to their action
#Scientists unveil molecular mechanism that controls plant growth, developmenta joint study published in Cell by the teams headed by Miquel Coll at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona)
and the Institute of Molecular biology of CSIC both in Barcelona and Dolf Weijers at the University of Wageningen in The netherlands unravels the mystery behind how the plant hormones called auxins activate multiple vital plant functions through various gene
and development that is to say they determine the size and structure of the plant. Among their many activities auxins favor cell growth root initiation flowering fruit setting
The effects of auxins in plants was observed first by Darwin in 1881 and since then this hormone has been the focus of many studies.
and where auxin is synthesized in the plant how it is transported and the receptors on which it acts it was unclear how a hormone could trigger such diverse processes.
Some plants have more than 20 distinct auxin-regulated transcription factors. They are called ARFS (Auxin Response Factors)
and control the expression of numerous plant genes in function of the task to be undertaken that is to say cell growth flowering root initiation leaf growth etc.
It appears to be exclusive to plants but we cannot rule out that it is present in other kingdoms.
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