Crop rotation is a critical feature of all organic cropping systems because it provides the principal mechanism for building healthy soils, a major way to control pests, and a variety of other benefits. Crop rotation means changing the type of crop grown on a particular piece of land from year to year. As used in this manual, the term includes both cyclical rotations, in which the same sequenc…
Abstract: Cell walls are vital to the normal growth and development of plants as they protect the protoplast and provide rigidity to the stem. Here, two poplar and Arabidopsis orthologous endoglucanases, which have been proposed to play a role in secondary cell wall development, were examined. The class B endoglucanases, PtGH9B5 and AtGH9B5, are secreted enzymes that have a predicted glycosylp…
Mutants defective in chloroplast development or photosynthesis are liable to accumulate higher levels of anthocyanin in photo‐oxidative stress. However, regulatory mechanisms of anthocyanin biosynthesis in the mutants remain unclear. Here, we investigated the mechanism by which the deletion of thylakoid formation1 (THF1) leads to an increased level of anthocyanin in Arabidopsis thaliana L. Ph…
Abstract: Transglycanases (endotransglycosylases) cleave a polysaccharide (donor-substrate) in mid-chain, and then transfer a portion onto another poly- or oligosaccharide (acceptor-substrate). Such enzymes contribute to plant cellwall assembly and/or re-structuring. We sought a general method for revealing novel homo- and hetero-transglycanases, applicable to diverse polysaccharides and oligos…
In a relatively brief period the soybean has become a major crop plant in the United States. Based on the utilization of the bean, or products therefrom, a substantial soybean industry has also developed. Its uses, agricultural and industrial, primarily depend on the high content of both protein (ca. 40%) and oil (ca. 20%) in the bean. Soybeans are a cash crop and provide a significant par…
As a consequence of the success of post-World War II agriculture, particularly in western Europe, many in affluent societies have taken food for granted for decades. We lack historical perspective to conclude that the gap between the world demand and supply of food is widening or otherwise. Nonetheless, the recent debate on this gap and the role of research and development in agriculture is a…
This book is concerned with the principles by which crop management can influence how plants use environmental resources. It deals with the biological processes that operate in the links between management, the physical environment and agricultural vegetation. It also seeks to identify general principles that operate across tropical species, cropping systems and environments. The purpose of …
We studied in detail the mean microfibril angle and the width of cellulose crystals from the pith to the bark of a 15-year-old Maidenhair tree (Ginkgo biloba L.). The orientation of cellulose microfibrils with respect to the cell axis and the width and length of cellulose crystallites were determined using Xray diffraction. Raman microscopy was used to compare the lignin distribution in the cel…
The Asian rice gall midge (Orseolia oryzae Wood‐Mason) is a serious pest of rice that causes huge loss in yield. While feeding inside the susceptible host, maggots secrete substances that facilitate the formation of a hollow tube‐like structure called gall and prevent panicle formation. The present investigation was carried out to get an account of biochemical changes occurring in the rice …
Potassium (K+) is an essential macronutrient in plants and a lack of K+ significantly reduces the potential for plant growth and development. By contrast, sodium (Na+), while beneficial to some extent, at high concentrations it disturbs and inhibits various physiological processes and plant growth. Due to their chemical similarities, some functions of K+ can be undertaken by Na+ but K+ homeost…
A total of 40 Pseudomonas syringae pv. actinidiae (Psa) strains isolated from past and current epidemics of kiwifruit bacterial canker worldwide were compared using repetitive-sequence PCR (rep-PCR) fingerprinting with BOX, ERIC and REP primer sets. The strains were also assessed for the presence of 23 type III secretion system effector genes, tolerance to sodium arsenite, the presence of coro…
The second publication was a book entitled Guidelines for Technical Management of Chemical Process Safety. It expands on the twelve elements of the CCPS model and provides both the framework and detailed components for a chemical process safety management system. It offers various alternative models for implementation of each of the elements and components of the model. To further supplement a…
Asian soybean rust (ASR) caused by Phakopsora pachyrhizi severely reduces seed yield in soybean. Molecular tagging of ASR resistance can help in the process of resistance breeding. In this study, an F2 population of cross (susceptible cultivar ‘NRC 7’ 9 resistant exotic genotype EC 241780) was used for bulked segregant analysis (BSA) with 25 SSR (simple sequence repeat) primers linked with…
Lavandula pedunculata (Mill.) Cav. subsp. lusitanica, Lavandula stoechas L. subsp. stoechas and Lavandula viridis l’Hér. are three lavender taxa that belong to the botanical section Stoechas and are widely used as aromatherapy, culinary herb or folk medicine in many Mediterranean regions. The analysis of their bioactive volatile constituents revealed the presence of 124 substances, the most …
Background and Aims Despite their importance for plant production, estimations of below-ground biomass and its distribution in the soil are still difficult and time consuming, and no single reliable methodology is available for different root types. To identify the best method for root biomass estimations, four different methods, with labour requirements, were tested at the same location. Met…
The ornamental industry has changed substantially in the last 20 years. The science of flower seed technology has also advanced rapidly to keep up with new market demands. There is much information scattered in various scientific and trade publications, and more is being kept in the proprietary domain of seed companies. Anyone searching for information on flower seeds finds it in short supply a…
The Desk Encyclopedia of Plant and Fungal Virology is the fourth in a series of four volumes that reproduces many entries that appeared in the third edition of the Encyclopedia of Virology, edited by Brian W J Mahy and Marc H V van Regenmortel,published by Academic Press/Elsevier in 2008. It consists of 85 chapters that highlight recent advances in our knowledge of the viruses that infect plant…
A characteristic feature of plants is their capacity to synthesize and store a wide variety of low molecular weight compounds, the so-called secondary metabolites (SMs) or natural products. The number of described structures exceeds 100 000; the real number in nature is certainly much higher because only 20–30% of plants have been investigated in phytochemistry so far. In contrast to pri…
This textbook is written for students and is the product of more than three decades of my teaching experience. It intends to give a broad but concise overview of the various aspects of plant biochemistry, including molecular biology. I have attached importance to an easily understood description of the principles of metabolism but also have restricted the content in such a way that a student is…
This textbook is written for students and is the product of more than three decades of my teaching experience. It intends to give a broad but concise overview of the various aspects of plant biochemistry, including molecular biology. I have attached importance to an easily understood description of the principles of metabolism but also have restricted the content in such a way that a student is…
The genomics revolution of the past decade has greatly enhanced our understanding of the genetic composition of living organisms including many plant species of economic importance. Complete genomic sequences of Arabidopsis and several major crops, together with high-throughput technologies for analyses of transcripts, proteins and mutants, provide the basis for understanding the relationsh…
This volume of the series Medicinal Plants of the World: Chemical Constituents, Modern and Traditional Medicinal Uses contains information on 16 plant species and follows the same format as volumes 1 and 2. Some of the plants discussed in volume 3 may be considered controversial in their classification as “medicinal.” However, the Paracelsian dictum that “sola dosis fecit venenum” h…
When the first edition of this text appeared thirteen years ago, its writing was guided by several of objectives. • The text should be suited for a semester course for undergraduate students encountering the subject of plant physiology for the first time. It was assumed that the student would have completed a first course in botany or biology with a strong botanical component. The book sho…
When the first edition of this text appeared thirteen years ago, its writing was guided by several of objectives. • The text should be suited for a semester course for undergraduate students encountering the subject of plant physiology for the first time. It was assumed that the student would have completed a first course in botany or biology with a strong botanical component. The book sho…
There has been increasing interest in the nutritional properties of fruits and vegetables as sources of health-promoting phytochemical compounds, due to epidemiological data that correlate a high consumption of these compounds with a lower risk of several cardiovascular and degenerative diseases. Phytochemicals are a heterogeneous group of chemical compounds with numerous biological actions. Th…
Fruits and vegetables are consumed as fresh or processed into different type of products. Some of the naturally occurring enzymes in fruits and vegetables have undesirable effects on product quality, and therefore enzyme inactivation is required during fruit and vegetable processing in order to increase the product shelf-life. Commercial enzyme preparations are also used as processing aids…
All of the chemicals are not listed. Remember that each plant species contains hundreds of chemicals in the part per million levels, and thousands in the parts per trillion levels. Here, I select a few of those I deem more important, or about which there is current breaking news. Rarely, if ever, is any phytochemical working alone; more likely, phytochemicals are acting synergistically with…
Tree species are indispensably supportive to human life. Due to their long life cycle and environmental sensitivity, breeding trees to suit day-to-day human needs is a formidable challenge. Whether they are edible as apple, cocoa, mango, citrus, litchi, pear, dates, and coconut or industrially essential as rubber or beverages like coffee and tea, improving yield under optimal, suboptimal, …
† Background and Aims: The combination of clonality and a mating system promoting outcrossing is considered advantageous because outcrossing avoids the fitness costs of selfing within clones (geitonogamy) while clonality assures local persistence and increases floral display. The spatial spread of genetically identical plants (ramets) may, however, also decrease paternal diversity (the numb…
† Background and Aims: The use of vitamins including vitamin B1, B2 and K3 for the induction of systemic acquired resistance (SAR) to protect crops against plant pathogens has been evaluated previously. The use of vitamins is beneficial because it is cost effective and safe for the environment. The use of folate precursors, including ortho-aminobenzoic acid, to induce SAR against a soft-rot …
† Background and Aims: The Orchidaceae have a history of recurring convergent evolution in floral function as nectar production has evolved repeatedly froman ancestral nectarless state.However, orchids exhibit considerable diversity in nectary type, position and morphology, indicating that this convergence arose from alternative adaptive solutions. Using the genus Disa, this study asks wheth…
† Background and Aims: The coastal plain of Israel hosts the last few remaining populations of the endemic Iris atropurpurea (Iridaceae), a Red List species of high conservation priority. The flowers offer no nectar reward. Here the role of night-sheltering male solitary bees, honey-bees and female solitary bees as pollinators of I. atropurpurea is documented. † Methods: Breeding syste…
† Background: Plants in over one hundred families in habitats worldwide bear extrafloral nectaries (EFNs). EFNs display a remarkable diversity of evolutionary origins, as well as diverse morphology and location on the plant. They secrete extrafloral nectar, a carbohydrate-rich food that attracts ants and other arthropods, many of which protect the plant in return. By fostering ecologically …
† Background and Aims: Penium margaritaceum is a unicellular charophycean green alga with a unique bi-directional polar expansion mechanism that occurs at the central isthmus zone prior to cell division. This entails the focused deposition of cell-wall polymers coordinated by the activities of components of the endomembrane system and cytoskeletal networks. The goal of this study was to eluc…
† Background and Aims: Eversporting eudicots were sought to see if they behave like gymnosperms. Behaviour of eversporting gymnosperm chimeras indicates a single apical cell is present in SAM and it would be of interest to see if eudicot chimeras have the same behaviour. † Methods: Four eversporting spireas, the pineapple mint and the Silver King euonymus were inspected for the fate of…
† Background and Aims: Rhamnogalacturonan-II (RG-II) is one of the pectin motifs found in the cellwall of all land plants. It contains sugars such as 2-keto-3-deoxy-D-lyxo-heptulosaric acid (Dha) and 2-keto-3-deoxy-D-manno-octulosonic acid (Kdo), and within thewall RG-II is mostly found as a dimer via a borate diester cross-link.To date, little is knownregarding the biosynthesis of this mot…
† Background and Aims: Aluminium is toxic in acid soils because the soluble Al3+ inhibits root growth.Amechanism of Al3+ tolerance discovered in many plant species involves the release of organic anions fromroot apices. The Al3+ - activated release of citrate from the root apices of Al3+ -tolerant genotypes of barley is controlled by a MATE gene named HvAACT1 that encodes a citrate transpor…
† Background and Aims: The putative FASCICLIN-LIKE ARABINOGALACTAN PROTEIN 4 (At-FLA4) locus of Arabidopsis thaliana has previously been shown to be required for the normal growth of wild-type roots in response to moderately elevated salinity. However, the genetic and physiological pathway that connects At-FLA4 and normal root growth remains to be elucidated. † Methods: The radial swel…
† Background and Aims: Despite the selective pressure slugs may exert on seedling recruitment there is a lack of information in this context within grassland restoration studies. Selective grazing is influenced by interspecific differences in acceptability. As part of a larger study of how slug–seedling interactions may influence upland hay meadow restoration, an assessment of relative acc…
† Background and Aims: Paleoclimatic data indicate that an abrupt climate change occurred at the Eocene–Oligocene (E–O) boundary affecting the distribution of tropical forests on Earth. The same period has seen the emergence of South-East (SE) Asia, caused by the collision of the Eurasian and Australian plates. How the combination of these climatic and geomorphological factors affected …
† Backgrounds and Aims: Current research in plant science has concentrated on revealing ontogenetic processes of key attributes in plant evolution. One recently discussed model is the ‘transient model’ successful in explaining some types of inflorescence architectures based on two main principles: the decline of the so called ‘vegetativeness’ (veg) factor and the transient nature of…
† Background and Aims: Dioecism characterizes many crop species of economic value, including kiwifruit (Actinidia deliciosa). Kiwifruit male sterility occurs at the microspore stage. The cellwalls of the microspores and the pollen of the male-sterile and male-fertile flowers, respectively, differ in glucose and galactose levels. In numerous plants, pollen formation involves normal functioni…
† Background: Conservation of the unique biodiversity of mountain ecosystems needs trans-disciplinary approaches to succeed in a crowded colloquial world. Geographers, conservationists, ecologists and social scientists have, in the past, had the same conservation goals but have tended to work independently. In this review, the need to integrate different conservation criteria and methodolog…
† Background: Certain membrane-associated arabinogalactan-proteins (AGPs) with lysine-rich sub-domains participate in plant growth, development and resistance to stress. To complement fluorescence imaging of such molecules when tagged and introduced transgenically to the cell periphery and to extend the groundwork for assessing molecular structure, some behaviours of surface-spread AGPs were…
† Background: Strigolactones (SLs) – a group of plant hormones and their derivatives – have been found to play a role in the regulation of root development, in addition to their role in suppression of lateral shoot branching: they alter root architecture and affect root-hair elongation, and SL signalling is necessary for the root response to low phosphate (Pi) conditions. These effects …
† Background and Aims: Large floral displays have opposing consequences for animal-pollinated angiosperms: they attract more pollinators but also enable elevated among-flower self-pollination (geitonogamy). The presence of sterile flowers as pollinator signals may enhance attraction while allowing displays of fewer open fertile flowers, limiting geitonogamy. The simultaneous contributions of…
† Background: A hypothetical ideotype is presented to optimize water and N acquisition by maize root systems. The overall premise is that soil resource acquisition is optimized by the coincidence of root foraging and resource availability in time and space. Since water and nitrate enter deeper soil strata over time and are initially depleted in surface soil strata, root systems with rapid e…