BACKGROUND Bupleuri Radix (Chaihu) represents one of the most successful and widely used herbal medicines in Asia for the treatment of many diseases such as inflammatory disorders and infectious diseases over the past 2000 years. In the Chinese Pharmacopoeia, Chaihu is recorded as the dried roots of Bupleurum chinense DC. and B. scorzonerifolium Willd. (Umbelliferae). However, the widespread de...

BACKGROUNDS AND AIMS Nitrogen nutrition of legumes, which relies both on atmospheric N2 and soil mineral N, remains a major limiting factor of growth. A decade ago, breeders tried to increase N uptake through hypernodulation. Despite their high nodule biomass, hypernodulating mutants were never shown to accumulate more nitrogen than wild types; they even generally displayed depressed shoot grow...

Peppermint (Mentha piperita L.) is one of the most important plants producing essential oil. An experiment was carried out using a randomized complete block design with 3 replications to study the effect of salinity stress on growth parameters, essential oil percent of peppermint. 4 levels of salinity solution containing 0, 50, 100 and 200 mmol NaCl was applied in irrigation plantings ...

Macro and micro-elements, carbon sources and elicitors play a central role during Panax ginseng hairy root growth, biomass and ginsenoside production and also influence numerous root developmental stages in largescale bioreactor culture. Due to the lack of biosynthetic nutrients and signalling-inducing nutrients, the regulatory role of mineral elements is not well understood. We have geneticall...

Although plastic root-foraging responses are thought to be adaptive, as they may optimize nutrient capture of plants, this has rarely been tested. We investigated whether nutrient-foraging responses are adaptive, and whether they pre-adapt alien species to become natural-area invaders. We grew 12 pairs of congeneric species (i.e., 24 species) native to Europe in heterogeneous and homogeneous nu...

UNLABELLED PREMISE OF THE STUDY Effects of drought stress and media type interactions on growth of Pinus ponderosa var. scopulorum germinants were investigated. • METHODS AND RESULTS Soil properties and growth responses under drought were compared across four growth media types: two native soils (dolomitic limestone and granite), a soil-less industry standard conifer medium, and a custom-m...

Peppermint (Mentha piperita L.) is one of the most important plants producing essential oil. An experiment was carried out using a randomized complete block design with 3 replications to study the effect of salinity stress on growth parameters, essential oil percent of peppermint. 4 levels of salinity solution containing 0, 50, 100 and 200 mmol NaCl was applied in irrigation plantings ...

Adjustment of ecosystem root respiration to warmer climatic conditions can alter the autotrophic portion of soil respiration and influence the amount of carbon available for biomass production. We examined 44 published values of annual forest root respiration and found an increase in ecosystem root respiration with increasing mean annual temperature (MAT), but the rate of this cross-ecosystem i...