The study of flower development has experienced great advances over the last 15 years. The most important landmark was the proposal of the ABC model in which three different functions of overlapping activities account for the development of the four rings of organs of the eudicot flower. Most interestingly, during recent years this simple and elegant model has been broadly accepted and is appli...

Many plant species are induced to flower by stress. Stress-induced flowering has been studied mostly in the short-day plant pharbitis (also called Japanese morning glory; Ipomoea nil, formerly Pharbitis nil). In this article, physiological characteristics, the regulation by salicylic acid (SA) and the expression of flowering-related genes in stress-induced flowering in pharbitis are reviewed. P...

ABSTRACT- To investigate the effect of draught stress on water relations, stomatal density, chlorophyll content and yield of rapeseed, an experiment was done with four levels of drought stress including L1 (Field Capacity, FC), L2 (70% Available Water Content, AWC), L3 (50% AWC), and L4 (30% AWC), within three growth stages- including stem elongation (T1), onset of flowering (T2) and silique fo...

there is substantial diversity in achillea biebersteinii plants in iran. it has considerable different biological activities including antibacterial, antifungal, antioxidant, insecticidal, herbicidal and wound healing. research improvement for medicinal plants depends on the available genetic diversity. the assessment of genetic variability could increase the information for breeding programs. ...

Colleters are protuberances or trichomes that produce and release an exudate that overlays vegetative or reproductive buds. Colleters have a functional definition, as they are thought to protect young tissues against dehydration and pest attack. Decaffeinated coffee plants, named Decaffito, have recently been obtained through chemical mutagenesis, and in addition to the absence of the alkaloid,...

Facilitation enables plants to improve their fitness in stressful environments. The overall impact of plant-plant interactions on the population dynamics of protégées is the net result of both positive and negative effects that may act simultaneously along the plant life cycle, and depends on the environmental context. This study evaluates the impact of the nurse plant Juniperus sabina on diffe...

Dimorphic cleistogamy is a specialized form of mixed mating system where a single plant produces both open, potentially outcrossed chasmogamous (CH) and closed, obligately self-pollinated cleistogamous (CL) flowers. Typically, CH flowers and seeds are bigger and energetically more costly than those of CL. Although the effects of inbreeding and floral dimorphism are critical to understanding the...

The reaction catalyzed by squalene synthase (EC.2.5.1.21) that converts two molecules of farnesyl pyrophosphate to squalene represents a crucial branch point of the isoprenoid pathway in diverting carbon flux towards the biosynthesis of sterols. In the present study two soybean squalene synthase genes, GmSQS1 and GmSQS2, were identified in the soybean genome and functionally characterized for t...

Chicory (Cichorium intybus L.) seed production includes sorting to remove foreign materials and non-viable seeds. A machine vision system was developed to monitor the fluorescence in order to detect the immature chicory seeds. It comprised a monochromatic light source, a highpass filter and a monochromatic CCD camera sensitive to red and infrared. With this device, blue light reflected by the s...

The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of pruning in different developmental stages on growth, development, seed yield and active substances of medicinal pumpkin (these active substances are uses for remedy the Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH)). The experiment was performed in a RCB design. Five pruning treatments in different developmental stages (no pruning, after 3-5 nod...