BACKGROUND Wheat straw forms an important, reliable source of lignocellulosic biomass for use in second-generation ethanol production. However, there is limited understanding of the variation in quality of straw from current breeding cultivars, and studies on such variation have generally employed suboptimal pretreatments. There is also a degree of confusion regarding phenotypic characteristics...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Plants in open, uncrowded habitats typically have relatively short stems with many branches, whereas plants in crowded habitats grow taller and more slender at the expense of mechanical stability. There seems to be a trade-off between height growth and mechanical stability, and this study addresses how stand density influences stem extension and consequently plant safety mar...

Phragmites australis is the dominant and constructive species among plant communities in the wetlands of the downstream of Yellow River, China. Its morphological characters were high variable in different habitats. Studies on Morphological and RAPD variation of 15 P. australis populations from this region showed that soil salinity was the dominant ecological factor that affected the morphologic...

Internode length is one of the decisive factors affecting plant height (PH) and ear height (EH), which are closely associated with the lodging resistance, biomass and grain yield of maize. miRNAs, currently recognized as important transcriptional/ post-transcriptional regulators, play an essential role in plant growth and development. However, their roles in developing internodes under maize ea...

We have identified five recessive allelic mutations, mori1-1 to mori1-5, which drastically modify the shoot architecture of rice. The most remarkable feature of mori1 plants is a rapid production of small leaves and short branches. The mori1 plants are about 5 cm in height even 7 months after sowing. No reproductive growth was attained in mori1 plants even if inductive short-day treatment was a...

To understand the dendritic differentiation in various types of cortical nonpyramidal cells, we analyzed quantitatively their dendritic branching and spine expression. The dendritic internode and interspine interval obeyed exponential distributions with type-specific decay constants. The initial branching pattern, internode interval and spine density at the light microscopic level divided nonpy...

Tef [Eragrostis tef (Zucc.) Trotter] is the major cereal crop in the Horn of Africa, especially in Ethiopia where it is a staple food for over 60% of its 90 million population. The crop performs better than other cereal crops under extreme environmental conditions. The grain of tef is not only nutritious but also gluten-free, the cause for celiac disease, which affects humans world wide. The ob...

Adaptive differences among species are often thought to result from developmentally constant trait differences that enhance fitness in alternative environments. Species differences in patterns of individual phenotypic plasticity can also have ecological consequences. Indeed, functionally related constant and plastic traits may interact to determine the phenotype’s adaptive value in particular c...

A field experiment was carried out at El-Gemmeiza Agricultural Research Station, El-Gharbia Governorate, Egypt in 2018 season and repeated 2019 season, to assess the effects of transplanting cotton seedlings 4 weeks old with their complete root system compared early late direct seeding or without Pix treatments on Giza 86 cultivar productivity. strip-plot design four replicates used. The obtain...