Foliar and soil-drench insecticide treatments were used in attempts to manipulate infestation of cultivated sunflower plants, Helianthus annuus LeConte (Asterales: Asteraceae) by Dectes texanus LeConte, (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae) a serious pest of sunflowers in the High Plains of the USA. Seed yields were assessed on a per-plant basis for both oilseed and confection type sunflower hybrids in tw...

Few studies have investigated the causes of evolutionary rate variation among plant nuclear genes, especially in recently diverged species still capable of hybridizing in the wild. The recent advent of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) permits investigation of genome wide rates of protein evolution and the role of selection in generating and maintaining divergence. Here, we use individual whole-...

Biofuel cropping systems are considered a potential source of renewable energy and an integral component of a sustainable energy policy. The type of biofuel crop selected for production has the capacity to substantially alter landscape composition, affecting biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services. To understand how increasing production of perennial grasses for biofuels may affect pol...

The use of plants for phytoextraction of heavy metals from contaminated soil is limited by the ability of the plants to grow on these soils and take up the target metals, as well as by the availability of the metals for plant uptake in the soil solution. The hypotheses of this study were that the growth-promoting phytohormone auxin (indole-3-acetic acid, IAA) can alleviate toxic effects of meta...