Sikkim and Darjeeling Himalayan region is characterized by a rich floral diversity and an equally rich ethnomedicinal tradition. Herbal medicine is the dominant system of medicine practiced by the local tribes of this region for the treatment of diabetes. During the course of the present studies it was found that 37 species of plants belonging to 28 families are used as antidiabetic agents in t...

Seeking to identify thrips species associated to peach and the injuries they cause, plants of Aurora and Tropic Beauty cultivars were weekly monitored, from May to August of 2005, in Holambra II district, in Paranapanema, SP. Flowers and fruits from six plants per hectare were sampled by the hitting technique. Frankliniella occidentalis (Pergande), F. schultzei (Trybom), F. gardenia (Moulton), ...

In this study, a set of experiments were conducted to investigate the influence of EDTA-grafted iron oxide nanoparticles exposure on agronomic traits of sunflower (Helianthus annuus) plants. The experiment was implemented by applying Nano-Fe3O4-EDTA and Fe-EDTA fertilizers applied through spray or soil amendment. A variety of parameters including Aerial organ biomass, Number of leaves, Plant he...

Background: High concentrations of various heavy metals of mine tailings can easily contaminate the environment. Such materials need monitoring and remediation to prevent them from polluting the environment and food chain. Materials & Methods: The concentrations of certain metals were evaluated in the soil samples at Sorkheh and Mazraeh copper mining areas in northwestern Iran, using three r...

Fire is a recurrent disturbance in savanna vegetation and savanna species are adapted to it. Even so, fire may affect various aspects of plant ecology, including phenology. We studied the effects of a spatially heterogeneous fire on the reproductive phenology of two dominant woody plant species, Miconia albicans (Melastomataceae) and Schefflera vinosa (Araliaceae), in a savanna area in South-ea...

The endosperm, a result of double fertilization in flowering plants, is a triploid tissue whose genetic composition is more complex than diploid tissue. We present a new maximum-likelihood-based statistical method for mapping quantitative trait loci (QTL) underlying endosperm traits in an autogamous plant. Genetic mapping of quantitative endosperm traits is qualitatively different from traits f...

The bacterial community structures in two sewage treatment plants with different processes and performance were investigated by denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) of nested polymerase chain reaction (nested PCR) amplified 16S rRNA gene fragments with group-specific primers. Samples of raw sewage and treated effluents were amplified using the whole-cell PCR method, and the activated ...

Abstract Pollen types present in samples from corbiculae of Melipona capixaba (Moure and Camargo) (Hymenoptera: Apidae: Meliponina) worker bees were analyzed, as well as pollen samples from food pots inside the hives in three sites located at the bees' original habitat. The aim was to find out the sources used as a trophic resource by this species. The dominant pollen grains in the spectrum of ...

Invasive knotweeds, native to Eastern Asia, are among the most dominant plant invaders of European and North American temperate ecosystems. Recent studies indicate that one cause of this dominance might be allelopathy, but the possible sources and modes of action of this allelopathy are insufficiently understood. Here, we asked whether the invasive knotweed Fallopia × bohemica can exert allelop...

Recently, the FtsZ protein, which is known as a key component in bacterial cell division, was reported to be involved in mitochondrial division in algae. In yeast and animals, however, mitochondrial fission depends on the dynamin-like proteins Dnm1p and Drp1, respectively, whereas in green plants, no potential mitochondrial division genes have been identified. BLAST searches of the nuclear and ...