A study was carried out to assess the combining ability of ten CMS lines with four testers using line x tester method. Biometrical observations were taken for days 50% flowering, plant height, head diameter, maturity, volume weight, hundred seed yield /plant, oil content and yield/plant.  Specific combing variance greater than general all characters which indicated that non-additive gene a...

Kaurene synthetase B activity (conversion of copalyl pyrophosphate to ent-kaurene) is readily detectable in crude cell-free extracts of 3- to 4-day old dark-grown sunflower (Helianthus annuus cv. Mammoth) seedlings, whereas little or no kaurene synthetase AB activity (conversion of geranylgeranyl pyrophosphate to ent-kaurene) can be found in these extracts under comparable assay conditions. A l...

Vegetal materials were one of the first construction materials used by humans, but the development of petrol-based synthetic materials in the last century replaced them in mainstream construction techniques. However, since environmental impact and resource depletion are increasingly becoming a central issue, vegetal materials are revisited. Natural thermal insulations are mainly developed from ...

The major "benefit" alleged to accrue from transpiration (the evaporative loss of water from plant surfaces) is that it is essential for the long-distance transport of mineral ions, but the possible interrelation between these two processes has rarely been tested. Transpiration was experimentally dissociated from mineral supply by growing sunflowers (Helianthus anuus) in hydroculture and provid...

The most abundant transposable elements (TEs) in plant genomes are Class I long terminal repeat (LTR) retrotransposons represented by superfamilies gypsy and copia Amplification of these superfamilies directly impacts genome structure and contributes to differential patterns of genome size evolution among plant lineages. Utilizing short-read Illumina data and sequence information from a panel o...

Hybridization is a natural phenomenon that has been linked in several organismal groups to transposable element derepression and copy number amplification. A noteworthy example involves three diploid annual sunflower species from North America that have arisen via ancient hybridization between the same two parental taxa, Helianthus annuus and H. petiolaris. The genomes of the hybrid species hav...