of Research Achievements and Impacts In the past year significant progress was achieved in all activities of the project. Numerous genotypes were screened for root traits conferring adaptation to drought and low soil fertility. These include inbred backcross lines developed at Zamorano and IIAM to introgress superior root traits into elite cultivars, and a range of genotypes from Africa and the...

Phenotypic uniformity of carrot androgenic lines of R1 generations was assessed in respect to several morphological traits in vegetative and generative stages. Seeds of R1 populations were obtained by self pollination of R0 androgenic plants derived by the use of anther culture technique from three donor cultivars: ‘HCM’, ‘CxC9900 F1’ and ‘Narbonne F1’. R1 plants of donor cultivar ‘HCM’ were ob...

Few studies describe root distributions at the species level in diverse forests, although belowground species interactions and traits are often assumed to affect fine-root biomass (FRB). We used molecular barcoding to study how FRB of trees relates to soil characteristics, species identity, root diversity, and root traits, and how these relationships are affected by proximity to ecotones in a t...

The Spectranomics approach to tropical forest remote sensing has established a link between foliar reflectance spectra and the phylogenetic composition of tropical canopy tree communities vis-à-vis the taxonomic organization of biochemical trait variation. However, a direct relationship between phylogenetic affiliation and foliar reflectance spectra of species has not been established. We sough...

Complete egg production data from a pair breeding flock located in South Africa were used to generate annual reproductive records for all hens exposed to breeding. Traits analysed included measures of total egg and chick production and related traits, along with egg and chick weights. Both genetic and non-genetic factors significantly influenced reproductive performance. Seasonal effects, durat...

• Plant resource-use traits are generally hypothesized to be adaptively differentiated for populations distributed along resource gradients. Although nutrient limitations are expected to select for resource-conservative strategies, water limitations may select for either resource-conservative or -acquisitive strategies. We test whether population differentiation reflects local adaptation for tr...

The large variation in the relationships between environmental factors and plant traits observed in natural communities exemplifies the alternative solutions that plants have developed in response to the same environmental limitations. Qualitative attributes, such as growth form, woodiness, and leaf habit can be used to approximate these alternative solutions. Here, we quantified the extent to ...

Responses to water stress within a population of wild barley from Tabigha, Israel, were examined. The population's distribution spans two soil types: Terra Rossa (TR) and Basalt (B). Seeds were collected from plants along a 100 m transect; 24 genotypes were sampled from TR and 28 from B. Due to different soil water-holding capacities, plants growing on TR naturally experience more intense droug...