Production of Mrenda (Corchorus olitorius) in Kenya has been low due to various reasons, such as poor agronomic practices like incorrect fertilizer rates. Observations from the Mrenda growing areas showed that there is high unmet demand for crop in local market and even for export. This is due to yields being low, 2-4 tons/ha as compared to expected yield of 5-8 tons/ha. Therefore, the main obj...

The present study was carried out to estimate genetic variability parameters for some traits such as pods per plant, cell membrane stability, one thousand kernel weight, flowering period, grain filling period, chlorophyll content, relative water content, leaf excised water content, seed per pod and pod length, in 16 winter rapeseed genotypes. Statistical analysis showed significant differences ...

Estimating plant traits in herbaceous plant assemblages from spectral reflectance data requires aggregation of small scale trait variations to a canopy mean value that is ecologically meaningful and corresponds to the trait content that affects the canopy spectral signal. We investigated estimation capacities of plant traits in a herbaceous setting and how different trait-aggregation methods in...

The fossil record demonstrates that past climate changes and extinctions significantly affected the diversity of insect leaf-feeding damage, implying that the richness of damage types reflects that of the unsampled damage makers, and that the two are correlated through time. However, this relationship has not been quantified for living leaf-chewing insects, whose richness and mouthpart converge...

This study was carried at the experimental farm of Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Bottle gourd cv. High-green (hybrid) was grown to investigate the morpho-physiological changes and yield performance under four different levels of light (100, 75, 50 and 25% PAR). It was observed that some of the morphological characters like main stem length, internode length and indiv...

In the dry forest of Santa Rosa National Park, Costa Rica, the understory shrub Jacquinia nervosa presents an inverse pattern of phenology that concentrates vegetative growth and reproduction during the dry season. In this study, we tested the "escape from herbivory" hypothesis as a potential explanation for the inverse phenological pattern of J. nervosa. We monitored leaf, flower and fruit pro...

An experiment was conducted at the research farm of Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University, Dhaka, Bangladesh with the cucumber cv. Modumoti to evaluate the porpho-physiological characters and yield performance under four different levels of light (100, 75, 50 and 25% PAR). Significant differences were observed among the treatments in response to different evaluated characters. Main stem length,...

The means by which plant genotypes influence species interactions and arthropod community structure remain poorly understood. One potential, but largely unstudied mechanism is that occurring through plant genetic variation in induced responses to herbivory. Here we test whether induced responses to leaf damage and genotypic variation for induction in Asclepias syriaca influence interactions amo...

This study, intending to understand the effects of crop rotation and tillage on blackleg disease, was conducted in a field at Carman, Manitoba, Canada, from 1999 – 2002. Canola, wheat and flax were among the rotated crops. Rotations were performed under conventional or zero-till conditions. The number of infected plants, infected leaves per plant, lesions per plant, and percentage of leaf cover...