Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are involved in microbial interspecies communication and the mode of action various antagonistic interactions. They important for balancing host-microbe interactions provide basis developing biological control strategies to plant pathogens. We studied between bacterial antagonist Serratia plymuthica HRO-C48 three fungal pathogens Rhizoctonia solani, Leptosphaer...

The effects of a 4-year crop rotation and two tillage systems on blackleg (Leptosphaeria maculans) disease of canola were determined in a field experiment carried out from 1999 through 2002 at Carman, Manitoba. Crops in rotation were canola (Brassica napus) (C), wheat (Triticum aestivum) (W), and flax (Linum usitatissimum) (F). Rotations were done under conventional tillage (T) or zero-till (Z)...

Effects of climate change on productivity of agricultural crops in relation to diseases that attack them are difficult to predict because they are complex and nonlinear. To investigate these crop-disease-climate interactions, UKCIP02 scenarios predicting UK temperature and rainfall under high- and low-CO(2) emission scenarios for the 2020s and 2050s were combined with a crop-simulation model pr...

Claviceps purpurea is an important food contaminant and well known for the production of the toxic ergot alkaloids. Apart from that, little is known about its secondary metabolism and not all toxic substances going along with the food contamination with Claviceps are known yet. We explored the metabolite profile of a gene cluster in C. purpurea with a high homology to gene clusters, which are r...

Essentially any behavior in simple and complex animals depends on neuronal network function. Currently, the best-defined system to study neuronal circuits is the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, as the connectivity of its 302 neurons is exactly known. Individual neurons can be activated by photostimulation of Channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2) using blue light, allowing to directly probe the importance ...