Nutrient resorption from senesced leaves as a nutrient conservation strategy is important for plants to adapt to nutrient deficiency, particularly in alpine and arid environment. However, the leaf nutrient resorption patterns of different functional plants across environmental gradient remain unclear. In this study, we conducted a transect survey of 12 communities to address foliar nitrogen (N)...

Recent studies have provided evidence that trade-offs in biomass allocation, resource-use efficiency, and anti-herbivore defense influence seedling performance and distribution across soil types. Our previous research suggested that soil nutrient availability acted as a filter for understory palm community assembly and species coexistence in a lower montane forest in western Panama. Here, we ex...

Silicon (Si) is known as beneficial element for graminaceous plants. The importance of Si for plant functioning of cereals was recently emphasized. However, about the effect of Si availability on biomass production, grain yield, nutrient status and nutrient use efficiency for wheat (Triticum aestivum L.), as one of the most important crop plants worldwide, less is known so far. Consequently, we...

Introduction Essential mineral nutrients applied to crops are a cost to growers and, poorly managed, contaminate air and/or water resources. Over the past 30+ years, fertilizer costs (USDA, 2006) and evidence of the negative impact of fertilizer nutrient contamination of air and water resources have increased significantly (Tilman et al., 2002). Therefore, an increase in nutrient efficiency, me...

Because key nutritional processes differ in their thermal optima, ectotherms may use temperature selection to optimize performance in changing nutritional environments. Such behaviour would be especially advantageous to small terrestrial animals, which have low thermal inertia and often have access to a wide range of environmental temperatures over small distances. Using the locust, Locusta mig...

AIMS The recent increases in food prices caused by the corresponding increases in fertilizer costs have highlighted the demand for reducing the overuse of fertilizers in industrial agriculture. There has been increasing interest in developing plant root-targeted delivery (RTD) of fertilizers in order to address the problem of inefficient fertilizer use. The aim of this study is to develop a low...