The distribution and dynamics of plant populations depend on the recruitment of young individuals, which is influenced by seed production, animal seed dispersal, dispersal distance, and the deposition of seeds in favourable places for seed germination/ establishment and seedling survival. In particular, seeds dispersed over long distances will likely encounter new environmental conditions that ...

Eastern deciduous forests are populated with a variety of hardwood species, with composition at large scales determined by a complex interplay of temperature, moisture, and disturbance. An understanding of seed production is important in the context of forest regeneration and wildlife management. We analyzed time series data obtained from the literature to investigate (1) the effects of life-hi...

277 Lathyrus (Lathyrus sativus L.) is mostly grown on the residual soil moisture in rice-fallows as utera (relay) crop (Gupta and Bhowmick, 2005; Mondal and Ghosh, 2005). But low productivity especially under utera system is the major problem associated with this crop (Bhowmick et al., 2005). Even there is a limited scope for agronomic manipulation under rice-utera system although it has potent...

Soybean trypsin inhibitors are thought to ward off pathogens. Studies with aflatoxigenic strains of Aspergillus flavus and A. parasiticus, frequent soybean contaminants, revealed that trypsin inhibitors do not affect the growth of these fungi and aflatoxin production. Further, the availability of zinc, an essential mineral for aflatoxin synthesis that was thought to explain increased aflatoxin ...

Changes in the chemical composition and functional properties of fermented seed flour of Pigeon pea, Cajanus cajan L. were studied for 0,1,2,3,4 and 5 days. The differently fermented seeds were analyzed for proximate composition, calorific values and functional properties. Results showed that fermentation significantly (p≤ 0.05) increased the moisture, protein and ash contents of the seed while...

Yellow starthistle (Centaurea solstitialis L.) is a summer-flowering annual plant of the family Asteraceae, and a significant weed of roadsides, pasture and grasslands in California. It is also distributed, though with less economic and ecological significance, throughout the US and in other temperate parts of the world. Yellow starthistle grows vigorously during the dormant period for most nat...

Aflatoxin assays and moisture determinations were made on locks from bolls inoculated with Aspergillus flavus 30-32 days from flower and harvested after additional periods of 5, 7, 9, 11, 13 and 15 days. Inoculated locks were always tight but had moisture contents comparable to those in noninoculated locks on the same bolls. Lowest toxin concentrations were in seeds from bolls still green at ha...

Alibertia patinoi (Rubiaceae) is of economic and cultural importance for communities in the Colombian Pacific and Amazon regions, where it is cultivated and mature fruits are highly appreciated and consumed. Since there is a lack of knowledge of the seed physiology of this species, we describe here the germination behavior and morphometry of seeds of Alibertia patinoi, and relate them to its ha...

Phenotypic plasticity has long been suspected to allow invasive species to expand their geographic range across large-scale environmental gradients. We tested this possibility in Australia using a continental scale survey of the invasive tree Parkinsonia aculeata (Fabaceae) in twenty-three sites distributed across four climate regions and three habitat types. Using tree-level responses, we dete...