To study the impact of iron nanoparticles foliar application on mitigating the effects of drought stress on yield, yield components and  oil percentage of Goldasht spring safflower cultivar, an experiment was carried out in 2012 in the Agricultural Research Farm Station of Islamic Azad University, Roudehen branch as split plot in a completely randomized blocks design with three replications. In...

Infection of soybean plants with Soybean mosaic virus (SMV), which is transmitted by aphids and through seed, can cause significant reductions in seed production and quality. Because seedborne infections are the primary sources of inoculum for SMV infections in North America, host-plant resistance to seed transmission can limit the pool of plants that can serve as sources of inoculum. To examin...

Deserts are open environments characterized by striking shifts in temperature and light regimes. We hypothesized that the abiotic environment mediates the interaction between an ant-dispersed plant, Datura wrightii (Solanaceae), ant mutualists, and rodent seed predators in the Sonoran Desert. Field experiments contrasting diurnal and nocturnal seed collection rates in the presence of ants only,...

Few studies have evaluated seed predation in fragmented landscapes, in which lower species diversity is expected to modifying ecological interactions. The rates of seed removal by mammals were investigated in a continuous forest and two fragmented patches of Premontane Tropical Moist Forest, in Monteverde, Costa Rica. The composition of mammalian seed-predators in each site was recorded during ...

Important roles for biotic agents in integrated weed management include preventing seed production and weed emergence from the seed bank. Seed-attacking microorganisms have been described for a limited number of economically important weeds and serve as examples illustrating the potential for reducing weed seed production. Innundative releases of seed-feeding insects have also successfully redu...

Mg(OEt)2 with spherical morphology is one of the most important precursors for the preparation of industrial Ziegler-Natta catalysts. In the present article, morphology evolution of Mg(OEt)2 particles is studied in the course of the synthesis. The morphology of Mg(OEt)2 particles is observed throughout the process by SEM. The results show that Mg(OEt)2 particles are formed through i) seed gener...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Gene flow from crops to their wild relatives has the potential to alter population growth rates and demography of hybrid populations, especially when a new crop has been genetically modified (GM). This study introduces a comprehensive approach to assess this potential for altered population fitness, and uses a combination of demographic data in two habitat types and mathemat...

Few studies have investigated the influence of water availability on plant population spatial patterns. We studied changes in the spatial patterns of Caragana stenophylla along a climatic drought gradient within the Inner Mongolian Plateau, China. We examined spatial patterns, seed density, "nurse effects" of shrubs on seedlings, transpiration rates and water use efficiency (WUE) of C. stenophy...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Reduction in female fitness in large clones can occur as a result of increased geitonogamous self-fertilization and its influence through inbreeding depression. This possibility was investigated in the self-compatible, bee-pollinated perennial herb Aconitum kusnezoffii which varies in clone size. METHODS Field investigations were conducted on pollinator behaviour, flowerin...