Ralstonia solanacearum (biovar 2, race 3) is a soil and water-borne pathogen that causes serious diseases in several solanaceous hosts. It can also infect geranium plants, posing an important threat to their culture when latently infected cuttings are imported from countries where the pathogen is endemic. R. solanacearum can be present in very low numbers in asymptomatic geranium cuttings, and/...

Two immunological approaches were used to determine if ribulose bisphosphate carboxylase oxygenase (RuBisCo) is present in guard cell chloroplasts. Immunocytochemistry on thin plastic sections using tissue samples that were processed using traditional glutaraldehyde/osmium fixation and then restored to antigenicity with metaperiodate treatment, resulted in labeling over wild-type mesophyll and ...

In our laboratory, bacterial contamination was detected in cultures of Pelargonium x hederaefolium ‘Bonete’ that had been subcultured continuously for several years. Two contaminating bacteria were isolated and identified by partial sequence analysis of 16S rRNA gene as Paenibacillus glycanilyticus and Lactobacillus paracasei. Antibiotic sensitivity testing was performed on the bacterial isolat...

Overall phylogenetic relationships within the genus Pelargonium (Geraniaceae) were inferred based on DNA sequences from mitochondrial(mt)-encoded nad1 b/c exons and from chloroplast(cp)-encoded trnL (UAA) 5' exon-trnF (GAA) exon regions using two species of Geranium and Sarcocaulon vanderetiae as outgroups. The group II intron between nad1 exons b and c was found to be absent from the Pelargoni...

The quality and quantity of medicinal plants are serious issues for the pharmaceutical and dietary supplement industries. Traditionally, this material has been harvested from the wild, and while cultivation procedures have been developed for supplements such as St. John’s Wort, this is still the general method employed for the majority of medicinal plants. Increasing public demand for these pro...

Peat is the most common substrate used in nurseries despite being a very expensive and a non-renewable material. Peat replacement with biochar could be a sound environmental practice, as it is produced from waste biomass, but evaluation of biochar as a potting substrate is needed. Ratios of peat:biochar of 100:0, 70:30, 30:70 (BC0, BC30, and BC70, respectively), two fertilizer rates (FERT1, FER...

This paper presents a globally optimal nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC) algorithm. Utilizing local techniques on nonlinear nonconvex problems leaves one susceptible to suboptimal solutions. In complex problems, local solver reliability is difficult to predict and often highly dependent upon the choice of initial guess. For the purpose of NMPC, local solvers can cause the algorithm to f...

A series of lignans from Bupleurum salicifolium Soland (Umbelliferae) were tesled for nemalostatic activity on the cysts and freed secondstage juveniles of ¡he potalo cyst nematodes Globodera rostochiensis and G. pallida. None of Ihe six lignans lested-bursehemin, rnatairesinol, syringaresinol, Ihe novel produCI buplerol, guayarol. and a derivative, nortrachelogenin triacetale-showed nemalicida...