The ability of invasive plants to achieve higher relative growth rates (RGR) than their native counterparts has been widely documented. However, the mechanisms allowing invasives to achieve higher RGR are poorly understood. The objective of this study was to determine the basis for RGR differences between native and invasive forbs that have widely invaded nutrient-poor soils of the Intermountai...

The potential of plants to replace fossil oil was evaluated by considering the scale of production required, the area of land needed and the types of plants available. High yielding crops (50 tonnes/ha) that have a high conversion efficiency (75%) would require a global land footprint of around 100 million ha to replace current (2008) oil consumption. Lower yielding or less convertible plants w...

For the first time, using chromosome engineering of durum wheat, the underlying genetic determinants of a yield-improving segment from Thinopyrum ponticum (7AgL) were dissected. Three durum wheat-Th. ponticum near-isogenic recombinant lines (NIRLs), with distal portions of their 7AL arm (fractional lengths 0.77, 0.72, and 0.60) replaced by alien chromatin, were field-tested for two seasons unde...

The symbiotic association between Medicago truncatula and Sinorhizobium meliloti is a well-established model system in the legume-Rhizobium community. Despite its wide use, the symbiotic efficiency of this model has been recently questioned and an alternative microsymbiont, S. medicae, has been proposed. However, little is known about the physiological mechanisms behind the higher symbiotic eff...

Global warming can lead to considerable impacts on natural plant communities, potentially inducing changes in plant physiology and the quantity and quality of floral rewards, especially nectar. Changes in nectar production can in turn strongly affect plant-pollinator interaction networks-pollinators may potentially benefit under moderate warming conditions, but suffer as resources reduce in ava...

lead to continuing effects for increasing extensive of yield by means of advanced agronomic operations and selection of high yielding resistant genotypes. there fore, due to evaluation and determination of best effective traits in improvement of yield and grain quality of local populations of winter wheat, an experiment was carried out in uremia agricultural research station, on 30 local popula...

Identification of factors that drive changes in plant community structure and contribute to decline and endangerment of native plant species is essential to the development of appropriate management strategies. Introduced species are assumed to be driving causes of shifts in native plant communities, but unequivocal evidence supporting this view is frequently lacking. We measured native vegetat...

plant biomass is an important factor for determining arid and semi-aridrangelands capacity. due to the lack of proper and annual sampling of rangelands, there areno suitable data to determine biomass, range condition and proper range managementoperations. plant biomass is one of the measurable attributes that can be assessed inrangeland studies. since the clip and weight method is destructive a...

Few papers concerning seagrasses of the eastern Pacific have been published. This paper presents the first ecological data on the seagrass, Ruppia maritima, from a non-lagoonal setting in the eastern Pacific. A 5000 m2 patch formed by R. maritima, at Playa Iguanita, Bahía Culebra, Pacific coast of Costa Rica was studied. Plant density and leaf length of R. maritima were determined along two tra...

Plant biomass enhancement using transgenesis in model as well as in crop plants both under optimal and stress controlled (greenhouse or growth chamber) and field conditions is observed. It was documented that genetic engineering approaches allow reaching up to two-fold increase of biomass in optimal conditions. Both transgenic and initial plants reduce biomass production under stress. It was de...