Three-year trials (2006-2008) were conducted in order to determine the influence of the herbicide diflufenican (trade name – Pelikan 50 CK) on certain biological traits of Bulgarian common bean cultivar Plovdiv 15 M. The herbicide was applied in the doses of 200, 250 and 300 ml/ha after the sowing and before the growth of the plants. It has been found that the traits related to the height of th...

Different kinds of plant-animal interactions are ordinarily studied in isolation, yet considering the combined fitness effects of mutualistic and antagonistic interactions is essential to understanding plant character evolution. Functional, structural, or phylogenetic associations between attractive and defensive traits may be nonadaptive or result from correlational selection on sets of herbiv...

(Distyly and variation in floral traits in natural populations of Psychotria ipecacuanha (Brot.) Stokes (Rubiaceae)). Psychotria ipecacuanha is a perennial, medicinal herb that grows in clusters in the understory of humid, shady areas of the Atlantic Rain Forest of southeastern Brazil. The present study characterized the variation in floral traits among 35 clusters from three natural population...

Sugar, organic acid, and carotenoid are the most important indicators of fruit taste and nutritional and organoleptic quality. These components were studied on fruit pulp of the cybrid between Willow leaf mandarin ( Citrus deliciosa Ten.) and Eureka lemon [ Citrus limon (L.) Burm.] and the two parents. The cybrid possessed nuclear and chloroplast genomes of Eureka lemon plus mitochondria from W...

Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum Mill.) represents a model species for all fleshy fruits due to its biological cycle and the availability of numerous genetic and molecular resources. Its importance in human nutrition has made it one of the most valuable worldwide commodities. Tomato fruit size results from the combination of cell number and cell size, which are determined by both cell division and ...

What causes the domesticated tomato Solanum lycopersicum to have sweet, juicy red fruit and large, compound leaves with narrow-tipped leaflets while its distant wild relative, the Peruvian Solanum pennellii, has small, soapy-smelling green fruit with an unpleasant flavor (Matsui et al., 2007) and small compound leaves with thick, rounded leaflets (see figure)? Thoroughly answering this question...

Folate deficiency leads to neural tube defects and other human diseases, and is a global health problem. Because plants are major folate sources for humans, we have sought to enhance plant folate levels (biofortification). Folates are synthesized from pteridine, p-aminobenzoate (PABA), and glutamate precursors. Previously, we increased pteridine production in tomato fruit up to 140-fold by over...

The growing body of literature on social behavior in fruit flies opens up exciting opportunities for addressing an unresolved issue involving the degree of correlation between behavioral traits in larvae and adults. Although the prevailing adaptive decoupling hypothesis states that metamorphosis is associated with the disruption of genetic correlations between juvenile and adult traits, 2 alter...

Species phenotypic traits affect the interaction patterns and the organization of seed-dispersal interaction networks. Understanding the relationship between species characteristics and network structure help us understand the assembly of natural communities and how communities function. Here, we examine how species traits may affect the rules leading to patterns of interaction among plants and...

We studied the relative role of inflorescence traits, flowering synchrony, and pollination context for infructescence and fruit initiation in two Spanish populations of Arum italicum, a species in which inflorescences are the pollination unit. In this species, a specialized inflorescence organ, the appendix, is important for pollinator attraction. However, the short floral longevity and the pro...