Safflower [Carthamus tinctorius (L.)] is a multipurpose oilseed crop grown mainly for getting high quality edible oil rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids. India is the largest producer of safflower in the world with 402,000 hectares area under it, producing about 206,000 tons of safflower seed annually [1]. But its use in India is limited mainly to oil extraction from seed and leftover cake as ...

Severa1 homeotic genes that are involved in floral differentiation have recently been isolated and characterized from Antirrhinum majus and Arabidopsis thaliana (Sommer et al., 1990; Yanofsky et al., 1990). Based on genetic and molecular studies, a model has been proposed to explain the roles of different homeotic genes in the specification of floral organ identity (Bowman et al., 1991). To see...

Senescence occurs at every stage of plant development. Shriveling of the cotyledons in young plants and the seasonal recurrence of leaf yellowing are obvious examples. Similarly, after pollination, petals have fulfilled their biological role and become senescent. Despite this ubiquity, however, the molecular events that initiate senescence have thus far remained a mystery. Thimann et al. (1977)...

Senescence occurs at every stage of plant development. Shriveling of the cotyledons in young plants and the seasonal recurrence of leaf yellowing are obvious examples. Similarly, after pollination, petals have fulfilled their biological role and become senescent. Despite this ubiquity, however, the molecular events that initiate senescence have thus far remained a mystery. Thimann et al. (1977)...

Honeybees are shown to be able to detect, learn, and discriminate between microsculptured epidermes of flower petals. The sensilla trichodea at the tips of the bees' antennae are in the same size range as the microsculptural features of the petals (ca. 10 mum), which presumably deflect these mechanoreceptive sensilla in characteristic ways. Honeybees were trained to associate reward with one fl...

Modern low earth orbit (LEO) satellites that require multi-mission flexibility are highly likely to be repositioned between different operational orbits. While executing this process the satellite may experience high levels of vibration and environmental hazards, exposing the deployed solar panel to dangerous stress levels, fatigue and space debris, hence it is desirable to retract the solar sa...

Previous study shows that LjCYC2, a CYC-like TCP (TB1, CYC and PCFs) gene in the model legume, Lotus japonicus, is involved in dorsal petal development, which together with the other two homologous genes, LjCYC1 and LjCYC3, belongs to an LjCYC gene cluster. In this report, we modified the transformation system in L. japonicus, and constructed different RNAi transgenes to target different LjCYC ...