ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thank you Mum and Dad for paving the road on which I walk, for your unconditional support and infinite love. Thank you Chez and everybody at the ISG for sharing your knowledge and wisdom. Being part of this course truly has been a wonderful experience.

This paper describes work being carried out at the National Institute of Agricultural Botany to develop a machine vision system that assesses the shape of chrysanthemum leaves as part of the testing procedure applied to new chrysanthemum varieties before they are granted protection under the UK’s Plant Breeder’s Rights Scheme. After outlining the testing procedure and the characters used to des...

The family of NITRATE TRANSPORTER 2 (NRT2) proteins belongs to the high affinity transport system (HATS) proteins which acts at low nitrate concentrations. The relevant gene content of the chrysanthemum genome was explored here by isolating the full length sequences of six distinct CmNRT2 genes. One of these (CmNRT2.1) was investigated at the functional level. Its transcription level was induci...

Strain UHM-5, a pSym Exo derivative of the aluminum-tolerant Rhizobium leguminosarum bv. phaseoli strain CIAT899, was equally tolerant of aluminum (Al) as the parental culture. Dialyzed culture supernatants of the wild-type cells grown in YEM broth (10 cells ml) contained 185 mug of glucose equivalents ml whereas UHM-5 culture supernatants yielded 2 mug of glucose ml. The Exo derivative and the...

This study aimed to determine whether the fatigue induced by a mountain ultramarathon (MUM) led to changes in energy cost and kinematic during level and graded running. Pre- and post-race, 14 ultratrail runners ran on a level, uphill (5%) and downhill (5%) treadmill at 10 km · h(-1). Kinematic data were acquired using a photocell system. Post-race, the downhill energy cost increased by 13.1% (P...

Polyploidy is a widespread phenomenon among higher plants and a major factor shaping the structure and evolution of plant genomes. The important ornamental chrysanthemum (Chrysanthemum indicum hybrid) possesses a hexaploid genome with 54 chromosomes and was classified based on its evolutionary origin and cytological methods as an allopolyploid. However, it is questionable whether cytological me...

The diverse plasticity of plant architecture is largely determined by shoot branching. Shoot branching is an event regulated by multiple environmental, developmental and hormonal stimuli through triggering lateral bud response. After perceiving these signals, the lateral buds will respond and make a decision on whether to grow out. TCP transcriptional factors, BRC1/TB1/FC1, were previously prov...