The phyllosphere is colonized by a wide variety of bacteria and fungi; it harbors epiphytes, as well as plant-pathogenic bacteria and even human pathogens. However, little is known about how the bacterial community composition on leafy greens develops over time. The bacterial community of the leafy-green phyllosphere obtained from two plantings of rocket salad (Diplotaxis tenuifolia) and three ...

Genetic diversity of 40 traditional Bangladeshi rice genotypes was studied under rainfed condition through Mahalanobis D statistic for grain yield and yield contributing characters. The genotypes were grouped into six clusters. The inter-cluster distances were higher than intra-cluster distances indicating wider genetic diversity among the genotypes of different clusters. The intra-cluster dist...

Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD) assay was performed to estimate genetic polymorphism in six different rice (Oryza sativa L.) cultivars viz. Basmati 370, DM 25, IRATOM 24, Binadhan 6, TNDB 100 and Y 1281. Three out of the 15 decamer random primers showed amplification of genomic DNA in 24 individuals. The primers produced a total of 26 bands of which 14 were polymorphic. Proportion of po...

Despite its status as one of the world's major crops, linkage disequilibrium (LD) patterns have not been systematically characterized across the genome of Asian rice (Oryza sativa). Such information is critical to fully exploit the genome sequence for mapping complex traits using association techniques. Here we characterize LD in five 500-kb regions of the rice genome in three major cultivated ...

Exploitation of heterosis in crops has contributed greatly to improvement in global food and energy production. In spite of the pervasive importance of heterosis, a complete understanding of its mechanisms has remained elusive. In this study, a small test-crossed rice population was constructed to investigate the formation mechanism of heterosis for 13 traits. The results of the relative mid-pa...

A deodorizing substance in black cumin (Nigella sativa L.), a spice for curry and vegetable foods in Southwest Asia, was examined. The essential oil prepared from the seeds of this plant exhibited strong deodorizing activity against methyl mercaptan, which is a main factor in oral malodor. After purification with silica gel column chromatography, the active substance in black cumin seed oil was...

Alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) is one of the most important perennial forage crops on cultivated fields in the world. Agronomical interests for this crop are based on its numerous advantageous characteristics such as (1) high yield potential and suitable feeding value, (2) different methods of utilisation green mass, hay, silage, greenchop, briquette, pellets, etc., (3) favourable environmental i...

SUMMARY Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is an important model monocot and cereal crop. While the rice genome sequence has been published and annotated, relatively little is known about the transcriptional networks that regulate rice gene expression. For this reason, we have developed Osiris, a database containing promoter sequences, predicted transcription factor (TF) binding sites, gene ontology annota...