BACKGROUND When applied at the correct plant stage and dose, herbicides are highly toxic to plants. At reduced, low herbicide doses (below the recommended dose) plants can survive and display continuous and quantitative variation in dose-survival responses. Recurrent (directional) selection studies can reveal whether such a phenotypic variation in plant survival response to low herbicide dose i...

Background: The use of allelopathic plant extracts as herbicide is being popularized in recent years. Objective: This research has been conducted to evaluate the allelopathic potential of caltrop (Tribulus terrestris L.) on seed germination and growth of Avena fatua L., Chenopodium album L., Setaria viridis L. and Amaranthus retroflexus L. Methods: This research was done to evalature the ef...

Feedbacks between plants and soil biota are increasingly identified as key determinants of species abundance patterns within plant communities. However, our understanding of how plant-soil feedbacks (PSFs) may contribute to invasions is limited by our understanding of how feedbacks may shift in the light of other ecological processes. Here we assess how the strength of PSFs may shift as soil mi...

Avena fatua (wild oat) populations with resistance (R) to one or more herbicides have been described in numerous cropping systems worldwide. We previously reported that the R3 and R4 wild oat populations from Montana, USA, were resistant to four herbicides representing three different modes of action: tralkoxydim [acetyl-CoA carboxylase (ACCase] inhibitor), imazamethabenz and flucarbazone [acet...

A field experiment was established to evaluate quantitative changes in weed species prevailing a crop rotation and 30-year cereal monoculture. The subject of the study included cropping systems: a) rotation, b) First (1989–1992) second (1993–1996) focused on infestation winter triticale monoculture; third (1997–2000) fourth (2001–2004) wheat; fifth (2005–2008), sixth (2009–2012), seventh (2013–...

Molecular studies of primary and secondary dormancy in Avena fatua L., a serious weed of cereal and other crops, are intended to reveal the species-specific details of underlying molecular mechanisms which in turn may be useable in weed management. Among others, quantitative real-time PCR (RT-qPCR) data of comparative gene expression analysis may give some insight into the involvement of partic...

Gibberellic acid at 0.1 mum stimulates amylase synthesis in dormant Avena fatua seeds without inducing germination; at 0.5 mm it enhances biosynthesis of proteins and RNA in both the embryo and the endosperm and utilization of the endosperm sugars by the embryo. These events occur in early hours (0-14th hour) and prior to germination, which begins 24 hours after gibberellic acid application. Th...

The impact of elevated CO2 on terrestrial ecosystem C balance, both in sign or magnitude, is not clear because the resulting alterations in C input, plant nutrient demand and water use efficiency often have contrasting impacts on microbial decomposition processes. One major source of uncertainty stems from the impact of elevated CO2 on N availability to plants and microbes. We examined the effe...