Bambusa nutans Wallich ex Munro subspecies nutans is a valuable economic plant occurring especially on the Terai region and mid hills (Kathmandu valley) in Nepal from sea level to 1700 m. Variation plays major role to compare the populations and to select superior trees for breeding purpose. Infraspecific variation is the study of comparison between plants belonging to the same species but from...

Although the introduction of semi-dwarf trait into rice has led to improved lodging resistance making it capable of supporting high grain yield, lodging still remains a concern when attempting to further increase the grain yield of rice. However, improving the lodging resistance in rice by depending on the semi-dwarf trait alone is possible only up to a certain limit, beyond which other traits ...

Dendrocalamus sinicus is the world's largest bamboo species with strong woody culms, and known for its fast-growing culms. As an economic bamboo species, it was popularized for multi-functional applications including furniture, construction, and industrial paper pulp. To comprehensively elucidate the molecular processes involved in its culm elongation, Illumina paired-end sequencing was conduct...

Rice straw was manually dissected and two main fractions were recovered: a culm and a leaf sheath/blade fraction, in order to evaluate their potential as feedstocks for the recovery of fermentable sugars. In the case of cv. Koshihikari and Milkyqueen, most soft carbohydrates (SCs: glucose, fructose, sucrose, starch, and beta-1,3-1,4-glucan) were present in the culms, reaching 47.9% and 89.2% of...

As an abundant natural resource in Asia, bamboo is receiving increased attention as an engineering material due to its renewability and excellent strength. The parallel-to-grain compression and shearing properties of moso bamboo culm were examined. The growth characteristics (bamboo age, nodes, and location along the culm), as well as treatments for practical applications (hole punching and hoo...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Flowering incidence in Bambusa tulda has a high socio-economic impact. The aim of the present study was to describe the species for morphological characters (vegetative and reproductive) as well as molecular markers in order to enable species identification at various stages of the life cycle. METHODS Thirty-two key morphological characters (15 culm and 17 culm-sheath) wer...

A method of ultrasonic leaching has been developed for the destructive analysis of magmatic rock samples. This method was applied to determine three new elements, Ca, Mg and Al, in magmatic rock samples. The accuracy of the ultrasonic leaching method (CULM) was tested using standard reference materials (SRMs) and the recovery ratio as K1 = CULM/CSRM was defined. Another recovery ratio, K2, was ...

AIMS Fargesia decurvata is closely allied with F. dracocephala and differs in 5 major characters (i.e. the culm sheath blade base shape, the width of the culm sheath blade base, the auricle shape, and the lower surface of leaf blade) in Fargesia. It is difficult to distinguish these two species because of existing of transitional statements of characters. The aims of this paper are to (i) inves...

Besides being a useful building material, bamboo also is a potential source of bioactive substances. Although some studies have been performed to examine its use in terms of the biological activity, only certain parts of bamboo, especially the leaves or shoots, have been studied. Comprehensive and comparative studies among different parts of bamboo would contribute to a better understanding and...

It is well established that a high external NH(+) 4 concentration depresses many processes in plant development, but the underlying mechanisms are still not well understood. To determine whether the negative effects of high levels of NH(+) 4 are related to competitive cation uptake, wheat was grown in a field with moderate (18 g N m(-2)) and high (30 g N m(-2)) supplies of NH(+) 4 in the presen...