BACKGROUND Screening of the ethnobotenical plants is a pre-requisite to evaluate their therapeutic potential and it can lead to the isolation of new bioactive compounds. METHODS The crude extracts and fractions of six medicinal important plants (Arisaema flavum, Debregeasia salicifolia, Carissa opaca, Pistacia integerrima, Aesculus indica, and Toona ciliata) were tested against three Gram pos...

The title compound, C(15)H(14)O(5), is a natural product, isolated from Sorbus lanata Syn. Pyrus lanata (D. Don) found in Pakistan. The compound is composed of three spiro-fused rings. The dihedral angle between the mean planes of the benzene rings is 4.81 (13)°. The meth-oxy groups are oriented at dihedral angles of 74.44 (14), 83.0 (2) and 66.3 (2)° with respect to the planes of the benzene r...

Mitochondrial fractions isolated from pears (Pyrus communis L.) at the climacteric minimum and peak were subjected to sucrose density gradient centrifugation. The distribution of protein and specific activities of 3 enzymes from this mitochondrial fraction were investigated.Cytochrome oxidase specific activity remained associated with the particulate fraction and increased slightly during the p...

Pear fruit usually soften and develop a melting texture when harvested at the mature green stage and ripened. The reason why the fruit does not fully ripen on the tree is unknown. To clarify this, our attention was directed to the continuous supply of assimilates and/or other substances into the fruit via phloem transport. To determine the effect of inhibiting phloem transport on fruit ripening...

Fingerprinting information can be used to elucidate in a robust manner the genetic structure of germplasm collections, allowing a more rational and fine assessment of genetic resources. Bayesian model-based approaches are nowadays majorly preferred to infer genetic structure, but it is still largely unresolved how marker sets should be built in order to obtain a robust inference. The objective ...

Various tissues in flower buds of Pyrus calleryana Decne. differ in their metabolic activity. Brown outer scales utilized more exogenously supplied glucose, particularly through the pentose phosphate pathway, than did the central axes and the green inner scales. They also contained more endogenous reducing sugars, and glucose leaked out more readily from the brown scales than from the other tis...

High density planting systems are a prerequisite to economise the use of land and labour costs of orchards. Dwarfing rootstocks controlling the vigour of the scion cultivars form the basis for such orchards (Wertheim and Webster, 2005). In the Netherlands, rootstock research is limited to and focussed on testing rootstocks selected abroad. For the Dutch pear growers the main selection criteria ...