Objectives-To investigate atopy and changes in symptoms, peak flow rate, and bronchial reactivity in people complaining of symptoms during the oilseed rape flowering season. Methods-37 people who had given positive answers to questions about the presence of symptoms in relation to the flowering season of oilseed rape and 24 controls with no such symptoms were studied, although not all took part...

Seagrasses form extensive meadows in shallow coastal waters and are among the world's most productive ecosystems. Seagrasses can produce both clonally and sexually, and flowering has long been considered infrequent, but important for maintaining genetically diverse stands. Here we investigate the molecular mechanisms involved in flowering of the seagrass Posidonia oceanica, an iconic species en...

Flowering of Nicotiana tabacum cv Xhanti depends on gibberellins because gibberellin-deficient plants, due to overexpression of a gibberellin 2-oxidase gene (35S:NoGA2ox3) or to treatment with the gibberellin biosynthesis inhibitor paclobutrazol, flowered later than wild type. These plants also showed inhibition of the expression of molecular markers related to floral transition (NtMADS-4 and N...

In plant species, control of flowering time is an important factor for adaptation to local natural environments. The Vrn1 , CO , FT1 and CK2α genes are key components in the flowering-specific signaling pathway of grass species. Meadow fescue is an agronomically important forage grass species, which is naturally distributed across Europe and Western Asia. In this study, meadow fescue flowering-...

Heterosis is an important phenomenon in agriculture. However, heterosis often greatly varies among hybrids and among traits. To investigate heterosis across a large number of traits and numerous genotypes, we evaluated 12 life history traits on parents and hybrids derived from five Arabidopsis thaliana ecotypes (Col, Ler-0, Cvi, Ws, and C24) by using a complete diallel analysis containing 20 hy...

Floral transition from the vegetative to the reproductive growth phase is a major change in the plant life cycle and a key factor in reproductive success. In rice (Oryza sativa L.), a facultative short-day plant, numerous flowering time and flower formation genes that control floral transition have been identified and their physiological effects and biochemical functions have been clarified. In...

to investigate the effects of supplementary irrigation and application of different compost levels on morphological traits, yield and yield components of two chickpea cultivars under dry land conditions, a field experiment was conducted at the research field in khoramabad, iran in 2009-2010. the experiment was split split plot based on randomized complete block design with four levels of irriga...

Moso bamboo is characterized by infrequent sexual reproduction and erratic flowering habit; however, the molecular biology of flower formation and development is not well studied in this species. We studied the molecular regulation mechanisms of moso bamboo development and flowering by selecting three key regulatory pathways: plant-pathogen interaction, plant hormone signal transduction and pro...

Gene duplication provides an important source of genetic raw material for phenotypic diversification, but few studies have detailed the mechanisms through which duplications produce evolutionary novelty within species. Here, we investigate how a set of recently duplicated homologs of the floral inducer FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT) has contributed to sunflower domestication. We find that changes in ex...

We focused on a region encompassing a major maize domestication locus, Tb1, and a locus involved in the flowering time variation, Dwarf8 (D8), to investigate the consequences of two closely linked selective sweeps on nucleotide variation and gain some insights into maize geographical diffusion, through climate adaptation. First, we physically mapped D8 at approximately 300 kb 3' of Tb1. Second,...