Understanding the relationship between sink and source in maize is of prime importance in maize growing regions. In this study, a field experiment was carried out during spring and summer 2007 in the experimental field of the College of Agriculture, Shiraz University, to examine the effects of source restriction (defoliation) on sink size (yield and its components) of  SC704 maize hybrid.  A fa...

Climate change is affecting every aspect of human activities, especially the agriculture. In China, extreme drought events caused by climate change have posed a great threat to food safety. In this work we aimed to study the drought risk of maize in the farming–pastoral ecotone in Northern China based on physical vulnerability assessment. The physical vulnerability curve was constructed from th...

Soil samples were collected at both jointing and maturing stages of maize and wheat to compare the effects of 4-year no-tillage (NT) and conventional tillage (CT) on seasonal variations of microbial biomass carbon (C), metabolic quotient, and invertase activity in a sandy loam soil in North China. Soil invertase activity significantly increased (P < 0.05) from summer to spring of the next year ...

Crop model-specific biases are a key uncertainty affecting our understanding of climate change impacts to agriculture. There is increasing research focus on intermodel variation, but comparisons between mechanistic (MMs) and empirical models (EMs) are rare despite both being used widely in this field. We combined MMs and EMs to project future (2055) changes in the potential distribution (suitab...

Maize is a dynamic cereal of world’s agriculture community and is grown both in spring and autumn seasons in Pakistan. In case of spring sowing (February sowing) both pistillate and staminate flowers face high temperature stress and ultimately results in poor seed setting because of increased silk dryness and pollen desiccation. Maize accessions were identified on the basis of their performance...

C(3) crops are generally considered more sensitive than C(4) crops to the elevated CO(2) and O(3), but it is unclear whether the concentrations of phenolic compounds in them are affected. In this paper, an enrichment experiment with open-top chamber was conducted to examine the effects of elevated CO(2), O(3), and their combination on the contents of total phenolic compounds and flavone in the ...

The effects of management of genetically modified herbicide-tolerant (GMHT) crops on adjacent field margins were assessed for 59 maize, 66 beet and 67 spring oilseed rape sites. Fields were split into halves, one being sown with a GMHT crop and the other with the equivalent conventional non-GMHT crop. Margin vegetation was recorded in three components of the field margins. Most differences were...

Whole-genome association studies of complex traits in higher eukaryotes require a high density of single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers at genome-wide coverage. To design high-throughput, multiplexed SNP genotyping assays, researchers must fi rst discover large numbers of SNPs by extensively resequencing multiple individuals or lines. For SNP discovery approaches using short read-lengths...

BACKGROUND Maize is a member of the Poaceae family, capable of producing large amounts of pollen grains which may constitute important allergens in spring and summer. The aim of this study was to determine the protein content of maize pollen and its allergenicity in guinea pigs. METHODS The morphology of maize pollens was determined using light microscopy and scanning electron microscopy. The...