Legume crops are known to have low soil N uptake early in their life cycle, which can weaken their ability to compete with other species, such as weeds or other crops in intercropping systems. However, there is limited knowledge on the main traits involved in soil N uptake during early growth and for a range of species. The objective of this research was to identify the main traits explaining t...

Hybridization produces strong evolutionary forces. In hybrid zones, selection can differentially occur on traits and selection intensities may differ among hybrid generations. Understanding these dynamics in crop-wild hybrid zones can clarify crop-like traits likely to introgress into wild populations and the particular hybrid generations through which introgression proceeds. In a field experim...

Early strategies of crop growth and N acquisition can be critical for determining competitive interactions between weeds and crops. Grain legumes and especially lupins are known to be poor competitors against weeds. Grain legumes are known to have low mineral soil N uptake abilities. However, inter- and intraspecific differences in N uptake ability in relation to below-ground traits have receiv...

Defoliation produced by abiotic factors and the subsequent re-growth can reduce sugar beet (Beta vulgaris L.) sucrose content and final sugar yield. Field experiments were conducted during 2003 and 2004 growing seasons in the farm of Hellenic Sugar Industry SA, Larissa factory, central Greece. Three sugar beet cultivars (Rival, Europa and Corsica) were ordinary irrigated till the beginning of J...

The objective of this study was to determine the appropriate non-linear function describing growth of some testicular traits (testicular length, testicular diameter, scrotal circumference and scrotal length) in Norduz male lambs. Testicular characteristics at 90, 110, 130, 150, 170, and 190 days of age for all the lambs were measured. Four growth (Monomolecular, Logistic, Gompertz, and Richard’...

Plant growth can be studied at different organizational levels, varying from cell, leaf, and shoot to the whole plant. The early growth of seedlings is important for the plant's establishment and its eventual success. Wheat (Triticum aestivum, genome AABBDD) seedlings exhibit a low early growth rate or early vigor. The germplasm of wheat is limited. Wild relatives constitute a source of genetic...

For organisms with complex life cycles, processes occurring at the interface between life stages can disproportionately impact survival and population dynamics. Temperature is an important factor influencing growth in poikilotherms, and growth-related processes are frequently correlated with survival. We examined the influence of water temperature on growth-related early life history traits (EL...

With increasing demand for novel traits in crop breeding, the plant research community faces the challenge of quantitatively analyzing the structure and function of large numbers of plants. A clear goal of high-throughput phenotyping is to bridge the gap between genomics and phenomics. In this study, we quantified 106 traits from a maize (Zea mays) recombinant inbred line population (n = 167) a...

field experiment was conducted in 2008 at the research field of agricultural college of shiraz university, shiraz, iran to investigate the effects of urban waste compost (uwc), manure and chemical fertilizer on the initial growth of corn (zea mays). experimental design was split plot factorial with three replications. main plots were assigned to nitrogen (n) fertilizer (0 and 200 kg n ha-1), an...