Application of most antibiotic growth promoters as feed additives has been banned in a lot of countries due to cross-resistance against pathogens and residues in tissues. Therefore, scientists are searching for alternatives to antibiotics nowadays. Medicinal plant extracts are one of the alternatives that have anti-microbial and growth promoting effect on poultry. In this paper, the benefits of...

The effects of aqueous leaf extracts of Tectona grandis L. and Mikania micrantha L. on germination and growth of Zea mays L. (maize) and Oryza sativa L. (paddy) were investigated during 2009-2010. The extracts suppressed the germination of paddy to an extent of 10-30% under high extract concentration and 40-50% suppression in maize under similar concentration. The growth of root and shoot of bo...

OBJECTIVES This study was conducted to determine whether the blood pressure-lowering effect of Nigella sativa might be mediated by its effects on nitric oxide, angiotensin-converting enzyme, heme oxygenase and oxidative stress markers. METHODS Twenty-four adult male Sprague-Dawley rats were divided equally into 4 groups. One group served as the control (group 1), whereas the other three group...

The MIPS Rice (Oryza sativa) database (MOsDB; http://mips.gsf.de/proj/rice) provides a comprehensive data collection dedicated to the genome information of rice. Rice (O. sativa L.) is one of the most important food crops for over half the world's population and serves as a major model system in cereal genome research. MOsDB integrates data from two publicly available rice genomic sequences, O....

The OsAPx2 gene from rice was cloned to produce PBI121::OsAPx2 dual-expression plants, of which expression level would be increasing under stressful conditions. The enzyme ascorbate peroxidase (APX) in the leaves and roots of the plants increased with increasing exposure time to different sodium chloride (NaCl) and hydrogen peroxide (H(2)O(2))concentrations, as indicated by protein gel blot ana...

application of most antibiotic growth promoters as feed additives has been banned in a lot of countries due to cross-resistance against pathogens and residues in tissues. therefore, scientists are searching for alternatives to antibiotics nowadays. medicinal plant extracts are one of the alternatives that have anti-microbial and growth promoting effect on poultry. in this paper, the benefits of...

Based on a site experiment on a typical steppe of Inner Mongolia, the short term effects on aboveground biomass, soil water content, soil organic carbon, and soil total nitrogen of four cultivated pastures (CPs) with different compositions of herbaceous species were examined and compared to those of adjacent, natural grassland (NG) enclosed simultaneously. All CPs produced significantly higher ...

Willet M. Hays was a great benefactor to plant breeding and the founder of the American Genetic Association (AGA). We commemorate the AGA's centennial. We mined university archives, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) yearbooks, plant breeding textbooks, scientific periodicals, and descendants for information. Willet Hays first recognized the individual plant as the unit of selection and star...

Data obtained by independent tests on each of 483 batches of Rhizobium inoculants for Glycine max, Medicago sativa, and Arachis hypogaea, manufactured commercially in South Africa, are reported and discussed. Whereas the average cell count per gram per batch was well in excess of 10, inoculants for G. max and M. sativa manufactured with peat treated with gamma irradiation at a dose of 50 kGr co...