Higher plants exhibit a variety of different life histories. Annual plants live for less than a year and after flowering produce seeds and senesce. By contrast perennials live for many years, dividing their life cycle into episodes of vegetative growth and flowering. Environmental cues control key check points in both life histories. Genes controlling responses to these cues exhibit natural gen...

Flowering Locus T (FT) can promote flowering in the plant photoperiod pathway and also facilitates vernalization flowering pathways and other ways to promote flowering. The expression of products of the FT gene is recognized as important parts of the flowering hormone and can induce flowering by long-distance transportation. In the present study, many FT-like genes were isolated, and the transg...

Background & Aim: Deanaie thyme (Thymus daenensis Celak.), a member of the Lamiaceae family.  Thymus in one of the most important medicinal and aromatic plants that was used in pharmaceutical, food, cosmetics hygienic industries in most of developed countries. Recent studies have showed that thyme have strong antibacterial, antifungal, spasmolytic and antioxidant acti...

The aerial plant architecture is built by phytomeres which are metameric units, each composed of a stem segment (internode) and a leaf with axillary meristem (node). In Arabidopsis thaliana, fully developed flower phytomeres lack the leaf even if they temporarily exhibit a cryptic bract (CB) during early development. Recently, we demonstrated that the CB becomes more prominent under non-inducti...

An experiment was carried out to compare half-sib and full-sib progeny selection methods in Indian mustard (Brassica juncea L.) under rainfed conditions from 2006-07 to 2009-10 for 14 morpho-physiological characters. Full-sib and half-sib progenies were developed from different populations. The values of genetic parameters were higher in full-sibs compared to half-sibs for a greater number of t...

Effects of salicylic acid (SA) on seed germination, seedling growth, flowering and biochemical activities were studied out in four cowpea (Vigna unguiculata) genotypes in control environments. The results revealed that both germination and seedling growth were negatively affected by 0.02%. SA application, however did not affect the size of full expanded buds, time of 50% flowering and date of f...

To increase our understanding of the genes involved in flower development in citrus, we identified genes differentially expressed between juveniles and adults of an early-flowering mutant of trifoliate orange (precocious trifoliate orange, Poncirus trifoliata L. Raf.) by suppressive subtractive hybridization (SSH) and macroarray hybridization analyses. Based on dot blot analysis, we confirmed t...

St. John's wort is a widely used medicinal plant. The quality of herbal drug, which is in most of the cases collected from nature, varies. Therefore, the aim of the present study was detailed chemical characterization of Hypericum perforatum subsp. perforatum samples collected in close time intervals during flowering and fruitification with the purpose to state the phenological stage characteri...

Thellungiella halophila (T. halophila) (salt cress) is a close relative of Arabidopsis and a model plant for salt tolerance research. However, the nature of its later flowering causes some difficulties in genetic analysis. The FRIGIDA (FRI) gene plays a key role in the Arabidopsis vernalization flowering pathway, whose homolog in T. halophila may also be a key factor in controlling flowering ti...

The patterns of nitrate reductase activity (NRA) in the leaves (in vivo assay) and root nodule nitrogenase activity (C(2)H(2) reduction) were investigated throughout the season in field-grown Phaseolus vulgaris plants.Maximal NRA (per g fresh weight) occurred at early stages of leaf development but total activity (per leaf) was maximal when the leaf reached full size. In mature plants, most NRA...