Metabolic profiling was carried out in the forage grass Lolium perenne L. (perennial ryegrass) to uncover mechanisms involved in the plants response to water stress. When leaf and root materials from two genotypes, with a contrasting water stress response, were analysed by GC-MS, a clear difference in the metabolic profiles of the leaf tissue under water stress was observed. Differences were pr...

Addition of floral resources to agricultural field margins has been shown to increase abundance of beneficial insects in crop fields, but most plants recommended for this use are non-native annuals. Native perennial plants with different bloom periods can provide floral resources for bees throughout the growing season for use in pollinator conservation projects. To identify the most suitable pl...

Changes in the species composition of biotic communities may alter patterns of natural selection occurring within them. Native perennial grass species in the Intermountain West are experiencing a shift in the composition of interspecific competitors from primarily perennial species to an exotic, annual grass. Thus traits that confer an advantage to perennial grasses in the presence of novel ann...

Investment in reproduction and growth represent a classic tradeoff with implication for life history evolution. The local environment can play a major role in the magnitude and evolutionary consequences of such a tradeoff. Here, we examined the investment in reproductive and vegetative tissue in 40 maternal half-sib families from four different populations of the herb Plantago coronopus growing...

Survival and fecundity are basic components of demography and therefore have a strong influence on population dynamics. These two key parameters and their relationship are crucial to understand the evolution of life histories. It remains, however, to be empirically established how life span, fecundity, and population dynamics are linked in different organism groups. We conducted a comparative s...

Release of bud dormancy in perennial plants resembles vernalization in Arabidopsis thaliana and cereals. In both cases, a certain period of chilling is required for accomplishing the reproductive phase, and several transcription factors with the MADS-box domain perform a central regulatory role in these processes. The expression of DORMANCY-ASSOCIATED MADS-box (DAM)-related genes has been found...

Even in the 21st century when the modern medicine has made tremendous progress in development of promptly acting medicines and precise diagnostic equipments the total health is still a challenge to medical science. Since many decades the utility of the Traditional Medicines/Wholistic medicine throughout the world has been felt immensely and the World Health Organization have also accepted the v...

Perennial crops need far less energy to plant, require less fertilizer and pesticides, and show a lower negative environmental impact compared with annual crops like for example corn. This makes the cultivation of perennial crops as energy crops more sustainable than the use of annual crops. The conversion into biogas in anaerobic digestion plants shows however much lower specific methane yield...

Photoperiod or daylength affects a diverse set of traits in plants, including flowering and tuberization in annuals, as well as growth cessation and bud set in perennials. During the last 10-15 years, great progress has been made in the understanding of molecular mechanisms controlling photoperiodic induction of flowering, in particular in the model species Arabidopsis thaliana. An obvious ques...

Hexokinase (HXK) is a sugar-phosphorylating enzyme involved in sugar-sensing. It has recently been shown that HXK in guard cells mediates stomatal closure and coordinates photosynthesis with transpiration in the annual species tomato and Arabidopsis. To examine the role of HXK in the control of the stomatal movement of perennial plants, we generated citrus plants that express Arabidopsis HXK1 (...