This investigation was undertaken to study the effect of boron on flower and fruit setting and yield of ratoon crop of brinjal (Solanum melongina L) in the Eastern Region of Sri Lanka. The treatments were arranged in a Randomized Complete Design (RCBD) replicated three times. The treatments were defined as follows: T1-50 ppm, T2-100 ppm; T3-150 ppm and T4Control along with recommended fertilize...

Cholestasis is a serious manifestation of liver diseases with limited therapies. Rhubarb, a widely used herbal medicine, has been frequently used at a relatively large dose for treating cholestasis. However, whether large doses are optimal and the therapeutic mechanism remain unclear. To explore these questions, the anti-cholestatic effect of five doses of rhubarb (0.21, 0.66, 2.10, 6.60, and 2...

Pollinator and flower morphology are important factors in structuring the plant-pollinator relationship. A pollinator’s morphology may influence aspects of its diet. Flower-visiting bats are important pollinators but very little is known about what influences their interactions with food plants. I examined the role of morphology in the partitioning of food resources for five species of flower-v...

Extreme specialization is a common phenomenon in antagonistic biotic interactions but it is quite rare in mutualistic ones. Indeed, bee specialization on a single flower species (monolecty) is a questioned fact. Here, we provide multiple lines of evidence on true monolecty in a solitary bee (Flavipanurgus venustus, Andrenidae), which is consistent across space (18 sites in SW Iberian Peninsula)...

abstract field experiment was carried out at the ferdowsi university research field, mashhad, iran during 2006-2007, to determine how much effective the n-fertilization is, to find out the most suitable plant density which could be used in chamomile (matricaria chamomilla l. asteraceae) to increase the yield of anthodium flowers and content of essential oil. the experimental design was as two f...

One of the unifying theories of plant biology is that the variety of plant forms are simply different modifications of a common growth plan. Different permutations of a few key features of plant growth can generate a bewildering array of seemingly distinct forms. There is perhaps no better illustration of this than the comparison of a flower and a shoot. The idea that these two apparently diffe...

Steady improvements of image description methods induced a growing interest in image-based plant species classification, a task vital to the study of biodiversity and ecological sensitivity. Various techniques have been proposed for general object classification over the past years and several of them have already been studied for plant species classification. However, results of these studies ...

Rhubarb and its bioactive component rhein are frequently used for the treatment of chronic kidney diseases (CKD) in eastern Asia countries. However, the potential therapeutic mechanism remains unclear. Autophagy plays an important role in CKD. However, there were some important related issues that remained unresolved in the role of autophagy in CKD and treatment by rhubarb and rhein. We designe...

Biologists have long assumed that pollinator behavior is an important force in angiosperm speciation, yet there is surprisingly little direct evidence that floral preferences in pollinators can drive floral divergence and the evolution of reproductive (ethological) isolation between incipient plant species. In this study, we expose computer-generated plant populations with a wide variation in f...

BACKGROUND In the emerging field of community and ecosystem genetics, genetic variation and diversity in dominant plant species have been shown to play fundamental roles in maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem function. However, the importance of intraspecific genetic variation and diversity to floral abundance and pollinator visitation has received little attention. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL F...