Increased tomato fruit quality in response to increased salinity is well documented (Li, 2000). However, the increased fruit quality is achieved at the expenses of severe yield losses mostly due to reduced fruit size (fresh weight) and increased incidence of physiological disorders such as blossom end rot (BER). The ability to minimize the negative effects of high salinity at the root level, wh...

When stressed by low soil water content (SWC) or high vapor pressure deficit (VPD), plants close stomata, reducing transpiration and photosynthesis. However, it has historically been difficult to disentangle the magnitudes of VPD compared to SWC limitations on ecosystem-scale fluxes. We used a 13 year record of eddy covariance measurements from a forest in south central Indiana, USA, to quantif...

Beech seedlings (Fagus sylvatica L.) were grown in various combinations of three photosynthetic photon flux densities (PPFD, 0.7, 7.3 or 14.5 mol m(-2) day(-1)) for two years in a controlled environmental chamber. Dry mass of leaves, stem and roots, leaf area and number of leaves, and unit leaf rate were affected by both previous-year and current-year PPFD. Number of shoots and length of the ma...

We investigated the assumption, necessary for comparison between bottom-up scaling of plot level fluxes to top-down scaling of regional models, that small plots of sap flux are representative of the transpiration component of regional land-surface atmosphere water vapor interactions. We conducted sap flux measurements in three stands dominated by sugar maple (Acer saccharum Marsh.) representing...

Under conditions of high vapor pressure deficit (VPD) and soil drying, restricting transpiration is an important avenue to gain efficiency in water use. The question we raise in this article is whether breeding for agro-ecological environments that differ for the rainfall have selected for traits that control plant water use. These are measured in pearl millet materials bred for zones varying i...

The effects of four concentrations (25, 50, 75, 100%) of spinach homogenate filtrate over a period of 96 hours on the body mass and transpiration rates of the pulmonate slug Milax rusticus, a crop pest found in Benghazi, Libya, are reported. A decrease in body mass and transpiration rate in filtrate treated slug over time was evident and the differences in these factors between control and trea...