Origins and Dispersal of Cultivated Vanilla (Vanilla planifolia Jacks. [Orchidaceae]). Vanilla is a clonally propagated crop originating from Mesoamerica. Information regarding the circumstances under which vanilla cultivation began is incomplete. Presumably, the Totonac people of Papantla (north-central Veracruz, Mexico) were the earliest to cultivate vanilla; however, the oldest reports of va...

Cultivated land resources are an important basis of regional sustainability; thus, it is important to determine the distribution of the cultivated land in the Northeast Asia trans-boundary area of China, Russia and Mongolia, which has a continuous geographic and ecological environment and an uneven population distribution. Extracting information about the cultivated land and determining the spa...

Aflatoxins are cancer-causing, immuno-suppressive mycotoxins that frequently contaminate important staples in Zambia including maize and groundnut. Several species within Aspergillus section Flavi have been implicated as causal agents of aflatoxin contamination in Africa. However, Aspergillus populations associated with aflatoxin contamination in Zambia have not been adequately detailed. Most o...

In China there is a growing debate on the role of cultivated land conversion on food security. This paper uses satellite images to examine the changes of the area of cultivated land and its potential agricultural productivity in China. We find that between 1986 and 2000 China recorded a net increase of cultivated land (+1.9%), which almost offset the decrease in average potential productivity, ...

With rapid and continuous population growth and the associated declining quality of cultivated land, food security in China has been attracting the attention of scholars both domestically and internationally. In recent decades, the implications of the cultivated land balance policy have promoted spatial changes of cultivated land. Estimating the agricultural potential productivity and assessing...

Microbeam studies over the past decade have garnered unique insight into manganese (Mn) homeostasis in plant species that hyperaccumulate this essential mineral micronutrient. Electron- and/or proton-probe methodologies employed to examine tissue elemental distributions have proven highly effective in illuminating excess foliar Mn disposal strategies, some apparently unique to Mn hyperaccumulat...

Phytoremediation, the use of plants and their associated microbes to remedy contaminated soils, sediments, and groundwater, is emerging as a cost-effective and environmentally friendly technology. Due in large part to its aesthetic appeal, this technology has gained increasing attention over the past 10 years. Phytoremediation uses different plant processes and mechanisms normally involved in t...

Hyperaccumulators tolerate and accumulate extraordinarily high concentrations of heavy metals. Content of the metal chelator nicotianamine (NA) in the root of zinc hyperaccumulator Arabidopsis halleri is elevated compared with nonhyperaccumulators, a trait that is considered to be one of the markers of a hyperaccumulator. Using metabolite-profiling analysis of root secretions, we found that exc...

Two arsenic-accumulating Pteris ferns (Pteris cretica mayii and Pteris multifida), along with a non-accumulating control fern (Nephrolepis exaltata) were grown in greenhouse conditions in clean sand spiked with 0, 20, 50, 100 and 200 ppm sodium arsenate. Spectral data were collected for each of five replicates prior to harvest at 4-week intervals. Fern samples were analyzed for total metals con...