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Making Better Peanuts
Plant pathologist Hassan Melouk and biologist and peanut breeder Kelly Chenault display a peanut plant they developed that has increased resistance to Sclerotinia blight. Photo by Todd Johnson.
The researchers, with ARS' Wheat, Peanut and Other Field Crops Research Unit, are joining the Oklahoma Peanut Commission and state research and extension professionals in a new, wide-ranging program to produce disease-resistant plants with tasty, fresh and healthful peanuts for consumers. Plant pathologist Hassan Melouk and biologist Kelly Chenault lead the ARS team. As per their research leader, Dave Porter, the new program fortifies and expands the ARS unit's efforts to enhance, through breeding, peanut plants' genetic diversity, and to develop superior peanut products. The new initiative, which was started in response to recent declines in peanut production in southern Plains states, can help growers meet an increasing demand for peanuts through economical, sustainable and environmentally compatible management strategies, as well as spur improved crop production that allows for less pesticide use and greater product value, quality and safety, as per Porter. This united effort will benefit from the continuation of Melouk's work on combining traits of peanut plants that resist diseases with those that boost oleic acid content. Studies have shown that oleic acid-which staves off deterioration and gives peanut products longer shelf life-may promote a lower risk of coronary heart disease......... Posted by: Erica Permalink Source Foiling Gene Found in Grape Plants
The finding came during research led by ARS plant geneticist Peter Cousins on the gene known as N that naturally protects the grape plants against the nematodes. Cousins works at ARS' recently established Grape Genetics Research Unit (GGRU) in Geneva, N.Y Specifically, Cousins and his colleagues studied a type of grape-an accession of Vitis mustangensis called DVIT1842-that fends off a new strain of root-knot nematode that is able to overcome the natural defenses of other grape rootstocks. These aggressive nematodes are putting an economic strain on a number of grape growers, especially in California. Laurie Boyden, a Cornell University doctoral student working with Cousins, made the discovery that the source of DVIT1842's resistance to nematodes wasn't just a variation of the N gene, but was a different gene altogether. As per Boyden, this finding may make it possible to breed both of the nematode-resisting genes into the same rootstock, a strategy that could provide better protection for grapes if the two genes act in different ways or if their interaction makes them more effective......... Posted by: Erica Permalink Source Forget A Better Mousetrap
The study, which appears in the latest issue of the journal Conservation Biology, found that rats and mongoose in the Fiji Islands rarely penetrate the forest interior, preferring instead to forage along the forest edges. The study holds potential good news for species like the pink-billed parrotfinch, banded iguana and Fijian land snails which live deep within Fiji's remaining forests. By using bait stations designed to attract rats and mongoose, the scientists discovered that stations over five kilometers (approximately three miles) from the forest edge were rarely visited. "Protection of the few remaining large blocks of natural forests on Pacific islands may be the most cost-effective approach for conserving a number of rare species threatened by rats and mongooses," said WCS researcher David Olson, lead author of the study. Though the authors are unsure on exactly why rats and mongoose seem to shy away from deep forests, they theorize that natural forests have poorer habitats for reproduction for these invasive species than agricultural areas or secondary forests......... Posted by: Erica Permalink Source Higher Carbon Dioxide, Lack Of Nitrogen Limit Plant Growth
That, in turn, is likely to dampen the ability of plants to offset increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide. "We found that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels may rise even faster than anticipated, because ecosystems likely will not store as much carbon as had been predicted," said Peter Reich of the University of Minnesota, lead author of the study, which was conducted at the National Science Foundation (NSF)'s Cedar Creek Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site in Minn. "As a result, soils will be unable to sustain plant growth over time [as atmospheric carbon dioxide continues to increase]," said plant ecologist David Ellsworth of the University of Michigan. Estimating the role of terrestrial ecosystems as current and future sinks--or storage places--for excess carbon dioxide hinges on an ability to understand the complex interaction between atmospheric carbon dioxide and nitrogen in soils, the researchers believe......... Posted by: Erica Permalink Source Nature Can Help Reduce Greenhouse Gas
The authors, including Bruce Hungate of Northern Arizona University and lead author Kees-Jan van Groenigen of UC Davis, discovered that plants are limited in their impact on global warming because of their dependence on nitrogen and other trace elements. These elements are essential to photosynthesis, whereby plants remove carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, from the air and transfer carbon back into the soil. "What our paper shows is that in order for soils to lock away more carbon as carbon dioxide rises, there has to be quite a bit of extra nitrogen available--far more than what is normally available in most ecosystems," said Hungate of NAU's Merriam-Powell Center for Environmental Research. The paper notes that various plants can pump nitrogen from the air into soils, and some researchers expected rising carbon dioxide to speed up this natural nitrogen pump, providing the nitrogen needed to store soil carbon. However, the research team found that this process, called nitrogen fixation, cannot keep up with increasing carbon dioxide unless other essential nutrients, such as potassium, phosphorus and molybdenum, are added as fertilizers......... Posted by: Erica Permalink Source Complexity Of Tropical Forest Structure
Observed patterns of tree growth, mortality and abundance deviate substantially from the predictions of metabolic ecology theory, particularly for large trees. Variation within and among forests is more consistent with alternative models presented by Muller-Landau and his colleagues, models that can incorporate some of the complex variation in tree shapes, growing conditions, and mortality threats within and among diverse tropical forests......... Posted by: Erica Permalink Source Photo Essay: Cherry Blossoms Bloom in DC
The accompanying National Cherry Blossom Festival is an annual celebration, commemorating the March 27, 1912, gift to the city of 3,000 Japanese cherry trees from Mayor Yukio Ozaki of Tokyo. Mayor Ozaki donated the trees in an effort to enhance the growing friendship between the United States and Japan and also celebrate the continued close relationship between the two peoples......... Posted by: Erica Permalink Source The Future Of Tropical Forests
Woody vines, or lianas, drape dipterocarp trees near the Pasoh forest reserve in peninsular Malaysia. Credit: Chris Wills, UCSD
The authors show that the proportion of potential forest cover remaining correlates with human population density among countries in both the tropics and the temperate zone. They use United Nations population projections and continent-specific relationships between both total and rural population density and forest remaining today to project future tropical forest cover. As per their projections, deforestation rates will decrease as population growth slows, and a much larger area will continue to be forested than prior studies suggest. Tropical forests diminished during repeated Pleistocene glacial events in Africa and more recently in selected areas that supported large prehistoric human populations. "Despite a number of caveats, our projections for forest cover provide hope that a number of tropical forest species will be able to survive the current wave of deforestation and human population growth," stress Wright and Mueller-Landau......... Posted by: Erica Permalink Source Monitoring Plant Health
Funded under the European Commission's FET (Future and Emerging Technologies) initiative of the IST programme, the PLANTS project sought to develop a unique system that linked plants, technology and people to continuously assess the state of crop health. Using sensors, transmitters and specialist software, the system monitors the state of the crop on a plant-by-plant basis, in near real-time. Dr Anthony Morrissey at Tyndall National Institute (Ireland) led the project which included partners from University College Cork (Ireland), Computer Technology Institute (CTI, Greece) and Eden Project Ltd (UK). "You could almost walk away from the crop and let it grow on its own," says Dr Fiona Tooke of the Eden Project, a unique public education facility in the UK's Cornwall region that gathers all the planet's major agricultural systems under a series of spectacular, and immense, plastic domes that function as high tech glasshouses. Eden joined the PLANTS project to help promote, and disseminate the ideas and philosophy behind the project......... Posted by: Erica Permalink Source Respiration Rate Of Sorghum
Because sorghum is a tropical plant originally from Africa, temperatures in the Great Plains are sub-optimal for it during germination, emergence and early seedling growth, said Dr. Bill Payne, Experiment Station crop stress physiology researcher. Increased seedling cold tolerance has many benefits for farmers, includng earlier planting, faster and more uniform emergence and a crop that develops and matures faster, Payne said. Respiration is a metabolic process essential to plant growth, he said. The specialized organelle in plant cells responsible for respiration is the mitochondria. Dr. Maria Balota, an Experiment Station research associate at Bushland who works with Payne, is extracting mitochondria from sorghum plants to pinpoint the basic physiologic processes that could lead to improved performance of sorghum plants under cool conditions. For the past few years, Balota and Payne have grown 50 varieties of sorghum from different regions of the world to test for germination and emergence in a cold environment. "The next step is to identify cold tolerance mechanisms in sorghum," Balota said. "The breeders can use this information to extend sorghum production into the northern regions of the United States and into other regions of the world."........ Posted by: Erica Permalink Source |
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