Understanding drought sensitivity of tree species and its intra-specific variation is required to estimate the effects of climate change on forest productivity, carbon sequestration and tree mortality as well as to develop adaptive forest management measures. Here, we studied the variation of drought reaction of six European Abies species and ten provenances of Abies alba planted in the drought...

Three subspecies of Artemisia tridentata occupy distinct habitats in the Great Basin of North America: ssp. wyomingensis in low, arid elevations; ssp. vaseyana in high, mesic elevations; and ssp. tridentata in intermediate zones. We evaluated differences in the drought experienced and drought tolerance among the subspecies. Drought tolerance was measured by two traits: the xylem pressure (Cx) c...

In seasonally dry tropical forest regions, drought avoidance during the dry season coupled with high assimilation rates in the wet season is hypothesized to be an advantageous strategy for forest trees in regions with severe and long dry seasons. In contrast, where dry seasons are milder, drought tolerance coupled with a conservative resource-use strategy is expected to maximize carbon assimila...

Drought stress is the major problem in arid and semi-arid regions of the world. Investigating the response of different cultivars of crop plants to drought stress can help to select the tolerant ones for agriculture in arid lands. In this study, a greenhouse experiment was conducted as a factorial experiment based on completely randomized design with two common bean cultivars (Phaseolus vulgari...

Increases in severity and frequency of drought periods, average global temperatures, and more erratic fluctuations in rainfall patterns due to climate change are predicted to have a dramatic impact on agricultural production systems. Insect pest populations in agricultural and horticultural systems are also expected to be impacted, both in terms of their spatial and temporal distributions and i...

Ecologists and population geneticists have long suspected that the diversity of living organisms was connected to the structure of their environment. In heterogeneous environments, diversifying selection combined to restricted gene flow may indeed lead to locally adapted populations. The freshwater snail, Galba truncatula, is a good model to address this question because it is present in a hete...

Aflatoxins are carcinogenic secondary metabolites produced mainly by Aspergillus flavus during infection of susceptible crops, such as corn. A. flavus infection and subsequent aflatoxin contamination is a serious issue in the southern US, especially during a drought. Field studies demonstrate that reduction of drought stress by irrigation reduces aflatoxin contamination in corn and peanut. Drou...

Mycorrhiza is a symbiotic association between a group of soil fungi called arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and plants. The successful association between plants and AMF constitutes a strategy to improve the nutritional status of both associates, which reduces the use of fertilizers specially phosphorus nutrition (Almagrabi and Abdelmoneim, 2012). The AMF take carbohydrates compounds from their pla...