The adoption of pest-resistant transgenic plants to reduce yield loss and pesticide utilization has been successful in the past three decades. Recently, transgenic plant expressing double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) targeting pest genes emerges as a promising strategy for improving pest resistance in crops. The steroid hormone, 20-hydroxyecdysone (20E), predominately controls insect molting via its nu...

Plants under herbivore attack emit volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that can serve as foraging cues for natural enemies. Adult females of Lepidoptera, when foraging for host plants to deposit eggs, are commonly repelled by herbivore-induced VOCs, probably to avoid competition and natural enemies. Their larval stages, on the other hand, have been shown to be attracted to inducible VOCs. We spec...

Background: Consumer demand for organic spelt wheat has increased rapidly and production expanded into semi-arid regions, where it was not traditionally grown. Methods: Here, we report the results of a factorial field experiment designed to compare performance four varieties grown in rain-fed irrigated, conventional systems environment. Results: Irrigation resulted 2.5-fold higher grain yields,...

Herbivory can aff ect plant community composition and diversity by removing biomass and reducing light competition. Herbivory may particularly benefi t low growing species such as bryophytes, which are frequently limited by light competition. Gastropods are important herbivores of seed plants and cryptogams, furthermore, they can disperse propagules such as seeds and spores via endozoochory. Ho...

nickel (ni) is one of the essential micronutrients for higher plants and its known function is beingthe metal component of urease. the effects of various ni levels on urease activity in maize (zea maize l.)plants grown in two nutrient media containing urea or ammonium nitrate as two separate nitrogen sourceswere investigated. the experiments were performed as completely randomized blocks with t...

Aquatic plants have attracted attention in recent years because of the unexpected presence of CAM (e.g. Keeley 1981; Richardson et al. 1984) and C4 (Bowes & Salvucci 1984; Spencer, Wetzel & Teeri 1996; Reiskind et al. 1997; Keeley 1998a) photosynthetic pathways. Indeed, it now appears that the aquatic environment is home to as great a diversity of photosynthetic pathways as terrestrial environm...

Arabidopsis thaliana (L.) Heynh. genotypes limited in their ability to mount either octadecanoid-dependent induced resistance (IR(-)) or systemic acquired resistance (SAR(-)) were used to characterize the roles of these pathways in plant-herbivore interactions. Molecular and biochemical markers of IR were analysed in plants subject to herbivory by caterpillars of the beet armyworm, Spodoptera e...

Objective: Several diseases are reported to be uncommon in those parts of the world where dietary fiber intakes are high, therefore, in this study; we evaluated the hypocholesterolemiceffects of a dietary fiber (guar gum) in hypercholesteromic rats. Materials and Methods: Rats were fed high-fat or a normal fed diet for 12-week then treated with 5% guar gum in their regime during a 28 days peri...