Action thresholds are traditionally based on the density of pests and the economic damage they cause to crops. Pest damage assessments are usually made in a "sterile" environment, devoid of extenuating factors such as predators, parasitoids, and alternative food sources. Recently, the effects of a predator or parasitoid species have been considered. However, interactions between natural enemy s...

Flower induction in apple (Malus domestica Borkh.) trees plays an important life cycle role, but young trees produce fewer and inferior quality flower buds. Therefore, shoot bending has become an important cultural practice, significantly promoting the capacity to develop more flower buds during the growing seasons. Additionally, microRNAs (miRNAs) play essential roles in plant growth, flower i...

Aims Floral traits are frequently used in traditional plant systematics because of their assumed constancy. One potential reason for the apparent constancy of flower size is that effective pollen transfer between flowers depends on the accuracy of the physical fit between the flower and pollinator. Therefore, flowers are likely to be under stronger stabilizing selection for uniform size than ve...

Objective: Chamomile is one of the commercial medicinal plants produced in Ethiopia. Besides, it is priority crop in national aromatic and medicinal plants research project in the country. As chamomile production affected by production techniques this activity was conducted to identify the effect of seed storage duration and seedling raising methods on its seedling establishmen...

Flowers of Nelumbo nucifera Gaertn, Hibiscus rosa-sinensis L., Calendula officinalis L., Datura metel L., Jasminum sambac L Aiton., Mimusops elengi L., Nyctanthes arbor-tristis L., Saraca asoca (Roxb.) Wilde., Tabernaemontana divaricata (L.) R. Br. ex Roemer and Schultes., and Ixora coccinea L. are very popular for their aesthetic and spiritual appeal. Indigenous treatment systems found these f...

Flower pollination algorithm is a new nature-inspired algorithm, based on the characteristics of flowering plants. In this paper, we extend this flower algorithm to solve multi-objective optimization problems in engineering. By using the weighted sum method with random weights, we show that the proposed multi-objective flower algorithm can accurately find the Pareto fronts for a set of test fun...

The size and number of flowers displayed together on an inflorescence (floral display) influences pollinator attraction and pollen transfer and receipt, and is integral to plant reproductive success and fitness. Life history theory predicts that the evolution of floral display is constrained by trade-offs between the size and number of flowers and inflorescences. Indeed, a trade-off between flo...

Dried flowers and buds of Sophora japonica (Huaihua) are used in China, Japan and Korea for treating haematemesis and bleeding haemorrhoids. This study compared the clinical safety and efficacy of a Sophora flower formula with a placebo for the conservative treatment of symptomatic haemorrhoids. The study was a prospective, double-blind, randomized placebo-controlled trial. The clinical effecti...

The objective of this research is to build an automatic method for recognizing a Thai blooming flower based on minimum distance for finding similarities between each type of Thai blooming flower. The Euclidean distance technique was applied in order to improve performance of retrieval processes. The flower images were acquired from digital cameras which were taken at close range to ignore the b...