Calendula officinalis (Marigold) was characterized in respect to its chemical composition, antioxidant potential and antimicrobial activities. Five compounds were identified and quantified by LC/MS and HPLC in leaves and flowers of aqueous-methanolic extracts. Total flavonoids ranged between 44.91 and 76.44 mg QE/g dry weight in leaf and flower extracts, respectively. Rutin, quercetin-3-O-gluco...

The transcription factor LEAFY is a master regulator of flowering and of flower development. It acts as a component of a switch that mediates the transition from the vegetative to the reproductive phase of plant development. Auxin is a plant hormone with many different roles in plant growth, including the induction of new primordia of both leaves and flowers at the shoot apex. We report that LE...

Pollination is a key ecosystem service, and appropriate management, particularly in agricultural systems, is essential to maintain a diversity of pollinator guilds. However, management recommendations frequently focus on maintaining plant communities, with the assumption that associated invertebrate populations will be sustained. We tested whether plant community, flower resources, and soil moi...

The study of plant growth and development has long relied on experimental techniques using dead, fixed tissues and lacking proper cellular resolution. Recent advances in confocal microscopy, combined with the development of numerous fluorophores, have overcome these issues and opened the possibility to study the expression of several genes simultaneously, with a good cellular resolution, in liv...

In order to study gene expression in a reproductive organ, we constructed a cDNA library of mature flower buds in Lotus japonicus, and characterized expressed sequence tags (ESTs) of 842 clones randomly selected. The EST sequences were clustered into 718 non-redundant groups. From BLAST and FASTA search analyses of both protein and DNA databases, 58.5% of the EST groups showed significant seque...

a pot experiment was carried out to determine the effect of foliage spraying of silicon (si) on growth and ornamental characteristics of calendula grown under salt stress and greenhouse conditions. a factorial experiment based on completely randomized design was conducted with 3 levels of si (0, 50 and 100 mg/l) and 3 levels of nacl (0, 100 and 200 mm) with 4 replications. at flowering stage, s...

Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi can be beneficial for horticultural crops due to their nutrient acquisition properties and stimulation of the plant metabolism. The present work focuses on the prospects of AM fungi a) to solve plant nutritional problems, b) to induce flower development of ornamental plants, and c) to improve the health potential of crop plants for humans. Contribution of AM fu...