Three subfamilies of grasses, the Ehrhartoideae, Panicoideae and Pooideae, provide the bulk of human nutrition and are poised to become major sources of renewable energy. Here we describe the genome sequence of the wild grass Brachypodium distachyon (Brachypodium), which is, to our knowledge, the first member of the Pooideae subfamily to be sequenced. Comparison of the Brachypodium, rice and so...

Exposure and ecological risks to heavy metals (copper, zinc, manganese, iron) at Lochnivar and Blue Lagoon National Parks in wildlife dependent on the Kafue river contaminated with mining waste was evaluated. Samples included water, fish, grasses and Kafue Lechwe (Kobus leche kafuensis) liver. At both parks copper ranged from 0.03-0.04 mg/l; 3.0-6.0 mg/kg; 11.0-44.0 mg/kg; trace -199.0 mg/kg; w...

Grasses are the single most important plant family in agriculture. In the past years, comparative genetic mapping has revealed conserved gene order (colinearity) among many grass species. Recently, the first studies at gene level have demonstrated that microcolinearity of genes is less conserved: small scale rearrangements and deletions complicate the microcolinearity between closely related sp...

Alkaloids produced by systemic fungal endophytes of grasses are thought to act as defensive agents against herbivores. Endophytic alkaloids may reduce arthropod herbivore abundances and diversity in agronomic grasses. Yet, accumulating evidence, particularly from native grasses, shows that herbivore preference, abundances and species richness are sometimes greater on endophyte-infected plants, ...

in the present study basal area and importance value index (ivi) attributes of herbage were investigated in chir pine (pinus roxburghii sargent) stands of three different ages and also in open grassland in the sub-tropical region of himachal pradesh (india) during growing season (june to september). a higher basal area of the herbage was recorded in open grassland as compared to chir pine stand...

Native grasses interact spatially with themselves and their environment and can therefore be thought of as a system of dependent random variables. One method of modeling the spatial dependence of a multi-species population is a Gibbsian pairwise potential model. Since natural selection operates at the level of individual plants, the information obtained from such a model should provide a greate...

Weed control efficacy of three herbicides recently registered for use in the South African Sugar Industry is discussed and the phytotoxic effects on sugarcane are presented. Destun, with or without atrazine, is a safe pre-emergence treatment which is useful for the control of Cyperus esculentus, grasses and broadleaf weeds, while some activity on Cyperus rotundus has also been recorded. Dual + ...

In the past and now most of the developments in conventional agriculture have concentrate on major grasses with little attention to the minor, underutilized grasses and as yet undeveloped grasses of livestock. Many underutilized grass species are being lost each day and more of which have unknown potential will be lost. The present study is undertaken to carry out the nutrient content of twenty...

Three subfamilies of grasses, the Ehrhartoideae, Panicoideae and Pooideae, provide the bulk of human nutrition and are poised to become major sources of renewable energy. Here we describe the genome sequence of the wild grass Brachypodium distachyon (Brachypodium), which is, to our knowledge, the first member of the Pooideae subfamily to be sequenced. Comparison of the Brachypodium, rice and so...

The web program GeMprospector (URL: http://cgi-www.daimi.au.dk/cgi-chili/GeMprospector/main) allows users to automatically design large sets of cross-species genetic marker candidates targeting either legumes or grasses. The user uploads a collection of ESTs from one or more legume or grass species, and they are compared with a database of clusters of homologous EST and genomic sequences from o...