The world population is increasing by 81 million every year and people need more agricultural production to avoid hunger. Despite modern farming methods, where advanced technologies new systems such as soilless agriculture are applied, seems far from meeting the nutritional needs of today or in future. Although phytopathogens, insects weeds, which cause significant yield quality losses products...

Plant protection products which are environment friendly, more selective and with a new mode of action are welcomed to be placed on the market and used. The reasons for the growing demand for new active substances are among others the withdrawals of the old ones due to new, more strict requirements and problems with resistance of harmful organisms against the existing active substances. The pap...

Plant identification is the building brick of plant research and development, and is very important for environmental protection and exploration. Usually, the leaves can be easily obtained from a plant and have sufficient visible characteristics for differentiating between their respective plant species. Plant identification is a huge problem that has escaped into neglect for years. Without vis...

BACKGROUND Restoration of degraded forest ecosystem is crucial for regional sustainable development. To protect the country's fragile and fragmented environment, the Chinese government initiated an ecological engineering project, the Natural Forest Protection Program, in seventeen provinces in China beginning in 1998. Fully hillside-closed forest protection (vegetation restoration naturally wit...

In defensive ant-plant interactions myrmecophytic plants express reduced chemical defense in their leaves to protect themselves from pathogens, and it seems that mutualistic partners are required to make up for this lack of defensive function. Previously, we reported that mutualistic ants confer plants of Acacia hindsii protection from pathogens, and that the protection is given by the ant-asso...

Vegetation is sparsely distributed over Antarctica's ice-free ground, and distinct plant communities are present in each of the continent's 15 recently identified Antarctic Conservation Biogeographic Regions (ACBRs). With rapidly increasing human activity in Antarctica, terrestrial plant communities are at risk of damage or destruction by trampling, overland transport, and infrastructure constr...

Mutualistic interactions between species can strongly affect the structure of ecological communities (Stachowicz, 2001; Bruno et al. 2003; Hay et al., 2004). For example, animal seed dispersal can determine the composition of tropical-tree communities (Terborgh et al., 2008), and pollinator preferences can favor the spread of certain plant species (Chittka and Schürkens, 2001). Protection mutua...

An outbreak of Q fever occurred in February-April 2014 among workers at a waste-sorting plant in Bilbao (Spain). The outbreak affected 58.5% of investigated employees, 47.2% as confirmed cases (PCR and/or serology) and 11.3% as probable cases (symptoms without laboratory confirmation). Only employees who had no-access to the waste processing areas of the plant were not affected and incidence of...