Recent studies suggest that plant pectin methylesterases (PMEs) are directly involved in plant defence besides their roles in plant development. However, the molecular mechanisms of PME action on pectins are not well understood. In order to understand how PMEs modify pectins during banana (Musa spp.)-Fusarium interaction, the expression and enzyme activities of PMEs in two banana cultivars, hig...

The effects of cultivar mixture cropping on yield, biomass, and water use efficiency (WUE) in winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) were investigated under non-irrigation (W0, no irrigation during growth stage), one time irrigation (W1, irrigation applied at stem elongation) and two times irrigation (W2, irrigation applied at stem elongation and anthesis) conditions. Nearly 90% of cultivar mixtur...

BACKGROUND Hyperspectral reflectance and transmittance sensing as well as near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy were investigated as non-destructive tools for estimating blueberry firmness, elastic modulus and soluble solid content (SSC). Least squares-support vector machine models were established from these three spectra based on samples from three cultivars viz. Bluecrop, Duke and M2 and two harv...

The toxic effects of the Fusarium graminearum trichothecene toxin deoxynivalenol were determined on ribosomes and leaf tissues of the fusarium head blight-resistant spring wheat cultivar Frontana and the susceptible spring wheat cultivar Casavant. The use of a poly-U-directed 14C-phenylalanine and deoxynivalenol ribosome-binding assays provided evidence of resistance to the protein-synthesis in...

Torenia is an annual plant of the family Scrophulariaceae that is used as an ornamental summer bedding plant. Torenia is also an experimental plant with several useful characteristics, i.e., ease of genetic transformation, ability to differentiate adventitious structures, protruding embryo sac, and capacity for in vitro flowering. Genetic transformation of torenia was first reported in 1995, an...

Chrysanthemum stunt viroid (CSVd) was inoculated into two chrysanthemum (Chrysanthemum morifolium) cultivars, the CSVd-susceptible cultivar Piato and the CSVd-resistant cultivar Mari Kazaguruma. For CSVd inoculation, grafting and Agrobacterium-mediated inoculation were used. In grafting experiments, CSVd was detectable in Mari Kazaguruma after grafting onto infected Piato, but after removal of ...

Fungi in the genus Escovopsis are known only from the fungus gardens of attine ants. Previous work has established that these anamorphic fungi, allied with the Hypocreales, are specialized and potentially virulent parasites of the ancient mutualism between attine ants and their fungal cultivars. It is unclear whether the primary nutrient source for the pathogen is the mutualist fungal cultivar ...

A two-level atom interacting with a single radiation mode is considered, without the rotating-wave approximation, in the strong coupling regime. It is shown that, in agreement with the recent results on Rabi flopping in a Josephson junction (Y. Nakamura, Yu. A. Pashkin and J. S. Tsai, to appear in Phys. Rev. Lett.), the Rabi frequency is indeed proportional to first kind integer order Bessel fu...

All-solid-state strong light-matter coupling systems with large vacuum Rabi splitting are great important for quantum information application, such as quantum manipulation, quantum information storage and processing. The monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) have been explored as excellent candidates for the strong light-matter interaction, due to their extraordinary exciton binding...

We demonstrate strong coupling between a surface plasmon and intersublevel transitions in self-assembled InAs quantum dots. The surface plasmon mode exists at the interface between the semiconductor emitter structure and a periodic array of holes perforating a metallic Pd/Ge/Au film that also serves as the top electrical contact for the emitters. Spectrally narrowed quantum-dot electroluminesce...