The grass family (Poaceae) has been the subject of intense research over the past decade. Although other angiosperm families contain more species and more genera, the Poaceae exceed all other families in ecological dominance and economic importance. Research has focused on the evolutionary relationships among grasses as well as the structure of grass genomes. Here I examine the evolutionary dyn...

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...

Under the harsh environmental conditions present in severely overgrazed, semiarid rangelands, facilitator plants offer a promising tool for ecological restoration. This study investigated facilitative effects of Aloe secundiflora—a native drought-tolerant, unpalatable, thorny shrub—on grass establishment in degraded rangelands in Kenya. We planted native perennial grass seeds adjacent to three ...

Herbicide resistance in wild grasses is widespread in the UK, with non-target site resistance (NTSR) to multiple chemistries being particularly problematic in weed control. As a complex trait, NTSR is driven by complex evolutionary pressures and the growing awareness of the role of the phytobiome in plant abiotic stress tolerance, led us to sequence the transcriptomes of herbicide resistant and...

Plant breeders developing cultivars to minimize the hazards of grass tetany are concentrating largely on increasing herbage Mg concentrations in cool-season (C3) grasses. Significant genetic variation has been found for Mg, Ca and K concentrations within C3 grass species studied to date. For most C3 forage grass species, heritability estimates are highest for Mg, slightly lower for Ca and lowes...

Grass is an essential element of natural scenes, which plays an important role in various fields of applications, such as virtual reality, computer games and special effects of movie. Unfortunately, it is still difficult to render and animate grass with interactive frame rates due to the huge number and wide covering range of grass blades. Realistic simulation of dynamic grass field turns to be...

Napier grass is a perennial, tropical C-4 grass that can produce large amounts of forage. However, low temperatures and drought stress limit its productivity and nutritive value as a forage. To overcome these limitations, pearl millet × napier grass hybrids (PMN) were developed. It was hypothesized that PMN hybrids were more drought-tolerant, produced higher yields, and had higher nutritive val...

commended the value of the scale of the project, but cautioned that there are 'lots of unknowns', such as how plants might migrate along it. " We are going to be looking at this for a long time, " he said. The first landowner to buy into the scheme is the Australian Bush Heritage Fund, a non-profit organisation that buys land for conservation with both government funding and private donations. ...

In the Netherlands, butter is produced from milk originating from three different production systems: conventional, organic, and grass-fed cows. The aim of the current study was to characterize these types of butters, and pinpoint distinct compositional differences. Retail conventional (n = 28), organic (n = 14), and grass (n = 12) full-fat butters were collected during the winter and summer se...

Biomass from wetland aquatic grass and buffalo grass can be exploited for biogas production, because this substrate is plenteous and does not compete with food production. In this study, the grass substrate was physically pretreated by boiling with different retention time to increase its biodegradability and was examined in batch mode. Boiling pretreatment suggested that 100 °C with 2 h retent...