Plant domestication can have negative consequences for defensive traits against herbivores, potentially reducing the levels of chemical defenses in plants and consequently their resistance against herbivores. We characterized and quantified the defensive flavonols from multiple cultivated ecotypes with wild ancestors of murtilla, Ugni molinae Turcz, an endemic plant from Chile, at different tim...

Plant infestation, stem borer density, parasitism, and parasitoid abundance were assessed during two years in two host plants, Zea mays (L.) (Cyperales: Poaceae) and Sorghum bicolor (L.) (Cyperales: Poaceae), in cultivated habitats. The four major host plants (Cyperus spp., Panicum spp., Pennisetum spp., and Sorghum spp.) found in natural habitats were also assessed, and both the cultivated and...

For rare plants, self-pollination and inbreeding can increase in small populations, while unusual levels of outcrossing can occur through restoration efforts. To study both inbreeding and outcrossing, we performed experimental pollinations using Panax quinquefolius (American ginseng), a wild-harvested plant with a mixed mating system. For inbreeding, plants were either cross-pollinated within t...

The use of non-cultivated plants in a daily diet based on local cuisines is potentially of considerable interest to nutritional scientists, because of the plants' role as local products and their potential as sources of novel nutraceuticals. In many Mediterranean regions these traditions are at risk of disappearing, hence the urgent need to study such knowledge systems. Accordingly, an ethnobot...

When the famous Russian botanist Nikolya Vavilov outlined the major regions of the world that had given man most of his principal cultivated plants, he did not include the Amazon Valley. Nor did his nineteenthcentury predecessor Alphonse De Candolle, the pioneer in the field of phytogeographic study, look to the Amazon as the source of important cultivated plants. Since the exploratory work of ...