Temperate crops cannot grow well in the tropics without rootzone cooling. As cooling increased production costs, this experiment aimed to study the growth of various Lactuca genotypes and propose possible ways of reducing these costs, without compromising productivity. A recombinant inbred line (RIL) of lettuce and its parental lines (L. serriola and L. sativa "Salinas") were grown aeroponicall...

The invasion and spread of exotic plants following land disturbance threatens semiarid ecosystems. In sagebrush steppe, soil water is scarce and is partitioned between deep-rooted perennial shrubs and shallower-rooted native forbs and grasses. Disturbances commonly remove shrubs, leaving grass-dominated communities, and may allow for the exploitation of water resources by the many species of in...

Hybridization and introgression between crops and wild relatives may have important evolutionary and ecological consequences such as gene swamping or increased invasiveness. In the present study, we investigated hybridization under field conditions between crop lettuce (Lactuca sativa) and its wild relative prickly lettuce (L. serriola), two cross-compatible, predominantly autogamous and insect...

nephus (bipunctatus) bipunctatus (kugelann) is a predator of peliococcus kimmericus (kiritshenko) (hem.: pseudococcidae) on lactuca serriola l. in different parts of the fars province, iran. some parasitized larvae of this predaceous ladybird were collected, and two parasitoid wasps, homalotylus flaminius (dalman) and h. sinensis xu & he (hym.: encyrtidae), reared from these larvae in the labor...