Biochar (BC) application to agricultural soils could potentially sequester recalcitrant C, increase N retention, increase water holding capacity, and decrease greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Biochar addition to soils can alter soil N cycling and in some cases decrease extractable mineral N (NO and NH) and NO emissions. These benefits are not uniformly observed across varying soil types, N ferti...

Agriculture in the humid tropics is mostly limited by low soil fertility and invasion of weeds. The nutrient retention capacity of most soils is low and applied mineral fertilizers are rapidly leached into subsoil. Small farmers can not afford continuous mineral fertilizer input to compensate for the losses. Hence the dominating agricultural praxis is shifting cultivation accompanied with slash...

The mean volume of pollen grains and total pollen production varied both within and among plants of Erythronium grandiflorum. The second flowers of two-flowered plants tended to produce smaller and fewer grains than first flowers, but there was no overall relationship between mean pollen grain size and production per flower. I evaluated the effects of pollen size differences within and among pl...

Patatin, the major glycoprotein in potato tubers, is encoded by a multigene family. RNA and protein analyses reveal that a homologous mRNA and an immunologically cross-reacting protein can be found in potato flowers, which is similar to patatin in that it displays a lipid acyl hydrolase activity. The patatin-like protein found in flowers has a higher molecular weight than the authentic tuber pa...

Senescence of carnation flowers is characterized by autocatalytic ethylene production from petals and subsequent wilting of the petals. Recent studies on the regulation of ethylene production and wilting in senescing carnation petals revealed that (1) petal senescence is triggered by ethylene evolved from the gynoecium during natural senescence, (2) ethylene production in the gynoecium is induc...

Flower senescence is initiated by developmental and environmental signals, and regulated by gene transcription. A homeodomain-leucine zipper transcription factor, PhHD-Zip, is up-regulated during petunia flower senescence. Virus-induced gene silencing of PhHD-Zip extended flower life by 20% both in unpollinated and pollinated flowers. Silencing PhHD-Zip also dramatically reduced ethylene produc...

The different forms of flowers in a species have attracted the attention of many evolutionary biologists, including Charles Darwin. In Fagopyrum esculentum (common buckwheat), the occurrence of dimorphic flowers, namely short-styled and long-styled flowers, is associated with a type of self-incompatibility (SI) called heteromorphic SI. The floral morphology and intra-morph incompatibility are b...

the zinnia (zinnia elegans j.) flower has many applications in landscape design, whereas lack of adequate conditions and nutritions in some cases can reduce the quality and number of flowers. therefore, control of growth conditions is very important related to nutrition and application of growth regulators to improve the quality and quantity of flowers. flower's morphology and longevity are two...

Carnation (Dianthus caryophyllus L.) cv. Yellow Candy flowers were treated with ethanol solution (4%) in the absence or presence of 1 or 10 mM L-methionine, or ethanol or acetaldehyde solution (0.05%), in the absence or presence of 1 mM aminocyclopropane carboxylic acid (ACC). Spermidine in petals was measured over time in flowers treated with 4% ethanol or distilled water. Ethanol treatment si...