Initial seedling recruitment is one of the most critical stages for plants in the Mediterranean basin. Moreover, wildfires and post-fire environmental conditions might deteriorate regeneration success, which can lead to problems for sustainable forest restoration and forest persistence. On this context, different seed origins and pine species may be better adapted to new environmental condition...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Studying the genome structure of pines has been hindered by their large genomes and uniform karyotypes. Consequently our understanding of the genome organization and evolutionary changes in different groups of pines is extremely limited. However, techniques are now available that can surmount these difficulties. The purpose of this study was to exploit some of these techniqu...

BACKGROUND Use of antioxidants is a means of reducing rancidity of fats and oils in food stuffs. The commercial synthetic antioxidants in food industry have been suspected to cause negative health effects. Therefore as alternatives, there is a strong need in finding new effective and safe antioxidants from natural sources to prevent deterioration of foods, drugs and cosmetics. OBJECTIVES IN O...

We present here a six-species comparison of tree-ring growth response to extremes (below the 30th and above the 70th percentile) in temperature, precipitation, and corresponding streamflow. The species compared are Pinus edulis (PIED), Pseudotsuga menziesii (PSME), Pinus ponderosa (PIPO), Pinus flexilis (PIFL), Pinus aristata (PIAR), and Picea engelmannii (PCEN). Sensitivity was determined usin...

The Chir Pine, Pinus roxburghii, named after William Roxburgh, is a pine native to the Himalaya. Pinus roxburghii Sarg. (Pinaceae) is traditionally used for several medicinal purposes in India. As the oil of the plant is extensively used in number of herbal preparation for curing inflammatory disorders, the present study was undertaken to assess analgesic and anti-inflammatory activities of its...

Fast and accurate detection of plant species and their hybrids using molecular tools will facilitate the assessment and monitoring of local biodiversity in an era of climate and environmental change. Herein, we evaluate the utility of the plastid trnL marker for species identification applied to Mediterranean pines (Pinus spp.). Our results indicate that trnL is a very sensitive marker for deli...

Ectomycorrhizal fungi (EMF) represent one of the major guilds of symbiotic fungi associated with roots of forest trees, where they function to improve plant nutrition and fitness in exchange for plant carbon. Many groups of EMF exhibit preference or specificity for different plant host genera; a good example is the genus Suillus, which grows in association with the conifer family Pinaceae. We i...