BACKGROUND Exploring the residence time of allelochemicals released by plants into different soils, episodic exposure of plants to allelochemicals, and the effects of allelochemicals in the field has the potential to improve our understanding of interactions among plants. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS We conducted experiments in India and the USA to understand the dynamics of soil concentrat...

Yellow starthistle (Centaurea solstitialis L.) (YST) is an important invasive plant that infests millions of hectares in the western USA and Canada. Isolates of the exotic rust fungus Puccinia jaceae have been evaluated as a potential biological control for YST. The objectives of this study were to characterize isolates of P. jaceae by amplified fragment length polymorphic (AFLP) DNA analysis a...

Restoring habitats degraded by intensive agriculture is challenging, and the resulting communities often have lower quality host fewer species than reference ecosystems. To improve restoration outputs, we need to understand what limits both establishment performance of target in restored populations. In this study, focused on grassland with regional seeds compared two herbs, Betonica officinali...

The aerial parts of Centaurea deusta Ten. afforded in addition to several known compounds, mainly sesquiterpene lactones, one new eudesmanolide and one new elemane derivative. Structures of the new compounds were elucidated by spectroscopic methods. The in vitro antifungal and antibacterial activities of the isolated compounds was tested, using the microdilution method. All compounds tested sho...