Leaf removal is a grapevine canopy management technique widely used to modify the source-sink balance and/or microclimate around berry clusters to optimize fruit composition. In general, the removal of basal leaves before flowering reduces fruit set, hence achieving looser clusters, and improves grape composition since yield is generally curtailed more than proportionally to leaf area itself. A...

Abstract Background Being a promising tropical woody oilseed crop, the evergreen and recurrent plants of Sacha Inchi ( Plukenetia volubilis L.) has complex phenology source–sink interactions. Carbon manipulations with control two treatments (reduce source, ca. 10% mature leaf pruning; reduce sink, fruitlet thinning) were conducted on 2.5-year-old field-grown P. plantation during early-wet seaso...

wheat stem reserves can be an important contributor to grain particularly under decrease in the source strength through defoliation. the aim of this research was to study ability remobilization as important contribution on yield stability under drought conditions and to investigate their intrinsic compensatory mechanism in the wheat cultivars with different degrees of resource limitations under...

in order to investigate of the effects of water stress on seed yield and gas exchange and to evaluate the relationship between source and sink in sunflower azargol variety, a split-plot factorial field experiment was conducted in 2008. in this experiment, water stress (no irrigation from 30 days after sowing till ripening) and irrigation (irrigation at -3 bar soil water potential) were consider...

Loss of photosynthetic area can affect soil microbial communities by altering the availability of fixed carbon. We used denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) and Biolog filamentous-fungus plates to determine the effects of artificial defoliation of pines in a mixed pine-spruce forest on the composition of the fungal community in a forest soil. As measured by DGGE, two fungal species we...

It has been proposed that aridity and grazing are convergent selective forces: each one selects for traits conferring resistance to both. However, this conceptual model has not yet been experimentally validated. The aim of this work was to experimentally evaluate the effect of aridity and grazing, as selective forces, on drought and grazing resistance of populations of Trichloris crinita, a nat...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Allocation of resources to floral traits often declines distally within inflorescences in flowering plants. Architecture and resource competition have been proposed as underlying mechanisms. The aim of the present study is to assess the relative importance of resource competition and architectural effects in pollen and ovule production on racemes of Hosta ventricosa, an apom...

George Tamaki and B. A. Butt. Impact of Perillas Bioculatus on the Colorado Potato Beetle and Plant Damage. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Technical Bulletin 1581, 11 pp. 1978 The potential impact of Perillus bioculatus, a pentatomid predator, on the Colorado potato beetle, Leptinotarsa decemlineata, was evaluated by studying the biology, constructing life tables, and determining the feeding p...

Prosopis denudans, an extreme xerophyte shrub, is consumed by ungulates and threatened by firewood gathering, because it is one of the preferred species used by Mapuche indigenous people of Patagonia. In a scenario of uncontrolled use of vegetation, it is very difficult to develop a conservation plan that jointly protects natural resources and its users. We performed a field experiment to asses...

Aims sex allocation in plants is often plastic, enabling individuals to adjust to variable environments. However, the predicted malebiased sex allocation in response to low resource conditions has rarely been experimentally tested in hermaphroditic plants. in particular, it is unknown whether distal flowers in linear inflorescences show a larger shift to male allocation relative to basal flower...