The root endophytic fungus Heteroconium chaetospira was isolated from roots of Chinese cabbage grown in field soil in Japan. This fungus penetrates through the outer epidermal cells of its host, passes into the inner cortex, and grows throughout the cortical cells, including those of the root tip region, without causing apparent pathogenic symptoms. There are no ultrastructural signs of host re...

The influence of organic and conventional farming practices on the content of single nutrients in plants is disputed in the scientific literature. Here, large-scale untargeted LC-MS-based metabolomics was used to compare the composition of white cabbage from organic and conventional agriculture, measuring 1,600 compounds. Cabbage was sampled in 2 years from one conventional and two organic farm...

Research on natural and bioactive compounds is increasingly focused on their effects on human health, but there are unexpectedly few studies evaluating the relationship between climate and natural antioxidants. The aim of this study was analyze the biological role of six different Brassica vegetables (Brassica oleracea L. and Brassica rapa L.) as a natural source of antioxidant compounds. The a...

Cytochrome b(5) is a microsomal protein that functions as an intermediate electron donor in fatty acid desaturation and other oxidation/reduction reactions. cDNA clones were isolated from cauliflower (Brassica oleracea L.) by using oligonucleotides based on the partial amino acid sequence of the protein. The deduced amino acid sequence of the polypeptide exhibited approximately 30% sequence ide...

ATP inactivated plant pyruvate dehydrogenase complex (PDC) from broccoli (Brassica oleracea) mitochondria. ATP inactivation of the complex was time-dependent and proportional to the ATP concentration. Time-dependent incorporation of (32)P from [gamma(32)P]ATP into trichloroacetic acid-precipitable protein corresponded to the inactivation of the PDC. It is concluded that plant PDC is phosphoryla...

A LEAFY cDNA was cloned from the short-day (SD) plant Brassica juncea cv Varuna. (BjLFY) consists of 1261 bp encoding for a protein of 420 amino acids and an estimated isoelectric point of 6.8. The deduced amino acid showed 99% and 86% identity to Arabidopsis thaliana and Brassica oleracea LFY cDNA respectively. The LFY transcript was detected throughout the vegetative and reproductive phase bu...

Farms benefit from pest control services provided by nature, but management of these services requires an understanding of how habitat complexity within and around the farm impacts the relationship between agricultural pests and their enemies. Using cage experiments, this study measures the effect of habitat complexity across scales on pest suppression of the cabbage aphid Brevicoryne brassicae...

The principle of equivalent light action predicts that two light treatments (wavelengths ;lambda(1) and lambda(2)) producing the same Pfr/P ratio (phi(lambda1) = phi(lambda2)) and the same rate of phytochrome photoconversion (k(lambda1) = k(lambda2)) are perceived by phytochrome as being the same and should produce the same effect. The results of experiments based on the principle of equivalent...

The S-locus-specific glycoprotein of Brassica and the gene encoding it (the SLG gene) are thought to be involved in determining self-incompatibility phenotype in this genus. It has been shown that the Brassica genome contains multiple SLG-related sequences. We report here the cloning and characterization of a Brassica oleracea gene, SLR1, which corresponds to one of these SLG-related sequences....