For many mosquito species, the females must obtain vertebrate blood to complete a gonotrophic cycle. These blood meals are frequently supplemented by feeding on sugary plant nectar, which sustains energy reserves needed for flight, mating, and overall fitness. Our understanding of mosquito nectar foraging behaviors is mostly limited to laboratory experiments and direct field observations, with little research into natural mosquito-host plant relationships done in North America.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFExtreme weather events threaten food security, yet global assessments of impacts caused by crop waterlogging are rare. Here we first develop a paradigm that distils common stress patterns across environments, genotypes and climate horizons. Second, we embed improved process-based understanding into a farming systems model to discern changes in global crop waterlogging under future climates.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWaterlogging is one of the main abiotic stresses severely reducing barley grain yield. Barley breeding programs focusing on waterlogging tolerance require an understanding of genetic loci and alleles in the current germplasm. In this study, 247 worldwide spring barley genotypes grown under controlled field conditions were genotyped with 35,926 SNPs with minor allele frequency (MAF) > 0.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWaterlogging is a major abiotic stress causing oxygen depletion and carbon dioxide accumulation in the rhizosphere. Barley is more susceptible to waterlogging stress than other cereals. To gain a better understanding, the genome-wide gene expression responses in roots of waterlogged barley seedlings of Yerong and Deder2 were analyzed by RNA-Sequencing.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFusarium crown and root rot (FCRR) of asparagus has a complex etiology with several soilborne Fusarium spp. as causal agents. Ninety-three Fusarium isolates, obtained from plant and soil samples collected from commercial asparagus fields in southwestern Ontario with a history of FCRR, were identified as Fusarium oxysporum (65.
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