Water quality performance of vegetated compost blankets for highway stormwater management: Particulate matter and trace metals.

Urban stormwater pollution poses serious risks to human and environmental health, including trace metals toxicity. To improve the performance of existing highway Vegetated Filter Strips (VFS), which have limited performance for volume reduction and pollutant removal, amendment with a Vegetated Compost Blanket (VCB), a layer of seeded compost, has been proposed. A novel VCB/VFS system was assessed as a Stormwater Control Measure (SCM) via particulate matter and trace metals removal performance.

Tomato Defenses Under Stress: The Impact of Salinity on Direct Defenses Against Insect Herbivores.

Abiotic stressors, such as salt stress, can reduce crop productivity, and when combined with biotic pressures, such as insect herbivory, can exacerbate yield losses. However, salinity-induced changes to plant quality and defenses can in turn affect insect herbivores feeding on plants. This study investigates how salinity stress in tomato plants (Solanum Lycopersicum cv.

Stomata: gatekeepers of uptake and defense signaling by green leaf volatiles in maize.

Plants adapt to balance growth-defense tradeoffs in response to both biotic and abiotic stresses. Green leaf volatiles (GLVs) are released after biotic and abiotic stresses and function as damage-associated signals in plants. Although, GLVs enter plants primarily through stomata, the role of stomatal regulation on the kinetics of GLV uptake remains largely unknown.

Stomatal closure prevents xylem transport of green leaf volatiles and impairs their systemic function in plants.

Plants perceive environmental stresses as whole organisms via distant signals conveying danger messages through their vasculature. In parallel to vascular transport, airborne plant volatile compounds, including green leaf volatiles (GLVs), can bypass the lack of vascular connection. However, some small volatile compounds move through the vasculature; such vascular transport is little known about GLVs.