Soil and Leaf Nutrients Drivers on the Chemical Composition of the Essential Oil of (Ruiz & Pav.) A. DC. from Ecuador.

Chemical compositions of plants are affected by the initial nutrient contents in the soil and climatic conditions; thus, we analyzed for the first time the effects of soil and leaf nutrients on the compositions of the essential oils (EOs) of in four different localities in Ecuador. EOs were obtained by hydrodistillation and analyzed by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) and a gas chromatography/flame ionization detector (GC/FID). Enantiomeric distribution by GC/MS was determined, modifying the enantiomeric separation of β-pinene, limonene, δ-elemene, β-bourbonene, cis-cadina-1 (6), 4-diene and atractylone.

Hydrogenotrophic methanogenesis is the dominant methanogenic pathway in neotropical tank bromeliad wetlands.

Several thousands of tank bromeliads per hectare of neotropical forest create a unique wetland ecosystem that emits substantial amounts of CH . Tank bromeliads growing in the forest canopy (functional type-II tank bromeliads) were found to emit more CH than tank bromeliads growing on the forest floor (functional type-I tank bromeliads) but the reasons for this difference and the underlying microbial CH -cycling processes have not been studied. Therefore, we characterized archaeal communities in bromeliad tanks of the two different functional types in a neotropical montane forest of southern Ecuador using terminal-restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) and performed tank-slurry incubations to measure CH production potential, stable carbon isotope fractionation and pathway of CH formation.

Diversity for chemical composition in a collection of different varietal types of tree tomato (Solanum betaceum Cav.), an Andean exotic fruit.

We evaluated 23 tree tomato (Solanum betaceum) accessions from five cultivar groups and one wild relative (Solanum cajanumense) for 26 composition traits. For all traits we found highly significant differences (P<0.001) among the materials studied.