Smoke-water treatment of seeds, an ancient technique for increasing seed vigor.

Germination is an essential phenomenon in the life cycle of plants, and a variety of external and internal factors influence it. Fire and the produced smoke have been vital environmental stimulants for the germination of seeds in many plant species, like Leucospermum cordifolium and Serruria florida. These plants do not germinate at all if fire and smoke are not present.

Monitoring Indian "Superfood" Moringa oleifera Lam. - species-specific PCR-fingerprint-based authentication for more consumer safety.

Moringa oleifera Lam. has become one of the major new superfoods commonly available in the aisles of bio-shops and health-food sections in supermarkets of North America and Europe. While most of these products appear under the generic and scientifically inconclusive term "Moringa", the European Union, so far, has allowed commercialisation for the use in food and feed for M.

A rice tubulin tyrosine ligase-like 12 protein affects the dynamic and orientation of microtubules.

The detyrosination/retyrosination cycle is the most common post-translational modification of α-tubulin. Removal of the conserved C-terminal tyrosine of α-tubulin by a still elusive tubulin tyrosine carboxypeptidase, and religation of this tyrosine by a tubulin tyrosine ligase (TTL), are probably common to all eukaryotes. Interestingly, for plants, the only candidates qualifying as potential TTL homologs are the tubulin tyrosine ligase-like 12 proteins.

Cellular Base of Mint Allelopathy: Menthone Affects Plant Microtubules.

Plants can use volatiles for remote suppression of competitors. Mints produce essential oils, which are known to affect the growth of other plants. We used a comparative approach to identify allelopathic compounds from different Mints (genus , but also including Cat Mint, , and Corean Mint, , belonging to sisters clades within the ) using the standard cress germination assay as readout.

Ancestral chemotypes of cultivated grapevine with resistance to Botryosphaeriaceae-related dieback allocate metabolism towards bioactive stilbenes.

Grapevine trunk diseases have devastating consequences on vineyards worldwide. European wild grapevines (Vitis vinifera subs. sylvestris) from the last viable population in Germany along the Rhine river showed variable degrees of resistance against Neofusicoccum parvum (strain Bt-67), a fungus associated with Botryosphaeriaceae-related dieback.

Italian weedy rice-A case of de-domestication?

Weedy rice is a representative of the extensive group of feral weeds that derive from crops, but has returned to the lifestyle of a wild species. These weeds develop either from a hybridization of crops with wild relatives (exoferality), or by mutation of crops to weedy forms (endoferality). Due to the close relation of weed and crop, the methods for weed-targeted containment are limited to date.

Product authenticity versus globalisation-The Tulsi case.

Using the Indian medicinal plant Tulsi (Holy Basil) as a case study, we have tested to what extent the discrepancy between vernacular and scientific nomenclature can be resolved, whether the presumed chemical diversity underlying the medicinal use of Tulsi has a genetic component, and whether it is possible to detect this genetic component using genetic barcoding markers. Based on four plastidic markers, we can define several haplotypes within Ocimum that are consistent across these markers. Haplotype II is congruent with O.

Corrigendum: Physiological and Proteomic Analysis of the Rice Mutant Suggests a Negative Regulatory Role of Jasmonic Acid in Drought Tolerance.

[This corrects the article on p. 1903 in vol. 8, PMID: 29250082.

Physiological and Proteomic Analysis of the Rice Mutant Suggests a Negative Regulatory Role of Jasmonic Acid in Drought Tolerance.

It is widely known that numerous adaptive responses of drought-stressed plants are stimulated by chemical messengers known as phytohormones. Jasmonic acid (JA) is one such phytohormone. But there are very few reports revealing its direct implication in drought related responses or its cross-talk with other phytohormones.

Are plants sentient?

Feelings in humans are mental states representing groups of physiological functions that usually have defined behavioural purposes. Feelings, being evolutionarily ancient, are thought to be coordinated in the brain stem of animals. One function of the brain is to prioritise between competing mental states and, thus, groups of physiological functions and in turn behaviour.

The influence of light quality, circadian rhythm, and photoperiod on the CBF-mediated freezing tolerance.

Low temperature adversely affects crop yields by restraining plant growth and productivity. Most temperate plants have the potential to increase their freezing tolerance upon exposure to low but nonfreezing temperatures, a process known as cold acclimation. Various physiological, molecular, and metabolic changes occur during cold acclimation, which suggests that the plant cold stress response is a complex, vital phenomenon that involves more than one pathway.

UV-Induced cell death in plants.

Plants are photosynthetic organisms that depend on sunlight for energy. Plants respond to light through different photoreceptors and show photomorphogenic development. Apart from Photosynthetically Active Radiation (PAR; 400-700 nm), plants are exposed to UV light, which is comprised of UV-C (below 280 nm), UV-B (280-320 nm) and UV-A (320-390 nm).

MKRN expression pattern during embryonic and post-embryonic organogenesis in rice (Oryza sativa L. var. Nipponbare).

Rice MKRN is a member of the makorin RING finger protein gene (MKRN) family, which encodes a protein with a characteristic array of zinc-finger motifs conserved in various eukaryotes. Using non-radioactive in situ hybridization, we investigated the spatio-temporal gene expression pattern of rice MKRN during embryogenesis, imbibition, seminal and lateral root development of Oryza sativa L. var.

A molecular insight into Darwin's "plant brain hypothesis" through expression pattern study of the MKRN gene in plant embryo compared with mouse embryo.

MKRN gene family encodes zinc ring finger proteins characterized by a unique array of motifs (C3H, RING and a characteristic cys-his motif) in eukaryotes. To elucidate the function of the MKRN gene and to draw an analogy between plant root apical meristem and animal brain, we compared the gene expression pattern of MKRN in plant seeds with that of mouse embryo. The spatio-temporal expression of MKRN in seeds of pea and rice was performed using non radioactive mRNA in situ hybridization (NRISH) with DIG and BIOTIN labeled probes for pea and rice embryos respectively.