Plants (Basel, Switzerland)

The growing interest in maize landraces over the past two decades has led to the need to characterize the Italian maize germplasm. In Italy, hundreds of maize landraces have been developed, but only a few of them have been genetically characterized, and even fewer are currently employed in agriculture or for breeding purposes. In the present study, 13 maize landraces of the west Emilia-Romagna region were morphologically and genetically characterized. These accessions were sampled in 1954 from three provinces, Modena, Parma, and Piacenza, during the characterization project of Italian maize landraces...

In regions where water is a limited resource, lettuce production can be challenging. To address this, water management strategies like deficit irrigation are used to improve water-use efficiency in agriculture. Associating this strategy with silicon (Si) application could help maintain adequate levels of agricultural production even with limited water availability. Two lettuce crop cycles were conducted in a completely randomized design, with a factorial scheme (2 × 3), with three irrigation levels (60%, 80% and 100%) of crop evapotranspiration (ETc), and with and without Si application...

Tillering directly determines the seed production and propagation capacity of clonal plants. However, the molecular mechanisms involved in the tiller development of clonal plants are still not fully understood. In this study, we conducted a proteome comparison between the tiller buds and stem node of a multiple-tiller mutant mtn1 ( more tillering number 1 ) and a wild type of centipedegrass. The results showed significant increases of 29.03% and 27.89% in the first and secondary tiller numbers, respectively, in the mtn1 mutant compared to the wild type...

Chili pepper ( Capsicum annuum L.) is extensively cultivated in China, with its production highly reliant on regional environmental conditions. Given ongoing climate change, it is imperative to assess its impact on chili pepper cultivation and identify suitable habitats for future cultivation. In this study, the MaxEnt model was optimized and utilized to predict suitable habitats for open-field chili pepper cultivation, and changes in these habitats were analyzed using ArcGIS v10.8. Our results showed that the parameter settings of the optimal model were FC = LQPTH and RM = 2...

Reduced defense against large herbivores has been suggested to be part of the "island syndrome" in plants. However, empirical evidence for this pattern is mixed. In this paper, we present two studies that compare putative physical and chemical defense traits from plants on the California Channel Islands and nearby mainland based on sampling of both field and common garden plants. In the first study, we focus on five pairs of woody shrubs from three island and three mainland locations and find evidence for increased leaf area, decreased marginal leaf spines, and decreased concentrations of cyanogenic glycosides in island plants...

Salt stress significantly impacts the functions of the photosynthetic apparatus, with varying degrees of damage to its components. Photosystem II (PSII) is more sensitive to environmental stresses, including salinity, than photosystem I (PSI). This study investigated the effects of different salinity levels (0 to 200 mM NaCl) on the PSII complex in isolated thylakoid membranes from hydroponically grown pea ( Pisum sativum L.) and maize ( Zea mays L.) plants treated with NaCl for 5 days. The data revealed that salt stress inhibits the photochemical activity of PSII (H2 O → BQ), affecting the energy transfer between the pigment-protein complexes of PSII (as indicated by the fluorescence emission ratio F695 /F685 ), QA reoxidation, and the function of the oxygen-evolving complex (OEC)...

The Australian Wet Tropics World Heritage Area (WTWHA) in northeast Queensland is home to approximately 18 percent of the nation's total vascular plant species. Over the past century, human activity and industrial development have caused global climate changes, posing a severe and irreversible danger to the entire land-based ecosystem, and the WTWHA is no exception. The current average annual temperature of WTWHA in northeast Queensland is 24 °C. However, in the coming years (by 2030), the average annual temperature increase is estimated to be between 0...

Winter sprouting potential and red rot resistance are two key parameters for successful sugarcane breeding in the subtropics. However, the cultivated sugarcane hybrids had a narrow genetic base; hence, the present study was planned to evaluate the Erianthus procerus genome introgressed Saccharum hybrids for their ratooning potential under subtropical climates and red rot tolerance under tropical and subtropical climates. A set of 15 Erianthus procerus derived hybrids confirmed through the 5S rDNA marker, along with five check varieties, were evaluated for agro-morphological, quality, and physiological traits for two years (2018-2019 and 2019-2020) and winter sprouting potential for three years (2018-2019, 2019-2020, and 2020-2021)...

Breeding resistant wheat cultivars to Fusarium head blight (FHB), caused by Fusarium spp., is the best method for controlling the disease. The aim of this study was to estimate general combining ability (GCA) and specific combining ability (SCA) for FHB resistance in a set of eight genetically diverse winter wheat cultivars to identify potential donors of FHB resistance for crossing. FHB resistance of parents and F1 crosses produced by the half diallel scheme was evaluated under the conditions of artificial inoculation with F...

Changes in land-use practices have been a central element of human adaptation to Holocene climate change. Many practices that result in the short-term stabilization of socio-natural systems, however, have longer-term, unanticipated consequences that present cascading challenges for human subsistence strategies and opportunities for subsequent adaptations. Investigating complex sequences of interaction between climate change and human land-use in the past-rather than short-term causes and effects-is therefore essential for understanding processes of adaptation and change, but this approach has been stymied by a lack of suitably-scaled paleoecological data...

Sustainable farming is one of the priority goals of the "4 per 1000" concept with regard to the preservation of soil fertility and carbon sequestration. This paper presents a study on the use of a mixture of cover crops of self-grown oats ( Avena sativa L.) and sown white mustard ( Sinapis alba L.) in organic farming under the agroecological conditions of Serbia. The main objective was to identify sensitive carbon pools (microbial carbon and nitrogen, basal respiration and a number of specific groups of soil microorganisms) in organic farming with and without cover crops...

Several preclinical studies suggest the potential of edible plants in controlling blood sugar levels and stabilizing diet. The goals of the study were to examine, analyze, and describe whether there are chemical compounds in dandelion and burdock roots that could have antidiabetic properties. The 70% ethyl alcohol and lyophilizate extracts (AE and LE, respectively), were used, and analyses were carried out on their total polysaccharide (TP), total phenolic content (TPC), tannin, and inulin. The antioxidant activity of extracts was determined using the DPPH (2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl) assay, and hypoglycemic properties were based on α-amylase activity...

The rapid production of hydrogen peroxide (H2 O2 ) is a hallmark of plants' successful recognition of pathogen infection and plays a crucial role in innate immune signaling. Aquaporins (AQPs) are membrane channels that facilitate the transport of small molecular compounds across cell membranes. In plants, AQPs from the plasma membrane intrinsic protein (PIP) family are utilized for the transport of H2 O2 , thereby regulating various biological processes. Plants contain two PIP families, PIP1s and PIP2s. However, the specific functions and relationships between these subfamilies in plant growth and immunity remain largely unknown...

The plant-specific NAC gene family is one of the largest transcription factor families, participating in plant growth regulation and stress response. Despite extensive characterization in various plants, our knowledge of the NAC family in oat is lacking. Herein, we identified 333 NAC genes from the latest release of the common oat genome. We provide a comprehensive overview of the oat NAC gene family, covering gene structure, chromosomal localization, phylogenetic characteristics, conserved motif compositions, and gene duplications...

Grafting is widely used to improve the resistance to abiotic stresses in cucurbit plants, but the effect and molecular mechanism of grafting on cold stress are still unknown in melon. In this study, phenotypic characteristics, physiological indexes, small-RNA sequencing and expression analyses were performed on grafted plants with pumpkin rootstock (PG) and self-grafted plants (SG) to explore the mechanism of changed cold tolerance by grafting in melon. Compared with SG plants, the cold tolerance was obviously enhanced, the malondialdehyde (MDA) content was significantly decreased and the activities of antioxidant enzymes (superoxide dismutase, SOD; catalase, CAT; peroxidase, POD) were significantly increased in PG plants...

Menthyl ester of valine (MV) has been developed as a plant defense potentiator to induce pest resistance in crops. In this study, we attempted to establish MV hydrochloride (MV-HCl) in lettuce and tomato crops. When MV-HCl solutions were used to treat soil or leaves of potted tomato and lettuce plants, 1 µM MV-HCl solution applied to potted plant soil was most effective in increasing the transcript level of defense genes such as pathogenesis-related 1 ( PR1 ). As a result, leaf damage caused by Spodoptera litura and oviposition by Tetranychus urticae were significantly reduced...

Streams are biodiversity hotspots that provide numerous ecosystem services. Safeguarding this biodiversity is crucial to uphold sustainable ecosystem functioning and to ensure the continuation of these ecosystem services in the future. However, in recent decades, streams have witnessed a disproportionate decline in biodiversity compared to other ecosystems, and are currently considered among the most threatened ecosystems worldwide. This is the result of the combined effect of a multitude of stressors. For freshwater systems in general, these have been classified into five main pressures: water pollution, overexploitation, habitat degradation and destruction, alien invasive species, and hydromorphological pressures...

This study aims to establish an Agrobacterium -mediated transformation system for use with the 'MiniMax'soybean cultivar. MiniMax is a mutant soybean whose growth cycle is around 90 days, half that of most other soybean varieties, making it an optimal model cultivar to test genes of interest before investing in modification of elite lines. We describe an efficient protocol for Agrobacterium -mediated transformation using MiniMax seeds. It uses a modified 'half seed' regeneration protocol for transgenic soybean production, utilizing the rapid generation MiniMax variety to obtain T1 seeds in approximately 145 days...

Plant structure has a large influence on crop yield formation, with branching and plant height being the important factors that make it up. We identified a gene, MtTCP18 , encoding a TEOSINTE BRANCHED1/CYCLOIDEA/PROLIFERATING CELL FACTOR (TCP) transcription factor highly conserved with Arabidopsis gene BRC1 (BRANCHED1) in Medicago truncatula . Sequence analysis revealed that MtTCP18 included a conserved basic helix-loop-helix (BHLH) motif and R domain. Expression analysis showed that MtTCP18 was expressed in all organs examined, with relatively higher expression in pods and axillary buds...

Waterlogging is one of the key abiotic factors that severely impedes the growth and productivity of soybeans on a global scale. To develop soybean cultivars that are tolerant to waterlogging, it is a prerequisite to unravel the mechanisms governing soybean responses to waterlogging. Hence, we explored the morphological, physiological, biochemical, and transcriptional changes in two contrasting soybean introgression lines, A192 (waterlogging tolerant, WT) and A186 (waterlogging sensitive, WS), under waterlogging...