Search results for "Plant"
showing 10 items of 11944 documents
Autotetraploid Emergence via Somatic Embryogenesis in Vitis vinifera Induces Marked Morphological Changes in Shoots, Mature Leaves, and Stomata
2021
Polyploidy plays an important role in plant adaptation to biotic and abiotic stresses. Alterations of the ploidy in grapevine plants regenerated via somatic embryogenesis (SE) may provide a source of genetic variability useful for the improvement of agronomic characteristics of crops. In the grapevine, the SE induction process may cause ploidy changes without alterations in DNA profile. In the present research, tetraploid plants were observed for 9.3% of ‘Frappato’ grapevine somatic embryos regenerated in medium supplemented with the growth regulators β-naphthoxyacetic acid (10 µM) and N6-benzylaminopurine (4.4 µM). Autotetraploid plants regenerated via SE without detectable changes in the …
Maritime Pine Pinus Pinaster Aiton
2018
Maritime pine (Pinus pinaster Aiton) is the most abundant conifer in the Mediterranean basin. Currently, maritime pine is considered to be a model conifer species for study of the adaption responses to drought stress from a genomics approach. In this context, the availability of protocols that allow not only mass vegetative propagation of selected families or genotypes, but also facilitate the functional analyses needed to verify and further to study the effects of candidate genes are necessary. Here we describe an improved protocol to generate maritime pine plants through somatic embryogenesis from immature megagametophytes. Accurate procedures for explant preparation, somatic embryo induc…
Oxygen Availability during Growth Modulates the Phytochemical Profile and the Chemo-Protective Properties of Spinach Juice.
2018
Fruits and vegetables are a good source of potentially biologically active compounds. Their regular consumption in the human diet can help reduce the risk of developing chronic diseases such as cardiovascular diseases and cancer. Plants produce additional chemical substances when subject to abiotic stress or infected by microorganisms. The phytochemical profile of spinach leaves (Spinacia oleracea L.), which is a vegetable with widely recognized health-promoting activity, has been affected by applying root hypoxic and re-oxygenation stress during plant growth. Leaf juice at different sampling times has been subject to liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (LC-MSn) analysis and tested on t…
Homozygote Depression in Gamete-Derived Dragon-Fruit (Hylocereus) Lines
2018
Putative gamete-derived progenies from two Hylocereus species, the diploid H. monacanthus and the tetraploid H. megalanthus, were studied with the dual aims to confirm their gamete origin and to evaluate their potential use as genetic resources. An additional goal was to determine the origin (allotetraploid vs. autotetraploid) of H. megalanthus by exploring morphological variations in the di-haploid (2x) H. megalanthus progeny. Gamete origin was proved in all five H. monacanthus lines obtained and in 49 of the 70 H. megalanthus lines by using flow cytometry and simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers. The five double-haploid (2x) H. monacanthus lines showed low vigor and abnormal flower develo…
Infestation of broad bean (Vicia faba) by the green stink bug (Nezara viridula) decreases shoot abscisic acid contents under well-watered and drought…
2017
The response of broad bean (Vicia faba) plants to water stress alone and in combination with green stink bug (Nezara viridula) infestation was investigated through measurement of: (1) leaf gas exchange; (2) plant hormone titres of abscisic acid (ABA) and its metabolites, and of salicylic acid (SA); and (3) hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) content. Furthermore, we evaluated the effects of experimentally water-stressed broad-bean plants on N. viridula performance in terms of adult host–plant preference, and nymph growth and survival. Water stress significantly reduced both photosynthesis (A) and stomatal conductance (gs), while infestation by the green stink bug had no effects on photosynthesis but s…
Modelling nonlinear dynamics of Crassulacean acid metabolism productivity and water use for global predictions
2021
Crassulacean acid metabolism (CAM) crops are important agricultural commodities in water-limited environments across the globe, yet modeling of CAM productivity lacks the sophistication of widely used C3 and C4 crop models, in part due to the complex responses of the CAM cycle to environmental conditions. This work builds on recent advances in CAM modeling to provide a framework for estimating CAM biomass yield and water use efficiency from basic principles. These advances, which integrate the CAM circadian rhythm with established models of carbon fixation, stomatal conductance, and the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum, are coupled to models of light attenuation, plant respiration, and bioma…
Physio-morphological traits and drought stress responses in three wild Mediterranean taxa of Brassicaceae
2019
Crop wild relatives (CWRs) have extremely relevant roles in biodiversity conservation, in investigating phylogeny and improving abiotic stress tolerance of crop plants. We screened the variability in leaf functional traits of three CWRs of kale crops (Brassica oleracea) from Sicily, Italy, grown in pots under well-watered and drought conditions. Our aim was to highlight traits in the different genotypes of endemic Sicilian threatened taxa. We measured several structural/anatomical traits (stomatal size, density and stomatal pore index—SPI, leaf mass per area—LMA) and leaf functional traits (stomatal conductance—gs, leaf water potential—ΨL, leaf temperature (TL), leaf relative water content—…
Molecular Responses to Small Regulating Molecules against Huanglongbing Disease
2016
Huanglongbing (HLB; citrus greening) is the most devastating disease of citrus worldwide. No cure is yet available for this disease and infected trees generally decline after several months. Disease management depends on early detection of symptoms and chemical control of insect vectors. In this work, different combinations of organic compounds were tested for the ability to modulate citrus molecular responses to HLB disease beneficially. Three small-molecule regulating compounds were tested: 1) L-arginine, 2) 6-benzyl-adenine combined with gibberellins, and 3) sucrose combined with atrazine. Each treatment contained K-phite mineral solution and was tested at two different concentrations. T…
Identification of Putative Interactors of Arabidopsis Sugar Transporters
2020
International audience; Hexoses and disaccharides are the key carbon sources for essentially all physiological processes across kingdoms. In plants, sucrose, and in some cases raffinose and stachyose, are transported from the site of synthesis in leaves, the sources, to all other organs that depend on import, the sinks. Sugars also play key roles in interactions with beneficial and pathogenic microbes. Sugar transport is mediated by transport proteins that fall into super-families. Sugar transporter (ST) activity is tuned at different levels, including transcriptional and posttranslational levels. Understanding the ST interactome has a great potential to uncover important players in biologi…
In Vitro Rooting of Capparis spinosa L. as Affected by Genotype and by the Proliferation Method Adopted During the Multiplication Phase
2020
The in vitro rooting of three caper (Capparis spinosa L.) selected biotypes, grown in a commercial orchard on the Sicilian island of Salina (38°