root in Biological News

Restoring a natural root signal helps to fight a major corn pest

... larvae of the Western corn rootworm, a voracious root pest. In field tests, the enhanced nematode attraction resulted in reduced root damage and considerably fewer surviving ... Germany. The corn rootworm larvae feed on root hairs and bore themselves into the maize roots. ...

Hormone clue to root growth

... that the plant hormone gibberellin controls how root cells elongate as the root grows in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. ... hormone also regulates the number of cells in the root in order to ...

Getting to the root of science in a nutty way

... sustainable way. "There have been very little root research efforts," said Lombardini who is teamed ... are planted bare root, that is with not much root system," Lombardini said. "The camera turns to ... in June will give an indication of first-year root growth. "If we can see when various roots of ...

Tree survival skills

... are dug prior to transport, the majority of the root system is often separated from the tree. After ... shock and vibration that can further disrupt the root system and cause considerable injury. As if ... the scientists said. Effects of water stress, root severance, and root-ball disruption on twig ...

Historical increase in corn yield -- it's in the roots

... in the U.S. Corn Belt, and have found that the root structure may be the key to understanding how ... some studies have also shown that changes in the root system also have an effect, as newer hybrids ... evidence suggesting that hybrids with narrower root angle have this capability. It is also plausible ...

Long-term study of orchard ground cover management systems

... inorganic, and geotextile mulch. Although root systems play an important role in tree growth and ... known about differential GMS effects on orchard root growth and distribution. Researchers Shengrui ... coauthored a study that compared apple root density and ...

Does hotter mean healthier?

... was conducted by observing infection on both the root and fruit of different varieties of peppers ... slower on fruit of all other cultivars. As the root of the plant contains no heat-inducing agents but the fruit does, the slow development on the root and rapid development on the fruit of the jalapeo ...

Root system architecture arises from coupling cell shape to auxin transport

... network of roots. What determines the pattern of root growth has been a mystery, but a new paper ... Biology shows that the shape of the existing root can determine how further roots branch from it ... Hofhuis, et al, explores the architecture of the root system of the model organism Arabidopsis ...

Root system architecture arises from coupling cell shape to auxin transport

... network of roots. What determines the pattern of root growth has been a mystery, but a new paper ... Biology shows that the shape of the existing root can determine how further roots branch from it ... Hofhuis, et al, explores the architecture of the root system of the model organism Arabidopsis ...

More food at lower cost

... Biology , has shown how to increase the length of root hairs on plants, potentially improving crop yields, as plants with longer root hairs take up minerals and water more ... and lead author on the paper, said: "Each root hair is a single, elongate cell and the length of ...

Surface-level ozone pollution set to reduce tree growth 10 percent by 2100

... biomass, and all component parts such as leaf, root and shoot, lost due to ozone pollution," said Dr. ... pollution than conifers, such as pines, and that root growth is suppressed more than aboveground ... over broad-leaved trees, and that the decrease in root size will increase the vulnerability to storms," ...

Bacteria manage perfume oil production from grass

... Scientists in Italy have found bacteria in the root of a tropical grass whose oils have been used in ... antimicrobial and antioxidant. Studying the root of the tropical Vetiver grass through ... Maffei and their colleagues found that Vetiver root cells produce a few oil precursors, which are ...

Origin of root offshoots revealed

... the substance that governs the formation of root offshoots in plants, and how it works. root offshoots are vitally important for plants and ... Because they do this best with a well-branched root system, plants must form offshoots of their roots ...

How to build crops that can beat aluminum's toxic effects

... of just one factor results in a mutant root that can now thrive in an Al toxic environment," ... engineering crop plants incapable of restricting root growth in response to Al toxicity, Larsen said. ... division in soils that would normally inhibit root growth. The new results may offer insight ...

UC Riverside biochemists devise method for bypassing aluminum toxicity effects in plants

... toxicity, a global agricultural problem, halts root growth in plants, severely limiting agricultural ... is that aluminum binds to several targets in the root system, blocking cell division, damaging DNA, and ... understanding of how aluminum toxicity inhibits root growth," said Leon Kochian , a professor of ...

US Air Force technology helps scientists understand plant root function

... of small-scale spatial and temporal variations in root water uptake. A single root water uptake experiment with a corn (Zea mays L.) ... soil. Unlike traditional methods for studying root systems, which are destructive, tedious, and ...

Getting to the root of the matter

... tree, tasty crop, and dazzling ornamental lies a root system that makes it all possible. Roots provide ... and industrial applications, and their use in root research requires new measurement procedures and ... able to successfully obtain images of growing root systems and were able to observe water uptake ...

Tel Aviv University researchers root out new and efficient crop plants

... turns the problem upside-down, getting to the root of the issue. They are genetically modifying plants' root systems to improve their ability to find the water essential to their survival. The root Cause of Wasting Water When it comes to ...

The emerging story of plant roots

... Lateral roots originate deep within the parent root and must emerge through intervening layers of ... to the integrity and architecture of the root system, little is known about the regulation of lateral root emergence. This question has fascinated, yet ...

A common genetic mechanism discovered in nitrogen-fixing plants

... Rhizobium type bacteria which are essential for root nodule formation. The actinorhizal plants make ... of these plants ability to form symbiotic root nodules with that of control plants showed that ... SymRK gene expression produced only half as many root nodules as the controls. The same modified ...

Secrets of cooperation between trees and fungi revealed

... specialized micro-organisms occur in their root systems. One such organism is the Laccaria ... symbiotic relationship of the fungus and the tree root systems is advantageous to both. The fungus ... at those places where the fungus and the tree root come into contact. The genome study also revealed ...

Evolution of root nodule symbiosis with nitrogen-fixing bacteria

... nitrogen-fixing bacteria. In this so-called root nodule symbiosis bacteria live in the root cells of the host plants, where they bind ... a common evolutionary origin of intracellular root symbioses with nitrogen-fixing bacteria. This ...

How roots find a route

... way and to elongate when their path is clear. root hairs explore the soil in much the same way as a ... a self-reinforcing cycle. A protein at the tip of root hairs called RHD2 produces free radicals that ... Africa, plants have adapted by producing more root hairs. A better understanding of this adaptation ...

Root or shoot? EAR calls the shots

... go down, plants develop along a polar axis with a root on one end and a shoot on the other. While ... to develop into a seedling topped with a second root instead of a stem with leaves, researchers at the ... linchpin that ensures that plants are neither all root nor all shoot. Turns out the ...

'Smart' flower bulbs pull themselves to deeper ground

... hundreds of books have been written about plant root growth, but none mention this phenomenon of ... epidermal wrinkles, starting at the base of the root and advancing toward the root tip. The movement function occurs in shallowly ...

Could 'hairy roots' become biofactories?

... the methods they used to keep a transgenic hairy root culture alive for 4-and-a-half years. At the ... carrying a gene for fluorescence. By transferring root tips into fresh liquid every four weeks, they maintained a stable root culture that had the characteristic fluorescent ...

American Chemical Society's Weekly PressPac -- Oct. 3, 2007

... report maintaining growth of a transgenic hairy root culture for more than 4.5 years. At the outset, they infected a species of periwinkle with a hairy root bacterium carrying a gene encoding a fluorescent ... contain the fluorescent protein. By transferring root tips into fresh liquid every four weeks, the ...

Yam bean a nearly forgotten crop

... bean in Peru. They were previously considered a root vegetable due to the high water content; however ... The study identified genotypes with high storage root production. Flower removal increased storage root production by 50 to 100%. Several yam bean ...

Yam bean a nearly forgotten crop

... bean in Peru. They were previously considered a root vegetable due to the high water content; however ... The study identified genotypes with high storage root production. Flower removal increased storage root production by 50 to 100%. Several yam bean ...

Newly discovered snow roots are 'evolutionary phenomenon'

... Russian mountains a previously unknown and entirely unique form of plant root has been discovered. Lead Scientist Professor Hans Cornelissen and his Russian-Dutch team describe this finding today in Ecology Letters . The root belongs to the small alpine plant Corydalis conorhiza and unlike normal ...

Managing Douglas-fir forests for diversity

... for nesting and foraging. Douglas-fir mortality from black stain root disease was greater where all hardwoods were removed than where some ... may also want to retain some hardwoods in areas prone to black stain root disease, since the hardwoods may reduce mortality of planted Douglas-fir ...

Limping rat provides sciatica insights

... For their experiments, the researchers compressed a specific nerve root known as the dorsal root ganglia in the lumbar region of the spine, which simulated sciatica in one ...

2009 ASPB Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship award announcement

... Mentor: Gloria Muday Auxin-Induced Flavonoid Gene Expression and root Architecture I am both honored and excited to receive this fellowship ... Mentor: Chris Wolverton The effects of phosphate availability on root architecture and gravity responsiveness in Arabidopsis I'm eager to ...

No longer a gray area: Our hair bleaches itself as we grow older

... white. This research, however, is an important first step to get at the root of the problem, so to speak." The researchers made this discovery by ... researchers speculate that a similar breakdown in the skin could be the root cause of vitiligo. "As any blue-haired lady will attest, sometimes hair ...

Rise or fall of reef fish driven by both economy and ecology

... and donors to restructure aid and conservation efforts to better tackle root causes of reef decline. While some coral reef conservation projects ... such as fishery closures while at the same time tackling poverty as a root cause of the degradation of reefs and their fish stocks." ...

Scientists identify bacteria that increase plant growth

... particular cultivars of poplar. In the studies specifically looking at root formation, non-inoculated plants formed roots very slowly. In contrast, plant cuttings that were allowed to root in the presence of selected endophytes grew roots and shoots more quickly. ...

Soybean database will help breeders engineer better-performing plants

... a soybean plant grown under drought conditions will send out a deeper root or increase root branching. These changes in the physical attributes of the plant arise ...

Novel bioreactor enhances interleukin-12 production in genetically modified tobacco plants

... plants a mouse gene that directs the production of interleukin 12. Hairy root cultures from those modified tobacco plants were then grown in a mist ... ultrasonic technology to spray a fine mist of water and nutrients on the root cultures, which are suspended in a plastic bag. The nutrient solution is ...

Urban trees enhance water infiltration

... fabric," said Susan Day, the project's lead investigator. "Manipulating root penetration through these separation geotextiles could potentially play a ... reservoirs may have reduced soil strength, increasing opportunities for root growth by some species." Structural soil reservoirs may thus provide ...

Entomological Society of America names 2008 award winners

... the Lake States. Specifically, he is investigating the impact of larval root feeding in a northern hardwood forest, larval host location behavior, ... tree production study, examining tree physiological characteristics, fine root dynamics, and insect population and damage in response to varying water ...