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Tag: "drought" at biology news

Scientists seek useful traits in wild cottons

...entists discover which physical traits help impart drought resistance and make more accurate trait selections in the future. Natalia Castillo, Experiment Station research assistant, screens cotton grown hydroponically ?without soil ?for salt tolerance. Seedlings are incrementally subjected to differ...

How trees manage water in arid environments

...National Climatic Data Center. Moderate to extreme drought conditions were evident in about 40 percent of the... three-year period during which there were extreme drought conditions in the semi-arid southwestern United States." Brown's measurements showed that in this...

Rearing an army to save wheat

...wfly management that are being pursued at MSU. The drought conditions of recent years have made the work more pressing, since drought favors damage by wheat stem sawflies, which are now more widely distributed in Montana than years ag...

Fire ant-attacking fly spreading rapidly in Texas

...Phorids got a slow start after introduction due to drought in Texas from 1999-2001, says Dr. Larry Gilbert, director of the fire ant research program and professor of integrative biology, but they are now spreading three-to-10 miles per year from initial introduction sites. In addition to Brazilian and Arg...

Important gene controlling tree growth and development found

...ter is low and the tree might be damaged from both drought and cold. The trees have adopted to these conditio... now dormant and is as such much more resistant to drought and frost than if it had been actively growing. It has been known for a long time that the trees se...

New strategy developed to combat West Nile Virus

...y from the University of Florida found that spring drought followed by continual summer rainfall is critical ...ouis Encephalitis Virus, in southern Florida. When drought occurs early in the year, the limited water resources confine mosquito populations to selected habit...

More than drought affecting wheat yields

Wheat producers have more than the drought cutting into their yields this year, said two Texas Agricultural Experiment Station researchers. Dr. Tom Allen, Experiment Station assistant research scientist and plant disease diagnostician, saw more than 150 wheat samples sent to the Great Plains...

How did cactuses evolve?

... system allows cacti to survive periods of extreme drought while maintaining well-hydrated tissues." Recent molecular phylogenetic work has confirmed that Pereskia, a genus that consists of 17 species of leafy shrubs and trees, is where the earliest cactus lineages began. Using field studies and environmen...

DOE JGI sequences, releases genome of symbiotic tree fungus

...nated response to environmental stressors, such as drought and extreme temperature, and other biological factors, providing a new dimension to climate change research and a step further toward mechanistic modeling of ecosystem responses," Rubin said. ...

Exotic crab poised for widespread UK invasion

...rease in river pollution and a prolonged period of drought in the late 1980s - which together improved habitat conditions for mitten crabs - are potential reasons for the recent population rise. Dr Bentley, of Newcastle University's School of Marine Science and Technology added: "This study demonstrates...

Parts of the Caribbean and Central America are likely to have less summer rain

...out going into it -- can cause one model to have a drought in a particular region, while another model does not. You have to be careful when talking about precipitation; there is natural variability, from year to year and from decade-to-decade." The computer climate simulations also agree on the magnitude o...

Amazon rainforest greens up in the dry season

...n tropical areas during El Nino years, which bring drought to many tropical areas, including the Amazon. The research team figured out when the intact forest grows by analyzing five years of satellite images from the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) instrument mounted on NASA's Terra sa...

Climate change: The rice genome to the rescue

...r warned. "IRRI's research has shown that even one drought year can push millions of rice farmers back below ... affects the whole family for many years after the drought year, as they will have sold their livestock and withdrawn their children from school just to surviv...

Predators keep the world green, ecologists find

... these islands is just in a state of collapse." A drought that began in 2001 and reached extreme levels in 2003 has now ended the study, Terborgh reported. "By 2003, the lake level had dropped 26 meters," he said. "By then, I think only three of the islands were left surrounded by water. That ended the exp...

Tropical Atlantic cooling and African deforestation correlate to drought, report scientists

... became more arid. The authors state, "periods of drought likely brought about environmental hardship, triggering population migration, giving rise to changes in the modes of agricultural production, and influencing the fall or rise of civilizations." Weldeab points out that the past 50 years are marked by...

Why the Amazon rainforest is so rich in species

...d sea levels and supposedly to periods of profound drought in the tropics generally, and in the Amazon basin ...lutionary biologists proposed that such periods of drought led to rainforest refuges in which many new species of birds, butterflies, and plants arose. Recen...

Anyway you slice it, tomatoes cut through drought with new gene

... the root system could then take the adjustment to drought stress better and thus grow better," Hirschi said ...use of AVP1 in Arabidopsis to create hardier, more drought resistant plants were published in the journal Science in October, but the study described in the pr...

Research: Snails were overlooked contributors to marsh destruction

...the journal Science. "It's important to note that drought was the trigger that initiated these events ?and because drought stress is becoming more extreme with global warming, events like this could become both more freque...

Membrane research opens window to benefits for plants, humans

...nt cells close their water channels in response to drought stress in order to preserve their water content," said Tajkhorshid, who also is assistant director of research of the Theoretical and Computational Biophysics Group at the U. of I. Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. "It is interes...

University of Arizona plant scientists to unravel maize genome

...o other crops." One important goal is to enhance drought resistance in corn and other cereal crops, which would greatly benefit regions with less favorable conditions for agriculture. Other improvements aim at increasing yield and nutritional value and optimizing the properties crucial for grain products s...

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