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Tag: "soil" at biology news

Soils offer new hope as carbon sink

...nto fuel and agrichar which can be used to enhance soil fertility and store carbon long-term. NSW DPI s...eate clean energy that also locks up carbon in the soil for the long term and lifts agricultural production," he said. The trials at Wollongbar have focu...

A new plant-bacterial symbiotic mechanism promising for crop applications

... thanks to its ability to live in association with soil bacteria of the Rhizobium, genus, capable of fixing nitrogen from the air. When these bacteria come into contact with their host plant, they trigger in the roots the formation and development of organs, termed nodules, where they continue to live. Th...

Dirty snow may warm Arctic as much as greenhouse gases

...sed enough melting to expose underlying sea ice or soil that is significantly darker than the snow. The darker surfaces absorb sunlight more rapidly than snow, causing additional warming. This cycle causes temperatures in the polar regions to rise as much as 3 degrees Celsius during some seasons, the scie...

Pesticides choke pathway for nature to produce nitrogen for crops

...s interfere with the ability of legumes to recruit soil bacteria needed to provide a natural fertilizer to...l nitrogen-fixing communications between crops and soil bacteria. The disruption results in lower yields or significantly delayed growth. In a paper appe...

Small, self-controlled planes combine plant pathology and engineering

...bes mediate important biochemical processes in the soil and the ocean. It is not so farfetched that a similar drama unfolds in the atmosphere, which we already know is teeming with microbial life.” Although Schmale is not currently conducting his research for the armed forces, his work has a definite b...

Potato wart eyed as risk to potato production

... Spores released from infected plants can make soil unsuitable for potato production for decades. The long-term survival of fungal spores and the lack of suitable chemical controls for potato wart suppression make this disease especially problematic for any type of cultivated potato production, includ...

Researchers demonstrate way to control tree height

...iation of polluted soils or in very windy, limited soil moisture situations. From an environmental viewpoint, the researchers said, dwarfed trees such as this are unlikely to be any kind of threat to spread, because they would compete very poorly with normal or wild trees. In virtually all tree species...

Genome of Clostridium botulinum reveals the background to world's deadliest toxin

... wrath of C. botulinum, explains Dr Sebaihia: "The soil can be a harsh environment and food can be scarce. To see off the competition, C. botulinum comes with its own ‘antibiotic’ — a chemical called boticin that kills competing bacteria." Genome sequences can tell us a lot about the biology of the org...

Madagascan tropical forests return thanks to better management and well-defined ownership

...ying to understand factors like seed dispersal and soil quality, our study clearly shows the importance of an increased understanding also of the social context behind forest regeneration," says Elmqvist. The loss of tropical forests is a concern worldwide since these forests harbor more than 50 % of the ...

Alien plants attack using 'resource conservation' as weapon, researchers say

...le resources-for example, by mixing sugar into the soil to lock up nutrients or by blocking sunlight with tarps. But these experiments had relatively limited success. "Our results can maybe explain why that method didn't work for all the invasive species," Funk said. Current techniques for fighting inv...

Scientists: As rainfall changes, tropical plants may acclimate

... The scientists analyzed nitrogen isotopes in the soil and leaf samples of four plant species at each site. They learned that drier soils contained more nitrogen in the form of nitrate, while wetter soils contained more nitrogen in the form of ammonia. Isotopic analysis of the plants revealed that they s...

100 percent of pregnant women have at least one kind of pesticide in their placenta

...t and which are consequently present in food, air, soil and water. Nonetheless, human beings are also victims of these emissions, and involuntarily (what is known in this scientific field as "inadvertent exposure"), every day humans ingest many of these substances which cannot be assimilated by our body, ...

Asexual worm quickly adapts to soil contamination

...de Acrobeloides nanus. The worms from contaminated soil live longer and lay more eggs under polluted condi...he long-term effects of environmental pollution on soil organisms. Environmental pollution is an important cause of stress in natural populations. This no...

Researchers develop way to calculate speed of bacterial sex

...sue of Vadose Zone Journal in a special section on soil biophysics. Researchers believe that one of the...transport in ground water, and the colonization of soil surfaces by bacterial cells. Using a previously established conceptual framework of conjugation p...

Scientists seek useful traits in wild cottons

...tant, screens cotton grown hydroponically ?without soil ?for salt tolerance. Seedlings are incrementally subjected to different concentrations of salt, which can reach 30,000 parts per million. If cotton breeders can impart more salt tolerance to commercial varieties, farmers on the Texas High Pl...

Ancient genes used to produce salt-tolerant wheat

...e for remediation, as well as helping to stabilise soil from wind and water erosion....

How trees manage water in arid environments

...e winter precipitation had been evaporated and the soil was extremely dry, the trees essentially closed do...tight coupling between the trees and the available soil moisture." In short, winter has a significant impact on the primary growing season for these moun...

MIT biologists solve vitamin puzzle

...e edition of Nature. Vitamin B12 is produced by soil microbes that live in symbiotic relationships with...a novel method for identifying mutant strains of a soil microbe that could not form a symbiotic relationship with a plant. Walker's team has now found th...

Bacteria could steady buildings against earthquakes

...s. The microbes can literally convert loose, sandy soil into rock. When a major earthquake strikes, deep,...tly, civil engineers can inject chemicals into the soil to bind loose grains together. But these epoxy chemicals may have toxic effects on soil and water, s...

Microfossils unravel climate history of tropical Africa

...and temperatures based on the molecular fossils of soil bacteria. They applied the method to a marine sedi...efore called 'proxies'. New method to measure soil temperatures Reconstructing continental temperature history is more difficult than for the ocean...

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