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Mining For Phytochemicals: A Multifaceted Effort, Kay W. Simmons, Jack Okamuro

Agricultural Research Magazine

Unlike in animals, the “fight or flight” response isn’t an option for imperiled plants—including those grown as crops for our food, fuel, and fiber needs. A plant, for example, cannot simply uproot itself and sprint to safety from an approaching caterpillar.

But plants can defend themselves, and they’ve done so for millennia, by using an abundance of potent secondary compounds broadly referred to as “phytochemicals.” Some, like glyceollins in soybeans, are produced only in response to a specific threat—similar to the adrenaline surge a person experiences from a life-threatening event. For plants, this threat can be from a grazing animal, …

Agricultural Research Magazine January 2012

Agricultural Research Magazine

Table of Contents

4 Corn Defenses Probed for New Pest-Fighting Clues

7 Comparing Light- Conversion Efficiency of Plants and Manmade Solar Cells

8 Building Baby’s Tiny Bones: Formulas and Mother’s Milk Analyzed in Animal Study

10 Recognizing the Threat of Leptospirosis

12 Using Cactus as a Bioremediation Tool

14 ARS Scientists Rally ’Round the Range

17 There’s a New Biofuel Crop in Town

18 A Search for the Sweet Spot in Sugar Beet Production

20 Nutrient Data in Time for the New Year

22 A Rough, Tough Forage for Rangeland Cattle

23 Locations Featured in This Magazine Issue

Recognizing The Threat Of Leptospirosis, Sandra Avant

Agricultural Research Magazine

“The disease in humans can often be an acute infection,” says lead scientist Richard Zuerner, a former microbiologist with the Agricultural Research Service’s National Animal Disease Center (NADC) in Ames, Iowa. “In areas where it is endemic, like Brazil, it occurs on a periodic basis, and a portion of those infected will experience pulmonary hemorrhage, which can lead to a very rapid and painful death.”

Leptospirosis in livestock can cause abortions, stillbirths, reduced milk production, and lower fertility, Zuerner says. In horses, it can also result in uveitis, a potential cause of blindness.

Less is known about leptospirosis in wildlife, …

Comparing Light-Conversion Efficiency Of Plants And Manmade Solar Cells, Donald R. Ort, Sharon Durham

Agricultural Research Magazine

When it comes to using light energy, how do manmade photo cells compare to plants’ photosynthesis? An Agricultural Research Service scientist participated in a study comparing how efficiently plants and photovoltaic cells convert sunlight into energy. The study, published in Science, could help researchers improve plant photosynthesis—a critical first link in the global supply chain for food, feed, fiber, and bioenergy production.

Comparing the two systems is a challenge. Although both processes harvest energy from sunlight, they use that energy in different ways. Plants convert the sun’s energy into chemical energy, whereas solar cells produce electricity.

Scientists know that …

January 2012- Locations Featured In This Magazine Issue

Agricultural Research Magazine

San Joaquin Valley Agricultural Sciences Center, Parlier, California

3 research units ■ 117 employees

Eastern Oregon Agricultural Research Center, Burns Oregon

1 research unit ■ 44 employees

The Vegetable and Forage Crops Research Unit, Prosser, Washington

1 research unit ■ 39 employees

Northwest Irrigation and Soils Research Laboratory, Kimberly, Idaho

1 research unit ■ 40 employees

Logan, Utah

3 research units ■ 100 employees

Las Cruces, New Mexico

2 research units ■ 54 employees

Ames, Iowa

8 research units ■ 535 employees

Little Rock, Arkansas

9 research units ■ 67 employees (1 ARS employee, 66 university employees)

National Center for …

Building Baby’S Tiny Bones: Formulas And Mother’S Milk Analyzed In Animal Study, Marcia Wood, Jin-Ran Chen, Aline Andres

Agricultural Research Magazine

For millions of American infants, a bottle of warm, soy-based baby formula is what’s for dinner. It’s also what’s for breakfast, lunch, and all those between-meal feedings, as well.

At least, that’s the routine for a healthy, soy-fed baby’s first few months of life. After that, baby may be ready to handle solid food—puréed fruits and vegetables, for instance.

At the USDA-ARS Arkansas Children’s Nutrition Center in Little Rock, principal investigator Jin-Ran Chen, M.D., is taking a close look at the effects that soy formula, cow’s-milk formula, and mother’s milk have in regard to development of strong, healthy bones. As …

Nutrient Data In Time For The New Year, Rosalie Marion Bliss, Joanne Holden

Agricultural Research Magazine

Federal rules published in 2010 require specific meat and poultry products to carry new nutrition information starting January 2, 2012. USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced that the new rules will make important nutrition information readily available to consumers on 40 of the most popular cuts of meat and poultry. Two timely data sets provided by the Agricultural Research Service’s Nutrient Data Laboratory (NDL) in Beltsville, Maryland, are being used by the beef and pork industries to provide the new Nutrition Facts labels for their products.

Previously, NDL researchers, in collaboration with representatives of the beef and pork …

Back Matter Agricultural Research Magazine January 2011

Agricultural Research Magazine

U.S. Department of Agriculture

Agricultural Research Magazine

5601 Sunnyside Ave.

Beltsville, MD 20705-5128

A Search For The Sweet Spot In Sugar Beet Production, Ann Perry

Agricultural Research Magazine

The whole point of growing sugar beets is to produce sugar. But once the beets are harvested and stored for processing—usually in huge piles that can weigh thousands of tons—they slowly start to decay, which lowers their sucrose levels.

Roots store sugar even more poorly if they originate from fields infested with the virus that causes rhizomania, a disease that also severely affects yield. Resistance genes in sugar beet help protect the plant from rhizomania, but some strains of the virus have evolved to overcome one of the resistance genes, Rz1.

“The economic loss from damage to stored beets …

Ars Scientists Rally 'Round The Range, Dennis O’Brien, Ann Perry, Tony Svejcar, Jeremy James, Mary Lucero

Agricultural Research Magazine

Rangelands in the western United States provide essential grazingland for hundreds of thousands of cattle and other livestock as well as a home for a vast array of native plants and animals. And since these rangelands make up a large part of the U.S. public land system, taxpayers often foot the bill for upkeep of the hardscrabble holdings. So Agricultural Research Service scientists across the West are collaborating to make sure the money used to sustain and repair these arid ecosystems is spent on programs that work.

A Burning Issue

For millennia, periodic wildfires have been an integral part of …

A Rough, Tough Forage For Rangeland Cattle, Ann Perry

Agricultural Research Magazine

Forage kochia (Kochia prostrata) is a shrubby Asian native that has found a new home on western U.S. rangelands. And although it is not invasive, it is still sometimes more resilient than the North American native plants.

“In some rangeland soils, it’s difficult to successfully reseed with native plants,” says geneticist Blair Waldron, who works at the Agricultural Research Service’s Forage and Range Research Laboratory in Logan, Utah. “But we’ve shown that forage kochia can be established to enhance rangelands and compete with cheatgrass successfully. It can even protect against wildfires. Some people said that livestock won’t eat …

Chapter 7 - Horticulture, Janice M. Glime

Bryophyte Ecology Volume 5: Uses

Explore the contents of Bryophyte Ecology, Volume 5, Chapter 7 - Horticulture by clicking the links above. For the Contents section of this ebook, as well as Volumes 1 through 5, please visit the Bryophyte Ecology Main Page.

Use CTRL+F to easily search within PDF files.

Ebook sponsored by Michigan Technological University and the International Association of Bryologists.

Bryophyte Ecology Glossary, Janice M. Glime, Leica Chavoutier

Bryophyte Ecology Subchapters

No abstract provided.

Volume 5, Chapter 4: Aquaria, Janice M. Glime

Bryophyte Ecology Subchapters

No abstract provided.

Igrow Wheat: Best Management Practices For Wheat Production, David C. Clay, C. Gregg Carlson, Kevin Dalsted

Agronomy, Horticulture, and Plant Science Books

No abstract provided.

Coexistence Patterns Of Two Invasive Thistle Species, Carduus Nutans And C. Acanthoides, At Three Spatial Scales, Emily S.J. Rauschert, Katriona Shea, Ottar N. Bjørnstad

Biological, Geological, and Environmental Faculty Publications

To better understand the competitive processes involved in invasion by congeners, we examine coexistence patterns of two invasive species, Carduus nutans and C. acanthoides, at three spatial scales. A roadside survey of 5 × 5 km blocks in a previously identified overlap zone provided information about the regional scale. At smaller scales, we surveyed four fields of natural co-occurrence, quantifying the spatial patterns at the field scale by randomly placed 1 × 1 m quadrats and at the smallest scale by detailing plant position within the quadrats. The patterns observed are strikingly different at the different scales. At the regional …

The Role Of Fine-Scale Habitat Associations In Structuring Spider Assemblages: Determinants Of Spatial Patterns In Community Compostion, Stephanie M. Cobbold

Green Canyon Environmental Research Area, Logan Utah

No abstract provided.

Livestock Foraging Behavior In Response To Sequence And Interactions Among Alkaloids, Tannins, And Saponins, Tiffany L. Jensen

Green Canyon Environmental Research Area, Logan Utah

No abstract provided.

A Functional Trait Perspective On Plant Invasion, Rebecca E. Drenovsky, Brenda J. Grewell, Carla M. D'Antonio

Biology

Global environmental change will affect non-native plant invasions, with profound potential impacts on native plant populations, communities and ecosystems. In this context, we review plant functional traits, particularly those that drive invader abundance (invasiveness) and impacts, as well as the integration of these traitsacross multiple ecological scales, and as a basis for restoration and management.
We review the concepts and terminology surrounding functional traits and how functional traits influence processes at the individual level. We explore how phenotypic plasticity may lead to rapid evolution of novel traits facilitating invasiveness in changing environments and then oscale up' to evaluate the relative …

Morphogenetic And Developmental Functions Of The Aspergillus Nidulans Homologues Of The Yeast Bud Site Selection Proteins Bud4 And Axl2, Haoyu Si, William R. Rittenour, Kaimei Xu, Mark Nicksarlian, Ana M. Calvo, Steven D. Harris

Department of Plant Pathology: Faculty Publications

The yeast bud site selection system represents a paradigm for understanding how fungal cells regulate the formation of a polarity axis. In Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Bud4 and Axl2 are components of the axial bud site marker. To address the possibility that these proteins regulate cellular morphogenesis in filamentous fungi, we have characterized homologues of Bud4 and Axl2 in Aspergillus nidulans. Our results show that Bud4 is involved in septum formation in both hyphae and developing conidiophores. Whereas Axl2 appears to have no obvious role in hyphal growth, it is required for the regulation of phialide morphogenesis during conidiation. In …

What Is Forest Farming?

Working Trees (USDA-NAC)

What is forest farming?

Forest farming, or multi-story cropping, is a distinctive approach to land management that combines management practices of conventional forestry with those of small-scale farming or gardening to attain an environmentally and economically sustainable land-use system.

Typically, a forest farming system is established by thinning an existing woodland or plantation to leave the best canopy trees for continued timber production and to create the appropriate conditions that favor the understory crop.

Riparian Forest Buffers: An Agroforestry Practice

Agroforestry Notes (USDA-NAC)

No abstract provided.

Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge In

Agroforestry Notes (USDA-NAC)

No abstract provided.

"+H": The Human Considerations In The Adoption Of

Agroforestry Notes (USDA-NAC)

No abstract provided.

Forest Grazing, Silvopasture, And Turning Livestock

Agroforestry Notes (USDA-NAC)

No abstract provided.

Windbreaks: A "Fresh" Tool To Mitigate Odors From Livestock

Agroforestry Notes (USDA-NAC)

No abstract provided.

Landscape Planning For Environmental Benefits

Agroforestry Notes (USDA-NAC)

No abstract provided.

Pine Straw: A Profitable Agroforestry

Agroforestry Notes (USDA-NAC)

No abstract provided.

Photo-Realistic Visual Simulation: An Agroforestry Planning

Agroforestry Notes (USDA-NAC)

No abstract provided.

Climate Change On The Shoshone National Forest, Wyoming: A Synthesis Of Past Climate, Climate Projections, And Ecosystem Implications, Janine Rice, Andrew Tredennick, Linda A. Joyce

United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service / University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Faculty Publications

The Shoshone National Forest (Shoshone) covers 2.4 million acres of mountainous topography in northwest Wyoming and is a vital ecosystem that provides clean water, wildlife habitat, timber, grazing, recreational opportunities, and aesthetic value. The Shoshone has experienced and adapted to changes in climate for many millennia, and is currently experiencing a warming trend that is expected to accelerate in the next century. Climate change directly and indirectly affects the Shoshone’s high-elevation, mountainous terrain that supports unique and sometimes rare ecological components. Several vulnerable and very responsive resources and processes on the Shoshone could interact to produce unforeseeable or undesirable ecosystem …