Plant Sciences Commons^™

Enhancing Water Stress Tolerance In Floriculture Crops, Suejin Park

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Water deficit is one of the major constraints on plant growth and development, causing reduction of crop productivity. To minimize water loss, among many adaptation strategies, plants close their stomata to reduce transpiration. The stomatal closure is regulated by light, internal CO2 concentration, and plant hormones, mainly abscisic acid. Plants’ response mechanisms to water deficit are complex processes involving numerous genes and various signaling pathways. Floriculture crops are often exposed to water deficit during shipping and retailing, and these periods often result in damaged crops and profit loss. Understanding of plant responses to water deficit stress will provide us an …

Structure Of The Ambrosia Beetle (Coleoptera: Curculionidae) Mycangia Revealed Through Micro-Computed Tomography, You Li, Yongying Ruan, Matthew T. Kasson, Edward L. Stanley, Conrad P.D.T Gillett, Andrew J. Johnson, Mengna Zhang, Jiri Hulcr

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Ambrosia beetles (Coleoptera: Curculionidae: Scolytinae and Platypodinae) rely on a symbiosis with fungi for their nutrition. Symbiotic fungi are preserved and transported in specialized storage structures called mycangia. Although pivotal in the symbiosis, mycangia have been notoriously difficult to study, given their minute size and membranous structure. We compared the application of novel visualization methods for the study of mycangia, namely micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) and laser ablation tomography (LATscan) with traditional paraffin sectioning. Micro-CT scanning has shown the greatest promise in new organ discovery, while sectioning remains the only method with sufficient resolution for cellular visualization. All three common types …

Chitosan Biopolymer Promotes Yield And Stimulates Accumulation Of Antioxidants In Strawberry Fruit, Mosaddiqur Rahman, Julakha Akter Mukta, Abdullah As Sabir, Dipall Rani Gupta, Mohammed Mohi-Ud-Din, Mirza Hasanuzzaman, Md. Giashuddin Miah, Mahfuzur Rahman, Md Tofazzai Islam

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Strawberry is a well-known source of natural antioxidants with excellent free radical scav- enging capacity. This study determined the effects of chitosan application in field condition on plant growth, fruit yield and antioxidant activities in strawberry fruit. Foliar applications of chitosan on strawberry significantly increased plant growth and fruit yield (up to 42% higher) compared to untreated control. Increased fruit yield was attributed to higher plant growth, individual fruit weight and total fruit weight/plant due to the chitosan application. Surprisingly, the fruit from plants sprayed with chitosan also had significantly higher contents (up to 2.6- fold) of carotenoids, anthocyanins, flavonoids …

Pleiotropic And Epistatic Network-Based Discovery: Integrated Networks For Target Gene Discovery, Deborah Weighill, Piet Jones, Manesh Shah, Priya Ranjan, Wellington Muchero, Jeremy Schmutz, Avinash Sreedasyam, David Macaya-Sanz, Robert Sykes, Nan Zhao, Madhavi Z. Martin, Stephen Difazio, Timothy J. Tschaplinski, Gerald Tuskan, Daniel Jacobson

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Biological organisms are complex systems that are composed of functional networks of interacting molecules and macro-molecules. Complex phenotypes are the result of orchestrated, hierarchical, heterogeneous collections of expressed genomic variants. However, the effects of these variants are the result of historic selective pressure and current environmental and epigenetic signals, and, as such, their co-occurrence can be seen as genome-wide correlations in a number of different manners. Biomass recalcitrance (i.e., the resistance of plants to degradation or deconstruction, which ultimately enables access to a plant’s sugars) is a complex polygenic phenotype of high importance to biofuels initiatives. This study makes use …

Plant Probiotic Bacteria Bacillus And Paraburkholderia Improve Growth, Yield And Content Of Antioxidants In Strawberry Fruit, Mosaddiqur Rahman, Abdullah As Sabir, Julakha Akter Mukrta, Mohibul Alam Khan, Mohammed Mohi-Ud-Din, Giashuddin Miah, Mahfuzur Rahman, M. Tofazzal Islam

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Strawberry is an excellent source of natural antioxidants with high capacity of scavenging free radicals.

This study evaluated the effects of two plant probiotic bacteria, Bacillus amylolequefaciens BChi1 and Paraburkholderia fungorum BRRh-4 on growth, fruit yield and antioxidant contents in strawberry fruits. Root dipping of seedlings (plug plants) followed by spray applications of both probiotic bacteria in the field on foliage significantly increased fruit yield (up to 48%) over non-treated control. Enhanced fruit yield likely to be linked with higher root and shoot growth, individual and total fruit weight/plant and production of phytohormone by the probiotic bacteria applied on plants. …