Botany Commons^™

Implementation Of Epigenetic Variation In Sorghum Selection And Implications For Crop Resilience Breeding, Dikungwa Ketumile, Xiaodong Yang, Robersy Sanchez, Hardik Kundariya, John F. Rajewski, Ismail M. Dweikat, Sally A. Mackenzie

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

Crop resilience and yield stability are complex traits essential for food security. Sorghum bicolor is an important grain crop that shows promise for its natural resilience to drought and potential for marginal land production. We have developed sorghum lines in the Tx430 genetic background suppressed for MSH1 expression as a means of inducing de novo epigenetic variation, and have used these materials to evaluate changes in plant growth vigor. Plant crossing and selection in two distinct environments revealed features of phenotypic plasticity derived from MSH1 manipulation. Introduction of an epigenetic variation to an isogenic sorghum population, in the absence of …

Assessment Of Bacterial Inoculant Delivery Methods For Cereal Crops, Yen Ning Chai, Stephanie Futrell, Daniel P. Schachtman

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

Despite growing evidence that plant growth-promoting bacteria can be used to improve crop vigor, a comparison of the different methods of delivery to determine which is optimal has not been published. An optimal inoculation method ensures that the inoculant colonizes the host plant so that its potential for plant growth-promotion is fully evaluated. The objective of this study was to compare the efficacy of three seed coating methods, seedling priming, and soil drench for delivering three bacterial inoculants to the sorghum rhizosphere and root endosphere. The methods were compared across multiple time points under axenic conditions and colonization efficiency was …

Seed-Shattering Phenology At Soybean Harvest Of Economically Important Weeds In Multiple Regions Of The United States. Part 3: Drivers Of Seed Shatter, Lauren M. Schwartz-Lazaro, Lovreet S. Shergill, Jeffrey A. Evans, Muthukumar V. Bagavathiannan, Shawn C. Beam, Mandy D. Bish, Jason A. Bond, Kevin W. Bradley, William S. Curran, Adam S. Davis, Wesley J. Everman, Michael L. Flessner, Steven C. Haring, Nicholas R. Jordan, Nicholas E. Korres, John L. Lindquist, Jason K. Norsworthy, Tameka L. Sanders, Larry E. Steckel, Mark J. Vangessel, Blake Young, Steven B. Mirsky

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

Seed retention, and ultimately seed shatter, are extremely important for the efficacy of harvest weed seed control (HWSC) and are likely influenced by various agroecological and environmental factors. Field studies investigated seed-shattering phenology of 22 weed species across three soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.]-producing regions in the United States. We further evaluated the potential drivers of seed shatter in terms of weather conditions, growing degree days, and plant biomass. Based on the results, weather conditions had no consistent impact on weed seed shatter. However, there was a positive correlation between individual weed plant biomass and delayed weed seed-shattering rates during …

Corn Nitrogen Nutrition Index Prediction Improved By Integrating Genetic, Environmental, And Management Factors With Active Canopy Sensing Using Machine Learning, Dan Li, Yuxin Miao, Curtis J. Ransom, Gregory Mac Bean, Newell R. Kitchen, Fabián G. Fernández, John E. Sawyer, James J. Camberato, Paul R. Carter, Richard B. Ferguson, David W. Franzen, Carrie A. M. Laboski, Emerson D. Nafziger, John F. Shanahan

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

Accurate nitrogen (N) diagnosis early in the growing season across diverse soil, weather, and management conditions is challenging. Strategies using multi-source data are hypothesized to perform significantly better than approaches using crop sensing information alone. The objective of this study was to evaluate, across diverse environments, the potential for integrating genetic (e.g., comparative relative maturity and growing degree units to key developmental growth stages), environmental (e.g., soil and weather), and management (e.g., seeding rate, irrigation, previous crop, and preplant N rate) information with active canopy sensor data for improved corn N nutrition index (NNI) prediction using machine learning methods. Thirteen …

Tracking Spatial Regimes In Animal Communities: Implications For Resilience-Based Management, Caleb P. Roberts, Daniel R. Uden, Craig R. Allen, David G. Angeler, Larkin A. Powell, Brady W. Allred, Matthew O. Jones, Jeremy D. Maestas, Dirac L. Twidwell Jr

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

Spatial regimes (the spatial extents of ecological states) exhibit strong spatiotemporal order as they expand or contract in response to retreating or encroaching adjacent spatial regimes (e.g., woody plant invasion of grasslands) and human management (e.g., fire treatments). New methods enable tracking spatial regime boundaries via vegetation landcover data, and this approach is being used for strategic management across biomes. A clear advancement would be incorporating animal community data to track spatial regime boundaries alongside vegetation data. In a 41,170-hectare grassland experiencing woody plant encroachment, we test the utility of using animal community data to track spatial regimes via two …

Water Use Characteristics Of Weeds: A Global Review, Best Practices, And Future Directions, Mandeep Singh, Meetpal Singh Kukal, Suat Irmak, Amit J. Jhala

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

Weeds usually penalize crop yields by competing for resources, such as water, light, nutrients, and space. Most of the studies on the crop-weed competition domain are limited to assessing crop-yield losses due to weed pressure and other crop-weed interactions, overlooking the significant uptake of soil-water by weeds that exacerbates global water constraints and threatens the productivity and profitability. The objective of this review was to synthesize globally available quantitative data on weed water use (WU) sourced from 23 peer-reviewed publications (filtered from 233 publications via a multi-step protocol of inclusion criteria) with experimental investigations across space (3 continents), time (1927–2018), …

Management-Intensive Grazing Impacts On Total Escherichia Coli, E. Coli O157: H7, And Antibiotic Resistance Genes In A Riparian Stream, Laura M. Rubeck, James E. Wells, Kathy Hanford, Lisa M. Durso, Walter H. Schacht, Elaine D. Berry

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

The impacts of management-intensive grazing (MIG) of cattle on concentrations of total Escherichia coli, total suspended solids (TSS), and nitrate-nitrite nitrogen (NO₃+NO₂-N), and occurrence of E. coli O157:H7 and selected antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in stream water and/or sediments were evaluated. Cattle were grazed for twoweek periods in May in each of three years. Overall, grazing increased total E. coli in downstream water by 0.89 log10 MPN/100 mL (p < 0.0001), and downstream total E. coli concentrations were higher than upstream over all sampling intervals. Downstream TSS levels also increased (p ≤ 0.0294) during grazing. In contrast, there was …

The Last Continuous Grasslands On Earth: Identification And Conservation Importance, Rheinhardt Scholtz, Dirac L. Twidwell Jr

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

Grasslands are the most threatened and least protected biome. Yet, no study has been conducted to identify the last remaining continuous grasslands on Earth. Here, we used World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) classifications to measure the degree of intactness remaining for the world's grassland ecoregions. This analysis revealed three findings of critical conservation importance. First, only a few large, intact grasslands remain. Second, every continent with a grassland ecoregion considered in this study contains at least one relatively intact grassland ecoregion. Third, the largest remaining continuous grasslands identified in this analysis have persisted …

Maud Gordon Holmes Arboretum List Of Tree Species, Chloe Mokadam

Maud Gordon Holmes Arboretum List of Tree Species

A database of tree species that links to descriptions/profiles for over 90 tree species.

The database is also available here: Maud Gordon Holmes Arboretum

Leveraging Herbaria Specimens: A New 3d Imaging Protocol And Analyses Of Diversity Of West Virginia Rosids, Zachary Scott Shamblin

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Herbaria are repositories of plant natural history, whose data can provide insights into the life histories of plant taxa over space and time. Recent initiatives to digitize herbarium data have made studies over broad geographic and taxonomic extents possible, with the ability of scientists to access data from large databases of herbaria. Most of the digitization initiatives have focused on flat 2D herbaria sheets, but herbaria also include 3D collections, such as fungi, mosses, lichens, and dry fruits. In Chapter 1 we propose an easy and cost-effective workflow that uses free photogrammetry software to produce 3D images of 3D herbaria …

The Future Of The Big Sagebrush Ecosystem: Plant Community Response To Grazing, Wildfire, And Invasive Annual Grass In A Changing Climate, Margaret Eleanor England

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Climate change is increasingly affecting the plant communities across the world. In the Western United States, these changes are affecting plant communities and their risk of invasive species, as well as the frequency and severity of wildfire. Big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata Nutt.) ecosystems of the Western United States are facing threats of increasingly frequent wildfire and invasion of the annual grass cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum L.), which may be exacerbated by global climate change. Past studies have found cheatgrass to exhibit a positive feedback loop with wildfire, and climate change is expected to facilitate expansion of the cheatgrass …

Software Choice And Sequencing Coverage Can Impact Plastid Genome Assembly–A Case Study In The Narrow Endemic Calligonum Bakuense, Eka Giorgashvili, Katja Reichel, Calvinna Caswara, Vuqar Kerimov, Thomas Borsch, Michael Gruenstaeudl

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Most plastid genome sequences are assembled from short-read whole-genome sequencing data, yet the impact that sequencing coverage and the choice of assembly software can have on the accuracy of the resulting assemblies is poorly understood. In this study, we test the impact of both factors on plastid genome assembly in the threatened and rare endemic shrub Calligonum bakuense. We aim to characterize the differences across plastid genome assemblies generated by different assembly software tools and levels of sequencing coverage and to determine if these differences are large enough to affect the phylogenetic position inferred for C. bakuense compared to congeners. …

Unraveling Ancient Lake Conditions Through Eunotia Identification, Erik Duffy Oddsund

Botany Honors Papers

No abstract provided.

Floral Inventory And Phenology At Flat Iron Lake Preserve, Taylor Smelker

Summer Research

This study was conducted at the Flat Iron Lake preserve located in Greenville, Michigan. Since around 2008. students have been on the preserve to study the blooming season of flowers and how they are affected by climate change. The property consists of habitats such as a prairie, woody forests, a vernal pool, a ravine and two swamps

Comparing Plant Diversity In Native Landscaping At Calvin University, Rine Wakeman, Dave Warners

Summer Research

Calvin University is home to several naturally planted sites, including woodland areas, three rain gardens, and several landscaping beds. The plants that populate these areas are native to Calvin’s watershed and West Michigan. Until this year, no database existed to keep track of which species of plants grow on campus and where. Over the summer, native sites on campus were surveyed to compile a database of the unique species found to examine the capacity for non-human, non-plant diversity on campus. How does the diversity of native sites compare to traditionally planted sites of similar size or position on Calvin University's …

A Vascular Flora Of The Selkirk Mountains, Bonner And Boundary Counties, Idaho, Harpo Faust, Ben Legler, David C. Tank

Aliso: A Journal of Systematic and Floristic Botany

The vascular flora described here covers ~2295 square kilometers (~886 square miles) of the Selkirk Mountains that lie in the Idaho Panhandle, covering an elevational range of 540–2330 m (1770–7670 ft). The majority of the mountain range is underlain by granitic rock of the Kaniksu Batholith, and is diversified by the rich glacial history of the Panhandle. The study area contains multiple pockets of alluvial and glacial deposition that serve as specialized habitat for present-day floristic diversity within the range. The Idaho Selkirks are part of the Northern Rocky Mountains and have floristic influences from the Pacific coast, boreal north, …

A Phytobacterial Tir Domain Effector Manipulates Nad+ To Promote Virulence, Samuel Eastman, Thomas Smith, Mark A. Zaydman, Panya Kim, Samuel Martinez, Neha Damaraju, Aaron Diantonio, Jeffrey Milbrandt, Thomas Clemente, James R. Alfano, Ming Guo

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

The Pseudomonas syringae DC3000 type III effector HopAM1 suppresses plant immunity and contains a Toll/interleukin-1 receptor (TIR) domain homologous to immunity-related TIR domains of plant nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeat receptors that hydrolyze nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) and activate immunity. In vitro and in vivo assays were conducted to determine if HopAM1 hydrolyzes NAD+ and if the activity is essential for HopAM1’s suppression of plant immunity and contribution to virulence. HPLC and LC-MS were utilized to analyze metabolites produced from NAD+ by HopAM1 in vitro and in both yeast and plants. Agrobacterium-mediated transient expression and in planta inoculation assays were performed to …

Student Perceptions Of Messages Regarding Genetically Modified Organisms Delivered Using Creative Media, Faith Mills, Casandra K. Cox

Discovery, The Student Journal of Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences

The purpose of this study was to determine how communicating authentic agricultural information using an infographic affects Millennial and Generation Z students’ perceptions of genetically modified organisms (GMO) and to determine the perceptions of college students regarding the infographic used to convey agricultural messages. This study used survey research methods with open- and closed-ended questions administered through Qualtrics. The questionnaire was designed with five sections including a pre-questionnaire, content presentation, post-questionnaire, infographic perception questionnaire, and demographics section. All questions in the pre- and post- questionnaire were focused on the content found in the researcher developed infographic. Overall, participants increased accuracy …

Preventative Weed Management Strategies In Arkansas Tomato Production, Gracie E. Morrison, Matthew Bertucci

Discovery, The Student Journal of Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences

Cost-effective weed suppression is an important consideration for tomato growers. Growers often choose methods which minimize hand labor, as hand weeding can be prohibitively expensive. This project determined economic viability of high tunnel tomatoes treated with several methods of weed control, both organic and chemical. These methods included: 2-week hand weeding, 1-week hand weeding, preemergent herbicide application (plots sprayed with herbicide prior to weed emergence), straw mulch (plots bedded with straw), landscape fabric (plots covered in fabric), and untreated weedy control plots. These six treatments were applied to randomized blocks in a high tunnel. Weeding, planting, and harvesting were all …

Using Poultry To Enhance Food Security In Stann Creek, Belize, Emily Spatz, Lisa S. Wood

Discovery, The Student Journal of Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences

Food insecurity is a growing issue in developing and developed countries alike, and in countries like Belize, the prevalence of hunger has soared in recent years. Not having access to diets with sufficient calories and nutrients leads to a host of developmental issues, including stunting and cognitive delays. The purpose of this work was to create an all-encompassing manual for small-scale poultry production in order to provide nourishment for the students and staff of a school in Belize. After determining that the best way to meet the school’s needs was through dual-purpose birds, background research was conducted to determine small-scale …