Academic Articles & Research Papers

Xylan Is Critical for Proper Bundling and Alignment of Cellulose Microfibrils in Plant Secondary Cell Walls

Plant biomass represents an abundant and increasingly important natural resource and it mainly consists of a number of cell types that have undergone extensive secondary cell wall (SCW) formation. These cell types are abundant in the stems ...

Completing the picture of field-grown cereal crops: a new method for detailed leaf surface models in wheat

Abstract Background The leaf angle distribution (LAD) is an important structural parameter of agricultural crops that influences light interception, radiation fluxes and consequently plant performance. Therefore, LAD and its parametrized fo...

Determination of fitness traits of Orius strigicollis Poppius (Hemiptera: Anthocoridae) on Pectinophora gossypiella (Lepidoptera: Gelechiidae) using two-sex life table analysis

Background Pink bollworm (Pectinophora gossypiella) is a destructive insect pest of cotton crops in China and globally, which is actively predated on by Orius strigicollis. Studies on the fitness or survival of O. strigicollis fed on P. gos...

The Infection Route of Tomato Zonate Spot Virus in the Digestive System of Its Insect Vector Frankliniella occidentalis

Tomato zonate spot virus (TZSV) is a phytopathogen of the genus Orthotospovirus (Bunyaviridae) that is widespread in many areas of Southwest China. TZSV is mainly transmitted by Frankliniella occidentalis, but its exact infection route rema...

A practical introduction to skeletons for the plant sciences

Before the availability of digital photography resulting from the invention of charged couple devices in 1969, the measurement of plant architecture was a manual process either on the plant itself or on traditional photographs. The introduc...

Plant Methods: putting the spotlight on technological innovation in the plant sciences

Plant Methods is a new journal for plant biologists, specialising in the rapid publication of peer-reviewed articles with a focus on technological innovation in the plant sciences. The aim of Plant Methods is to stimulate the development an...

Global proliferation of small hydropower plants – science and policy

Large‐scale electricity policies that embrace renewable resources have led to continued investments in hydropower. Despite evolving viewpoints regarding the sustainability of large hydropower installations, there has been a major increase i...

Photosynthetic Research in Plant Science

Photosynthesis is a highly regulated, multistep process. It encompasses the harvest of solar energy, transfer of excitation energy, energy conversion, electron transfer from water to NADP+, ATP generation and a series of enzymatic reactions...

Plant Metabolomics: An Indispensable System Biology Tool for Plant Science

As genomes of many plant species have been sequenced, demand for functional genomics has dramatically accelerated the improvement of other omics including metabolomics. Despite a large amount of metabolites still remaining to be identified,...

A year at the forefront of plasmodesmal biology

Distinct Infection Mechanisms of <i>Rhizoctonia solani</i> AG-1 IA and AG-4 HG-I+II in <i>Brachypodium distachyon</i> and Barley

Rhizoctonia solani is a basidiomycete phytopathogenic fungus that causes rapid necrosis in a wide range of crop species, leading to substantial agricultural losses worldwide. The species complex is divided into 13 anastomosis groups (AGs) b...

Synergistic effects of the entomopathogenic fungus Isaria javanica and low doses of dinotefuran on the efficient control of the rice pest Sogatella furcifera

The rice planthopper, Sogatella furcifera, is a piercing-sucking insect pest of rice, Oryza sativa. It is responsible for significant crop yield losses, and has developed moderate to high resistance to several commonly used chemical insecti...

Soil mycobiome structure across central and peripherial zones in a pecan nut agroecosystem [Carya illinoinensis (Wangenh.) K. Koch]

Using ITS1-based metabarcoding, we investigated the structure of the soil fungal communities in the central and peripheral zones of a 25-hectare pecan nut (Carya illinoinensis) orchard located in the arid region of Coahuila, Mexico. While e...

Correlation and path coefficient analysis among agro-morphological and biochemical traits of okra [Abelmoschus esculentus (L.) Moench] genotypes in Ethiopia

Thirty six okra genotypes were evaluated for different agro-morphological and biochemical traits at Melkassa Agricultural Research Center, Ethiopia during 2018 main season using 6 x 6 simple lattice design. The objectives were to assess the...

Editorial: State-of-the-Art Technology and Applications in Crop Phenomics

Multivariate analysis for agronomic, physiological, macro, and micronutrient traits of exotic vegetable amaranth genotypes

Abstract The genus amaranth is comprised of 60–70 species. This climate hardy plant is grown as a vegetable as well as cereal crop in many areas of the world. Current study multivariate analysis was used to characterize the exotic vegetable...

Enset Bacterial Wilt (Xanthomonas vasicola pv. musacearum): Farmer Perspectives, Physicochemical Characterization, and Phenotypic Variation Among Strains

Enset is a staple food for approximately 25% of Ethiopia’s population. It is threatened by a range of biotic and abiotic stress, of which bacterial wilt is the most significant. This study investigated the enset bacterial wilt (EBW) status ...

LC–MS/MS-guided discovery of japonamides C and D, two new cyclohexadepsipeptides, from the Nicotiana tabacum-derived endophytic fungus Aspergillus japonicus TE-739D

Endophytic fungi belonging to the Aspergillus genus have received substantial attention due to their notable secondary metabolic potential. In this study, chemical investigations using LC–MS/MS-based molecular networking on the endophytic f...

Molecular Taxonomy of Conogethes punctiferalis and Conogethes pinicolalis (Lepidoptera: Crambidae) Based on Mitochondrial DNA Sequences

Conogethes punctiferalis (Guenée) (Lepidoptera: Crambidae) was originally considered as one species with fruit-feeding type (FFT) and pinaceae-feeding type (PFT), but it has subsequently been divided into two different species of Conogethes...

Highly divergent karyotypes and barcoding of the East African genus Gonatoxia Karsch (Orthoptera: Phaneropterinae)

Abstract East Africa is a hotspot of biodiversity of many orthopteran taxa, including bushcrickets. Gonatoxia Karsch, 1889 species are fully alate Phaneropterinae, which are perfectly adapted to the foliage of forests. We examined five spec...