                  |
 Net World Directory Your personal directory for the internet | ||
| Net World Directory: Archives of botany blog |
 | ||
Archives Of Botany Blog From NetworlddirectorySubscribe To Botany Blog RSS Feed 
Brazil Publishes Biodiversity Generic Name List
The Brazilian government has been, and is, involved in a number of trademark disputes with companies that, for example, take a name of a fruit in Brazilian Portuguese and trademark it to get exclusive rights to commercialise it under that name in a certain country or region. This hinders Brazilian exports, especially when it happens in larger markets, Cristiano Franco Berbert of the Permanent Mission of Brazil in Geneva told Intellectual Property Watch. Berbert said the mission has sent the list to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) to help raise awareness of the issue. The government also is looking into the possibility of the list being circulated at a future meeting of the WIPO Standing Committee on the Law of Trademarks, Industrial Designs and Geographical Indications, he said. WIPO members adopted a Revised Trademark Law Treaty in March of this year (IPW, WIPO, 5 April 2006). In addition, Brazil is looking into the list possibly being presented at the WTO Council on the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement, Berbert said......... Posted by: Jessica Permalink Source Cherry Juice May Prevent Muscle Damage Pain
Historically, a number of approaches to prevent exercise-induced muscle pain and damage have been examined, but few have been effective. Declan Connolly, associate professor of education and director of the human performance laboratory at the University of Vermont and colleagues at New York's Nicholas Institute of Sports Medicine and Athletic Trauma and Cornell University, evaluated the efficacy of a fresh, highly-concentrated, specially- processed tart cherry juice blend in preventing the symptoms of muscle damage in a randomized, placebo-controlled study in 14 male college students. "The anti-inflammatory properties of cherry juice have been examined before, but the focus of this research was on a new area - muscle damage repair," said Connolly. "Only two species of mammals suffer this type of muscle damage - horses and humans". The study participants were asked to either drink a bottle of the cherry juice blend twice a day for three days before exercise and for four days afterwards, or to drink a placebo juice containing no cherries. The 12-ounce bottle of juice contained the liquid equivalent of 50 to 60 tart cherries blended with commercially available apple juice......... Posted by: Jessica Permalink Source Bacteria And Algae Destroy Coral
Caption: Coral (Acropora) from the Line Islands covered by bubble algae (Dictyosphaeria)
Credit: Jennifer Smith Reporting in the June 5 on-line version of the scientific journal Ecology Letters, researchers described laboratory experiments on coral and algae. First author Jennifer Smith, a postdoctoral fellow at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) at the University of California, Santa Barbara, explained that the team of scientists, as part of a research expedition to the Line Islands, put algae and coral in chambers of seawater with filters between them. All of the corals with neighboring algae died, while coral without neighboring algae did not die. However, with the addition of an antibiotic, coral death even in the presence of algae was prevented, showing that bacteria fed by the algae are the agents of coral death. "We are the first to link these processes together," said Smith. "This study tightly links the fields of microbiology with coral reef ecology to help guide reef conservation efforts," said senior author Forest Rohwer, assistant professor of microbiology at San Diego State University......... Posted by: Tyler Permalink Source Top 100 Ecological Questions
Image courtesy of http://telematics.ex.ac.uk/
As per the lead author, Professor Bill Sutherland of the University of East Anglia: "There is currently too little information flow between researchers and policy makers. Narrowing this gap would be very beneficial in generating policies that are based on sound science. On the other hand, it is desirable that research should be more clearly directed at issues that influence policy." The list of 100 questions is the outcome of two days of discussion between 654 environmental policy makers and academics. The academics acted as facilitators, helping the policy makers arrive at a short-list of 100 key questions from an initial long-list of more than 1,000. Policy makers came from 30 leading environmental organisations and regulators, including the Environment Agency, SEPA, English Nature, the National Trust, Butterfly Conservation, the Wildlife Trusts, the Woodland Trust and the British Trust for Ornithology, and the short-list was agreed by consensus and compromise......... Posted by: Tyler Permalink Source More than drought affecting wheat yields
Dr. Tom Allen, Experiment Station assistant research scientist and plant disease diagnostician, saw more than 150 wheat samples sent to the Great Plains Diagnostic Network lab this growing season, in addition to 400-plus samples the plant pathology staff gathered across the Panhandle. Ninety-five percent of these samples were diagnosed with the wheat streak mosaic virus. In addition, 50 percent of the samples contained maize red stripe virus, more usually known as High Plains virus. Both diseases are vectored by the wheat curl mite, Allen said. And so far, there's no therapy for either the viruses or the mite. The Great Plains Diagnostic Network is a part of a national plant disease monitoring system, which is divided into five regions. The Amarillo facility, a satellite lab to one at Kansas State University, is operated under the Experiment Station's plant pathology program, headed by Dr. Charlie Rush. Samples came by mail, through Texas Cooperative Extension agents or were dropped off by producers, Allen said. They came from as far north as Nebraska and as far south as Dallas and the Hill Country, Rush said, making this one of the most widespread years for wheat streak mosaic damage......... Posted by: Jessica Permalink Source Plant Diseases Threaten Chocolate Production
"Plant diseases are the most important constraints to cacao production and the continued viability of the world's confectionary trades," said Randy Ploetz, plant pathology professor at the University of Florida, Homestead, FL. Currently, 4 million metric tons of beans worth more than $4 billion are produced each year. The global chocolate market is worth $75 billion annually. As per Ploetz, the three most important and damaging cacao diseases are black pod, frosty pod, and witches' broom. Black pod occurs worldwide and has the largest impact, while frosty pod and witches' broom are restricted to tropical America. "Frosty pod and witches' broom would devastate cacao production in West Africa, where almost 70 percent of all production occurs," said Ploetz. "In this region, either disease could reduce yields by an additional one million more metric tons per year," he said. New insights and current research on cacao diseases, as well as resistance to and management of the diseases, will be addressed during the Cacao Diseases: Important Threats to Chocolate Production Worldwide symposium held July 30 from 1:30-5 p.m., during the joint annual meeting of The American Phytopathological Society, Canadian Phytopathological Society, and the Mycological Society of America. The joint meeting will be held July 29-August 2, 2006, at the Centre des Congrès de Quebec, Quebec City, Quebec, Canada......... Posted by: Jessica Permalink Source Avocado fruit for health
The avocado has various names. In the past it was called as alligator pear, midshipman's butter, vegetable butter, or sometimes as butter pear. Avocados may grow well in the mild-winter areas of California, Florida and Hawaii. Some sub varieties of could be seen in the northern parts of California and along the Gulf Coast. An average avocado tree produces about 120 avocados annually. Commercial orchards produce an average of 7 tonnes per hectare each year, with some orchards achieving 20 tonnes per hectare (FAO statistics). Biennial bearing can be a problem, with heavy crops in one year being followed by poor yields the next. The fruit is sometimes called an avocado pear or alligator pear, from its shape and green skin. The avocado tree does not tolerate freezing temperatures, and so can be grown only in subtropical and tropical climates......... Posted by: Jessica Permalink Source Cassava Plants To Fight Hunger In Africa
The findings could help ease hunger in many countries where people rely heavily on the cassava plant (Manihot esculenta) as a primary food source, said Richard Sayre, the study's lead author and a professor of plant cellular and molecular biology at Ohio State University. The researchers used a gene from the bacterium E. coli to genetically modify cassava plants. The plants, which were grown in a greenhouse, produced roots that were an average of 2.6 times larger than those produced by regular cassava plants. "Not only did these plants produce larger roots, but the whole plant was bigger and had more leaves," Sayre said. Both the roots and leaves of the cassava plant are edible. Cassava is the primary food source for more than 250 million Africans - about 40 percent of the continent's population. And the plant's starchy tuberous root is a substantial portion of the diet of nearly 600 million people worldwide. Sayre said he hopes to offer these plants to countries where cassava is an important crop. The current study appears in the online early issue of the Plant Biotechnology Journal. Sayre collaborated with Ohio State colleague Uzoma Ihemere and scientists from BASF Plant Science in Research Triangle Park, N.C., and BARC-West in Beltsville, Md., who formerly worked on this project in his laboratory......... Posted by: Tom Permalink Source Super Broccoli At Chelsea Flower Show
The stand will have a range of plants from the brassica family, broccoli and oilseed rape being the most important commercial crops. Breeding better crops entails crossing plants which possess the best properties, commonly from within the same crop (for instance restricting oneself to just cross breeding broccoli with another type of broccoli). However, this approach misses out the vast range of useful properties in the larger brassica family. The Warwick HRI scientists are well equipped to change that situation as they have one of the largest gene banks of vegetable brassicas in the world. With over 6,000 plants in the gene bank the Warwick HRI research teams have an invaluable resource enabling them to carry out their research. This breeding work on broccoli alone is on course to transform it into a super plant in the following ways:......... Posted by: Jessica Permalink Source Mystery Of Flowering Plants
Photographs by Yi Hu, Penn State Eberly College of Science Department of Biology
The yellow water lily (Nuphar advena) shows evidence of an ancient genome duplication that may have been a key event in the evolution of flowering plants Claude dePamphilis, associate professor of biology at Penn State, is the principal investigator of the Floral Genome Project and the senior author of the paper. "We found a concentration of duplicated genes that suggests a whole-genome duplication event in the earliest flowering plants," he says. "A polyploidy event early in the history of flowering plants could explain their sudden evolution." The results appear in a recent issue of Genome Research. One unexpected observation from the study is the relatively slow accumulation of mutations in primitive flowering plants like the yellow water lily (Nuphar). "We can view these basal angiosperms like the Hubble Space Telescope, which helps us get a deeper look into the early history of the universe--these plants allow us to take a deeper look into genomic history"......... Posted by: Jessica Permalink Source |
||
| Net World Directory: Navigation |