Posts Tagged ‘botany’

Plants with the ability to re-grow even after about five hundred years

Lab culture of the plants (Credit: Catherine La Farge)

Main Point:

Researchers have found the plants under the Arctic ice that have the ability to re-grow due to glacial melting after about five centuries. Read more…

Trials to check whether Plants could grow on Moon and Mars or not

Main points:

Researchers have planned to experiment whether it is possible to grow the plants on Mars or not. They will give the plants, the mineral composition of the soil on the moon and the Mars and will study the plant species that would theoretically grow on the surface of the moon and the Mars. Read more…

Protect trees for your good health

Researchers have found that the presence of trees in the environment strongly relates with the human health.

This research has been published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Researchers in this study have done an analysis of 18 years of data from 1,296 counties in 15 states in U.S. They found about 15,000 more deaths from cardiovascular disease and slightly more than 6,000 deaths from lower respiratory disease in the people living in the areas bug-ridden by the emerald ash borer, a beetle that kills ash trees making them treeless, as compared to uninfected areas. Read more…

Plant having a chemical defense against irritating insects

Researchers have found plants may repel the “insect antagonists” after getting cues related to the odors of flies to attract female flies that may result in damage to the plants.

This research has been published online in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

“It’s become increasingly clear in recent years that plants are responsive to odors,” Mark Mescher, assistant professor of entomology, said in a statement. “But previous examples of this are all plant-to-plant. For example, some plants have been shown to respond to the odor of insect-damaged neighbors by priming their own defenses. What’s new about this is that it seems that plants may sometimes be able to smell the insects themselves.”

Researchers worked on tall goldenrod (Solidago altissima) plants. They exposed some of the plants to the odor of the male fly and observed the laying of eggs by female on exposed and unexposed plants by checking the characteristic scarring that happens when females pierce the stem to lay their eggs inside, said Mescher. Read more…

NASA’s map on nutrient limitation and plant productivity; Research

Scientists from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, Calif. made an analysis for the first time to estimate the effect of nutrients available in the soil to the growth of plants in the world.

This research has been published online in the journal Global Biogeochemical Cycles.

Researchers have developed a map to check for the utilization of carbon dioxide by the Earth’s ecosystems as the greenhouse gas levels increase.

Read more…