Showing papers in "Annals of Botany in 2012"

TL;DR: Polyploidy can be an important factor in species invasion success through a combination of 'pre-adaptation', whereby polyploid lineages are predisposed to conditions in the new range and, therefore, have higher survival rates and fitness in the earliest establishment phase.

TL;DR: Grasslands are important for global food supply, contributing to ruminant milk and meat production and grassland-based food production can produce food with a comparable carbon footprint as mixed systems.

TL;DR: It is essential to link trait-based responses of invaders to changes in community and ecosystem properties, and this work suggests a functional trait framework for assessing per capita effects and, ultimately, impacts of invasive plants on plant communities and ecosystems.

TL;DR: Genomic selection or genome-wide selection is a potent, attractive and valuable approach for plant breeding and will be integrated into many practical breeding programmes in the near future with further advances and the maturing of its theory.

TL;DR: This paper reviews phylogenetic, developmental, anatomical, genetic and paleontological data with the aim of reconstructing the succession of events that shaped major land plant lineages and concludes that bryophytes are the key to a better understanding of the early evolution of land plants.

TL;DR: The ability of AM plants to switch between water transport pathways could allow a higher flexibility in the response of these plants to water shortage according to the demand from the shoot.

TL;DR: Differences in Cd uptake of roots and shoots are probably related to the development of apoplasmic barriers and maturation of vascular tissues in roots, which might be attributed to enhanced binding of Cd to the apoplasmsic fraction in maize shoots.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss the shared conceptual framework of the transmission advantage and reproductive assurance ideas and their empirical support that is emerging from tests of their predictions over the last 25 years.

TL;DR: The substantial phenotypic, cytogenetic and molecular differences detected among the three B. distachyon sensu lato cytotypes are indicative of major speciation processes within this complex that allow their taxonomic separation into three distinct species.

TL;DR: It is concluded that spatial niche differentiation caused by differences in root architecture allows polycultures to overyield when plants are competing for mobile soil resources, however, direct competition for immobile resources might be negligible in agricultural systems.

TL;DR: This review summarizes current knowledge about optimal defence patterns in above- and below-ground plant tissues, including information on basal and induced defence metabolite accumulation, defensive structures and their regulation by jasmonic acid (JA).

TL;DR: The results suggest that although root hair length is not important for maintaining yield, the presence of root hairs is implicit to sustainable yield of barley under P-deficient conditions and when combined with extreme drought.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the significance of cluster roots and high carboxylate exudation in the development of young ecosystems is probably far more important than has been envisaged thus far, and suggest that diazotrophic species that colonize young soils with strong P-sorption potential should be considered for their positive effect on P availability.

TL;DR: This review aims to discuss key processes involved in the development of functional root zones within the context of direct revegetation of tailings and introduces a conceptual process of rehabilitating structure and function in the root zones based on a state transition model.

TL;DR: Soil compaction adversely affects root system architecture, influencing resource capture by limiting the volume of soil explored and swelling of the root tip occurred in compacted soil.

TL;DR: Root elongation rate in the majority of field soils was slower than half of the unimpeded rate, which will decrease rooting volumes and limit crop growth in soils where nutrients and water are scarce.

TL;DR: The first evidence that some members of the GmPAP gene family are possibly involved in the response of plants to symbiosis with rhizobia or arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi under P-limited conditions is provided.

TL;DR: In this article, an investigation was made of how climate change will affect the timing and the level of germination in eight alpine species of the glacier foreland, and the results showed that seasonal changes in climate will inevitably affect recruitment success.

TL;DR: This review highlights the issue of pollen water status and indicates the various mechanisms used by pollen grains during their five developmental phases to adjust to changes in water content and maintain internal stability.

TL;DR: It is proposed that the transference of gene function from gametophyte to sporophyte could provide a mechanism that explains the increase in morphological diversity of sporophytes that occurred during the radiation of land plants in the Devonian Period.

TL;DR: The highly co-ordinated variation of roots and leaves in terms of traits and potential decomposition rate suggests that changes in the functional composition of communities in response to anthropogenic changes will strongly affect biogeochemical cycles at the ecosystem level.

TL;DR: Although geophytism together with producing larger cells appears to be an advantageous strategy for fast development of an organism in seasonal habitats, the drought sensitivity of large stomata may restrict the occurrence of geophytes with very large genomes to regions not subject to water stress.

TL;DR: It appears that Baker's Law encompasses a variety of ecological scenarios, which cannot be considered a priori as equivalent, and evolutionary predictions are actually more complex than Baker's intuitive arguments.

TL;DR: In this paper, a comparison was made of stem hydraulic conductivity, vulnerability curves, wood anatomy, leaf life span, leaf pressure volume characteristics and photosynthetic capacity of six evergreen and six deciduous tree species co-occurring in a tropical dry karst forest in south-west China.

TL;DR: It is shown that CO(2)-induced stomatal closing is strongly impaired under conditions that prevent intracellular Ca(2+) elevations, and an individualStomatal tracking method is proposed for improved analyses of stimulus-regulated Stomatal movements in Arabidopsis guard cells that reduces noise and increases fidelity in stimulus- regulated stomatic aperture responses.

TL;DR: Joint application of precise phenotyping machinery and molecular tools in optimized breeding schemes will improve forage and turf breeding in the near future and will thereby contribute to amended performance of managed grassland agroecosystems.

TL;DR: Females tend to have greater seed fertility advantages over hermaphrodites where the two coexist, and this advantage is positively correlated with female frequency across species, as predicted by theory.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated the effect of display size on male and female fitness in Mimulus ringens and found that male success per flower declined with increasing display size, while female success per female success did not vary with display.

TL;DR: Different genetic determinants were involved in controlling seed yield and yield-related traits in B. napus in soils with low P availability in marker-assisted selection.

TL;DR: The distribution of AGPs as well as various aspects of their functional properties in root tissues and pollen tubes are discussed, and novel directions of research on the role of AGP in the biology of roots and pollenubes are suggested.