Hard-setting behaviour of some structurally weak tropical soils

Some soils set hard on drying and may limit crop productivity. The hard-setting behaviour is influenced by soil properties and management. The objective of this study was to relate physical properties of soils sampled from 3 sites in Nigeria to soil strength or degree of hard-setting and to management. Clearing the vegetation and tillage led to a decrease in organic matter content and wet aggregate stability and increased bulk density leading to an increase in soil strength. The soil strength increased as the water content decreased but the increase was much more marked for mechanized cleared or tilled soils than for the less disturbed treatments of forestry or no-till cropping.     

Some fluorine-containing pheromone analogues

Two analogues of the aphid alarm pheromone (E)-β-farnesene, a trifluorofarnesene and a difluoro-1-norfarnesene, were found to be highly active and were more readily detectable than the parent compound. For (Z)-hexadec-11-enal, a component of some lepidopteran sex attractant pheromones, replacement of the carbonyl oxygen with a difluoromethyl group to give a difluoroheptadecadiene resulted in loss of activity. A trifluoroacetoxyhexadecanolide was a more volatile analogue of the mosquito oviposition pheromone (?)-(5R,6S)-6-acetoxy-5-hexadecanolide and was highly active.     

Intra-varietal variation for in vitro plant regeneration in the genus Trifolium

Summary Seedlings of Trifolium repens showed considerable variation with regard to the morphology and growth of their calli, and their ability for in vitro differentiation of shoots. One of the lines selected for regeneration in primary callus cultures also showed shoot formation from protoplasts. Somatic embryogenesis in callus cultures of T. pratense and T. arvense occurred only in selected seedling lines. This paper highlights the importance of screening a large number of plants within a cultivar of outbreeding species to achieve reproducible plant regeneration from tissue culture.     

Compaction and shrinkage of sands and sand-kaolin mixtures

A comparison was made between the porosities of sands and of mixtures of sand and kaolin paste which had either been allowed to air-dry or had been consolidated under a load of 1.5 MPa. For all the mixtures of sand and kaolin, air-drying resulted in porosities which were from 0.1 to 0.05 (v/v) lower than those produced by consolidation. In contrast, two sands had porosities 0.01 and 0.05 (v/v) higher when air-dried than when consolidated. This demonstrates that some sandy-textured soils may compact significantly on drying.     

Dynamic instability in a DNA-segregating prokaryotic actin homolog

Dynamic instability-the switching of a two-state polymer between phases of steady elongation and rapid shortening-is essential to the cellular function of eukaryotic microtubules, especially during chromosome segregation. Since the discovery of dynamic instability 20 years ago, no other biological polymer has been found to exhibit this behavior. Using total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy and fluorescence resonance energy transfer, we observe that the prokaryotic actin homolog ParM, whose assembly is required for the segregation of large, low-copy number plasmids, displays both dynamic instability and symmetrical, bidirectional polymerization. The dynamic instability of ParM is regulated by adenosine triphosphate (ATP) hydrolysis, and filaments are stabilized by a cap of ATP-bound monomers. ParM is not related to tubulin, so its dynamic instability must have arisen by convergent evolution driven by a set of common constraints on polymer-based segregation of DNA.     

Using ground-penetrating radar to detect layers in a sandy field soil

Pollutant transport in sandy soils can be very complex due to the presence of coarse sand lenses. Water flows laterally over the coarse material and, subsequently, breakthrough occurs in concentrated pathways, called fingers. This (funneled) flow process is a form of preferential flow reducing solute travel time and degradation of organic chemicals.

In this paper, we test ground-penetrating radar (GPR) as a tool for detecting layers in the soil. Several GPR transects were established on a fine sandy loam soil throughout the growing season and subsequent fall period to find the best time to reveal layer structures. The effect of the spatially varying moisture content on the radar velocity was determined from actual measurements with soil samples and by using the Common Mid-Point (CMP) technique. The optimal time to find coarse layers with GPR in this soil was at the end of the fall season when the soil was wetted and evaporation had decreased. The depth of layers, as indicated by GPR, was highly sensitive to the soil moisture content and could be in error by as much as ±0.4 m on a depth scale of 1.5 to 2 m if an average propagation velocity was used. A satisfactory depth prediction of textural interfaces was obtained non-destructively by collecting data in both reflection and CMP mode.     

Amino acid variation in the 10 kDa Oryza prolamin seed storage protein

The deduced amino acid variability for the 10 kDa prolamin was determined for 16 Oryza species, both cultivated (rice) and wild. Prolamin, a seed storage protein and site of nitrogen and sulfur accumulation, is sequestered in the subaleurone layer of the starchy endosperm for use during seedling germination. The 10 kDa prolamin amino acid distribution for the cultivated species (O. sativa and O. glaberrima) was determined and compared to those of wild and, hitherto unknown, noncultivated Oryza species. Four wild species (O. granulata, O. australiensis, O. brachyantha, and O. meyeriana) exhibited the greatest residue heterogeneity in both the signal and mature peptide regions. A breakdown of the essential amino acid variance among three Central/South American and one African endemic wild species is also presented and compared with those of rice.     

Propagation in vitro of pear, Pyrus communis L., cultivars ‘William's Bon Chrétien’, ‘Packham's Triumph’ and ‘Beurré Bosc’

Shoot cultures were established from nodal explants of 3 pear cultivars by subculture on Murashige and Skoog medium containing mixtures of 3 cytokinins. Zeatin and 6·(γ,γ-dimethylallylamino)purine were both supplied at 10 μM and benzyladenine as follows: ‘William's Bon Chrétien’, 6 μM; ‘Packham's Triumph’, 8 μM; ‘Beurré Bosc’, 10 μM. Production of axillary shoots was greater by basal explants (4–6) comprising the remnants of the previous subculture than by apical explants (2–3) comprising the distal parts of extension shoots. Up to 80% of microcuttings of all cultivars formed roots in vitro with either γ-indolebutyric acid, 10 μM, or α-naphthaleneacetic acid, 10 μM, and approximately 50% of rooted microcuttings were successfully established as container-grown plants. Use of aseptic methods for producing own-rooted pears is discussed in relation to fruit growing and fruit improvement.