Most eukaryotic organisms display specialized cellular and behavioral oscillations with a period of approximately 24 hours, which are called circadian rhythms. The biological clock generates a rhythm that conveys temporal information over a day. Through this system, most eukaryotic organisms appropriately respond to daily or seasonal environmental changes by regulating their physiology and development in a time-dependent manner, conferring the organism with an adaptive advantage. In plants, the endogenous timing system also controls many important physiological processes including flower opening, hormone synthesis, metabolic pathways and gene expression so that these sessile species may survive efficiently in changing environments. Temperature compensation (TC) is one of the defining features of the clock mechanism. Under this mechanism, the pace of the clock, or period, remains stable over a broad range of physiologically relevant temperatures, which is unlikely to happen in other biochemical reactions. Thus, this mechanism allows organisms to sustain their ordinary life in various thermal environments by providing an accurate measure of the passage of time, regardless of the ambient temperature. Considering the current global climate changes our planet is undergoing, understanding the fundamental mechanism underlying TC cannot be overemphasized. In this review, we discuss the molecular organization of the plant circadian clock and the concept of TC, as well as the significance of plant TC in conferring fitness under the current increasing thermal environments.
Transposable elements (TEs) play important roles in structural and functional diversification, genome enlargement, and speciation in plant genome. Their derivatives or small non-autonomous TEs play important roles in the alteration of homologous genes by epigenetic control or structural modification. The miniature inverted-repeat transposable element (MITE) is one of the representative non-autonomous class II TEs. MITEs include high copy members that are widely distributed and in close association with genic regions, which make MITEs useful targets and resources for in-depth understanding of genome evolution, as well as practical applications in molecular breeding. Here, we discuss the important features of MITEs, such as the identification tools of a novel MITE family, structural characterization, distribution pattern analysis, and impact on evolution in highly duplicated
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Soybeans have a long history as a nutritious hay and silage crop. Early research extensively investigated forage yield, adaptability to various maturity zones, and nutritional values. Evaluation and breeding with diverse soybean accessions continued to optimize soybean forage yield and quality. There is still interest by breeders in developing more desirable forage soybeans, depending on market demand, and the existing interests of crop and livestock producers. In this review, we provide an update compiled from recent publications on the use and development of soybean as a forage crop.
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A recombinant inbred line (RIL) population derived from the cross between Ilpumbyeo (a
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Perennial poor fruit-set and variability in tree yield are among major problems of cashew nut production. Thus, development of improved stable genotypes would be a sustainable strategy to address this perpetual problem in order to boost income and livelihood of many smallholder farmers of this important commodity crop. Here, we have applied additive main effect and multiplicative interaction (AMMI) and genotype, genotype by environment (GGE) biplot analysis to a 3-year multi-locational trial data on nine yield component characters of cashew to evaluate phenotypic stability across diverse environments. Variance analysis showed significant variability in the cashew genotypes and strong influence of genotype by environment (GxE) on tree yield as none of the genotypes was stable for any of the yield components across locations. GxE data showed that a substantial portion of the variation was explained by the genotype (highly heritable), accounting for between 10% and 87% of the variation, while the environment accounted for between 0.7% and 37%. Data showed significant higher values of interaction (GxE) than the respective values for environment, and were mostly captured and could be explained by the first principal component axis (IPCA 1) for all the yield component characters. There was an inverse relationship between stability and yield as the best three yielding genotypes (KT_26, IW_222 and IW_31) were found to be the most unstable. Among the yield component tested, hermaphrodite flowers per panicle, nuts per panicle, nuts per tree, nut weight, and tree fruiting efficiency were identified to be critical components for nut yield. Although there was wide variation between the three environments evaluated, the data effectively identified two mega-environments (ME), and two superior genotypes (IW_222 and KT_26) suitable for these two mega-environments. The GxE complex exposes the short-comings of broad recommendations of common agronomic-husbandry technologies across diverse cashew ecologies as each mega-environment would require specific adaptable technologies for optimal plant output. Above all, the data presented here underscore the importance of multi-locational evaluation of genotypes for varietal development in cashew.
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Plants have adapted the ability to respond to various abiotic stresses such as high salinity, osmotic stress, high and low temperatures, and drought in order to survive. Small heat shock proteins (sHsps) play important and extensive roles in plant defenses against abiotic stresses. Herein, we cloned an sHsp gene from the rice, which we named
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Rice (
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This study was carried out to evaluate the genetic diversity and relationships among fifty-six blackberry (
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Eggplant (
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