Aliphatic polyamines are ubiquitous compounds classified as plant growth substances (1). They act mainly in processes based on cell division. It is known that exogenous polyamines can induce cell division in plant tissues temporarily lacking in polyamines (1). Many authors have sugge ...
The availability of transgenic plant material has provided an important new tool for unraveling the complex mechanisms by which auxins regulate plant development (1–4). The accurate estimation of indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) and IAA-conjugates remains a vital part of the analysis if we are ...
Physicochemical techniques are very specific, sensitive, and accurate techniques widely used for phytohormone analysis (for a review see refs. 1–3). Liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (LC-MS) or gas chromatography-coupled mass spectrometry (GC-MS) in particular, rece ...
Agrobacterium-mediated transformation of plants has not only become a useful tool for the introduction of chimeric genes into plants, but it has also recently been utilized in gene tagging (for reviews, see refs. 1–3). T-DNA tagging has proven a powerful genetic approach for the isolation of nov ...
Agrobacterium tumefaciens-mediated transformation of plants provides a relatively straightforward means of altering the amounts of individual proteins involved in photosynthetic processes. By the introduction of additional copies of genes or of chimeric cDNA construc ...
Several research groups have undertaken gene transfer studies to test the feasibility of using animal metallothionein (MT; a Cd, Zn, Cu, Au, Ag, etc. binding peptide) to partition and sequester pollutant metals in plant tissues. To date, several mammalian MT genes have been expressed constitu ...
Molecular oxygen, although required for aerobic life, is toxic. The cellular damage caused by oxygen derivatives is known as oxidative stress. To survive, all aerobic organisms must posses the ability to protect themselves from oxidative stress. These protective mechanisms include b ...
The term “agroinfection” was first used (1) to describe the use of Agrobacterium for the introduction of infectious molecules to plants. This implies infection of the host plant with a molecule, the “infectious agent,” generally a virus or viroid, that has the ability to replicate and spread with ...
Agrobacterium tumefaciens is a soil bacterium that induces, in most dicotyledonous plants, the neoplastic disease called crown gall. These tumors form at the site of wounding. The molecular basis for the tumor formation is the integration into and expression from the plant genome of T-DNA (t ...
Cosmid libraries are important tools for molecular analysis of plant genes because of their useful properties. Cosmids carry the cos site from the bacteriophage lambda (1–4); therefore, cosmid libraries have the advantage of being able to be packaged in vitro using commercially availab ...
In Bergey’s Manual of Systematic Bacteriology (1), the genus Agrobacterium is divided into four species (A. radiobacter, A. rhizogenes, A. rubi, and A. tumefaciens) based on phytopathogenic characters. With the exception of A. rubi, each species is subdivided into three biovars based on physi ...
The first glimmering that microbes could be used to control insects is generally traced back to 1834 when Aogostino Bassi discovered that a fungus, Beauveria bassiana, caused an infectious disease in the silkworm. However, it was not until some 40 yr later that the first attempts were made to use inse ...
Bloand botanical pesticides are often grouped together in developing countries as possible alternatives to chemical pesticides. In reality, botanic pesticides are no different from chemical pesticides, but blopestlcides are all far removed from them. Botanical pesticides de ...
Pesticide policy has a substantial impact on the development and use of biopesticides. Before exploring the nature and extent of this impact, it is worthwhile to examine biopesticide use, in order to put policy influences in proper perspective.
The commercial development of biofungicides received a significant boost in recent years, primarily because of impressive progress in the isolation and characterization of novel strains of microorganisms that can fulfill the mam characteristics of a biofungicide, which are the c ...
Seedlings of economically important crop plants are attacked by various soilborne pathogenic fungi, such as Pythium, Fusarium, Rhizoctonia, Phytopthora, and others, which cause either seed rot before germination or seedling rot after germination, resulting in billions of dolla ...
During the past 20 yr, more attention than ever has been given to the devel opment of biological methods to control plant diseases. Indeed, the concern for food of high quality, without residues of pesticides, and for a sustainable agri culture that will preserve the fertility of soil, and prevent the po ...
The agricultural industry of the 1990s is challenged to find new methods and materials for controlling pests and diseases. New legtslatton, including the 1996 Food Quality Protection Act, Worker Protection Standard, and Pesticide Reregistratton, are limiting the availability of t ...
In 1985, Pierre Ferron reviewed the status of a “hundred-year-old hypothesis” that the entomopathogemc fungi would one day become integral components of many insect-pest management systems. He concluded his review by stating the need to “define precisely the ecosystems in which these na ...
Baculoviruses of insects have been promoted for their pest control potential forinore than half a century (1). Despite this, only a few have been successful in biological control, and almost none has proven a commercial success, or is used routinely for large-scale Insect controlin industri ...