Ninja Plants

Ninja Plants
Author: Wiley Blevins
Publisher: Twenty-First Century Books ™
Total Pages: 135
Release: 2017-01-01
Genre: Young Adult Nonfiction
ISBN: 1512439142

What can communicate but has no mouth, and can attack but has no hands? A plant! You might love the beauty and fragrance of flowers, but plants are far more complex than meets the eye. Some plants have ways of luring insects for pollination. Others mimic the look of the female insects whose male counterparts they want to attract. The Venus flytrap eats insects and other small animals for extra nourishment. You might see some of these ninja plants—with their sneaky and deceitful ways—in your own backyard. These plants might even be sitting on a windowsill in your home. This fascinating world of ninja plants is waiting to be discovered.

How Plants Protect Themselves

How Plants Protect Themselves
Author: Sarah Machajewski
Publisher: Gareth Stevens Publishing LLLP
Total Pages: 24
Release: 2019-07-15
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1538233827

When it comes to survival, plants are regular pros, but their defenses aren't always easy to see. This high-interest science book exposes the plant kingdom's biggest secrets, allowing readers to really understand what goes on under the soil and right in front of our faces. Budding botanists will be excited to learn the varied ways plants protect themselves, from color-muted camouflage to painful pokers and everything in between. Engaging language, high impact fact boxes, and photographs make this elementary science content memorable and fun.

Killer Carnivorous Plants

Killer Carnivorous Plants
Author: Nathan Aaseng
Publisher: Enslow Publishing, LLC
Total Pages: 50
Release: 2018-12-15
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1978504500

Plants sit at the bottom of the food chain. They provide meals for the vast majority of animals on earth, but what if the food chain were upset? Strange as it may sound, there are places on virtually every continent where plants are the hunters and animals the hunted. Some plants move so quickly that insects do not know what hit them. Others lay elaborate traps to lure their prey. Featuring stunning full-color photographs, informative sidebars, and accessible text, this book will fascinate young readers as it introduces them to real meat-eating plants of the world.

Cannabis

Cannabis
Author: Robert Clarke
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 452
Release: 2016-06-28
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0520292480

Cannabis: Evolution and Ethnobotany is a comprehensive, interdisciplinary exploration of the natural origins and early evolution of this famous plant, highlighting its historic role in the development of human societies. Cannabis has long been prized for the strong and durable fiber in its stalks, its edible and oil-rich seeds, and the psychoactive and medicinal compounds produced by its female flowers. The culturally valuable and often irreplaceable goods derived from cannabis deeply influenced the commercial, medical, ritual, and religious practices of cultures throughout the ages, and human desire for these commodities directed the evolution of the plant toward its contemporary varieties. As interest in cannabis grows and public debate over its many uses rises, this book will help us understand why humanity continues to rely on this plant and adapts it to suit our needs.

Molecular Plant Immunity

Molecular Plant Immunity
Author: Guido Sessa
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2013-01-04
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0470959509

Molecular Plant Immunity provides an integrated look at both well-established and emerging concepts in plant disease resistance providing the most current information on this important vitally important topic within plant biology. Understanding the molecular basis of the plant immune system has implications on the development of new varieties of sustainable crops, understanding the challenges plant life will face in changing environments, as well as providing a window into immune function that could have translational appeal to human medicine. Molecular Plant Immunity opens with chapters reviewing how the first line of plant immune response is activated followed by chapters looking at the molecular mechanisms that allow fungi, bacteria, and oomycetes to circumvent those defenses. Plant resistance proteins, which provide the second line of plant immune defense, are then covered followed by chapters on the role of hormones in immunity and the mechanisms that modulate specific interaction between plants and viruses. The final chapters look at model plant-pathogen systems to review interaction between plants and fungal, bacterial, and viral pathogens. Written by a leading team of international experts, Molecular Plant Immunity will provide a needed resource to diverse research community investigated plant immunity.

Abiotic Stress Signaling in Plants: Functional Genomic Intervention

Abiotic Stress Signaling in Plants: Functional Genomic Intervention
Author: Girdhar K. Pandey
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
Total Pages: 638
Release: 2016-08-08
Genre: Botany
ISBN: 288919891X

Abiotic stresses such as high temperature, low-temperature, drought and salinity limit crop productivity worldwide. Understanding plant responses to these stresses is essential for rational engineering of crop plants. In Arabidopsis, the signal transduction pathways for abiotic stresses, light, several phytohormones and pathogenesis have been elucidated. A significant portion of plant genomes (Arabidopsis and rice were mostly studied) encodes for proteins involves in signaling such as receptor, sensors, kinases, phosphatases, transcription factors and transporters/channels. Despite decades of physiological and molecular effort, knowledge pertaining to how plants sense and transduce low and high temperature, low-water availability (drought), water-submergence, microgravity and salinity signals is still a major question for plant biologist. One major constraint hampering our understanding of these signal transduction processes in plants has been the lack or slow pace of application of molecular genomic and genetics knowledge in the form of gene function. In the post-genomic era, one of the major challenges is investigation and understanding of multiple genes and gene families regulating a particular physiological and developmental aspect of plant life cycle. One of the important physiological processes is regulation of stress response, which leads to adaptation or adjustment in response to adverse stimuli. With the holistic understanding of the signaling pathways involving not only one gene family but multiple genes or gene families, plant biologist can lay a foundation for designing and generating future crops, which can withstand the higher degree of environmental stresses (especially abiotic stresses, which are the major cause of crop loss throughout the world) without losing crop yield and productivity. Therefore, in this e-Book, we intend to incorporate the contribution from leading plant biologists to elucidate several aspects of stress signaling by functional genomics approaches.

Where Have All the Bees Gone?

Where Have All the Bees Gone?
Author: Rebecca E. Hirsch
Publisher: Millbrook Press
Total Pages: 92
Release: 2020-02-04
Genre: Young Adult Nonfiction
ISBN: 1541595939

Apples, blueberries, peppers, cucumbers, coffee, and vanilla. Do you like to eat and drink? Then you might want to thank a bee. Bees pollinate 75 percent of the fruits, vegetables, and nuts grown in the United States. Around the world, bees pollinate $24 billion worth of crops each year. Without bees, humans would face a drastically reduced diet. We need bees to grow the foods that keep us healthy. But numbers of bees are falling, and that has scientists alarmed. What's causing the decline? Diseases, pesticides, climate change, and loss of habitat are all threatening bee populations. Some bee species teeter on the brink of extinction. Learn about the many bee species on Earth—their nests, their colonies, their life cycles, and their vital connection to flowering plants. Most importantly, find out how you can help these important pollinators. "If we had to try and do what bees do on a daily basis, if we had to come out here and hand pollinate all of our native plants and our agricultural plants, there is physically no way we could do it. . . . Our best bet is to conserve our native bees." —ecologist Rebecca Irwin, North Carolina State University

Low-Temperature Stress in Plants: Molecular Responses, Tolerance Mechanisms, Plant Biodesign and Breeding Applications

Low-Temperature Stress in Plants: Molecular Responses, Tolerance Mechanisms, Plant Biodesign and Breeding Applications
Author: Jin Xu
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
Total Pages: 155
Release: 2024-05-17
Genre: Science
ISBN: 2832549195

Low-temperature stress is the primary abiotic stress that affects the growth and development of plants and their geographical distribution. This can lead to the solidification of membrane lipids and decrease of enzymatic reaction rate in plants in a relatively short time, or indirectly affect the imbalance of respiration and photosynthesis, accumulation of toxic substances, ATP depletion, cell solute leakage and wilting due to water loss. Low-temperature stress can be divided into chilling stress and freezing stress according to the damage caused to plants. Both chilling and freezing stress drastically threaten global food security and species diversity in the northern and frigid temperate zones. Once plants experience low-temperature stress, the regulation mechanism of gene expression is rapidly activated to cope with the adverse environment.