Production and Identification of a Tetraploid Germplasm of Edible Lilium davidii var. unicolor Salisb via Chromosome Doubling

Lilium davidii var. unicolor Salisb is a cultivar of Lilium (Liliaceae) with important edible and ornamental characteristic. The application and production of Lilium davidii var. unicolor Salisb were still facing large problems because of its several disadvantages such as narrow range of adaptability, small annual growth increment, and low fertility. To achieve broader environmental adaptability and obtain a more nutritious germplasm, we used colchicine and oryzalin to induce chromosome doubling via the soaking method. Tissue culture bulbs were treated with colchicine at 0.03%, 0.05%, or 0.08% for 32, 40, or 48 hours or with oryzalin at 0.002%, 0.005%, 0.008%, or 0.01% for 3, 6, 9, 12, or 24 hours before being transferred to a differentiating medium. The results showed that colchicine treatment resulted in the highest induction rate when applied at 0.05% for 48 hours, whereas oryzalin treatment produced fewer tetraploid plants. The chromosome number of induced plants with small stoma density and longer guard cells is twice than that of the diploid. The plants were identified as tetraploid. In this study, a new germplasm of Lilium davidii var. unicolor Salisb was innovative and showed novel genetic characteristic.

The difficulties of dating olive wood

Olive wood is difficult to date for a variety of reasons, the most important of which is that one cannot tell visually what is an annual growth increment (usually referred to as a ‘ring’) and what is a sub-annual growth flush of which there may be any number in one growing season. (I have been able to count a dozen or more flushes in olive wood where the end of the growing season was somewhat more clearly marked than usual.) If one cannot determine the ring boundaries with certainty, one cannot do tree-ring dating, period. For Egyptologists reading this note, acacia is just as bad, and for the same reason. For 25 years I had a couple of sections of olive wood in my dendrochronology lab. Every term I would challenge students to tell me how many rings there were on them. No two students ever came up with the same answer and neither could I. An inspection of two different radii on the same piece also yielded widely varying results. (A side issue, not relevant here, is that the size of the ring in an olive tree does not necessarily reflect climatic conditions but rather the energies of the farmer or gardener who brings water to it. Thus olive is useless for purely dendrochronological cross-dating purposes.

Age and growth of forkbeard, Phycis phycis, in Portuguese continental waters

The forkbeard, Phycis phycis, is an important commercial species in Portugal; however, little information is available on its biology. Age and growth of the forkbeard from Portuguese continental waters were studied using 687 otoliths from specimens caught between May 2011 and December 2012. Otoliths were transversally sectioned, and assigned ages were validated by marginal increment analysis and edge analysis, and indices of precision were also calculated to corroborate ageing within and between readers. Validation techniques showed that an annual growth increment is formed every year, corresponding to the succession of an opaque and a translucent growth zone. Specimens ranged from 15.5 to 67.1 cm total length (TL), and their estimated ages ranged between 0 and 18 years. The forkbeard is a relatively slow growing, long lived species, that does not show sexual dimorphism in growth. The von Bertalanffy growth parameters estimated for forkbeard from the Portuguese continental waters were L∞ = 75.14 cm TL, k = 0.10 yr−1 and t0 = −2.09 yr.

Establishing highly accurate production-age data using the tree-ring technique of crossdating: a case study for Pacific geoduck (Panopea abrupta)

We apply the tree-ring technique of crossdating to generate highly accurate age data and evaluate error in annual growth increment (annual growth zone) counts for long-lived Pacific geoduck ( Panopea abrupta ) in the Tree Nob Islands, northern British Columbia, Canada. Crossdating is the most fundamental procedure of tree-ring analysis and is based on the tendency of environmental variability to synchronize the growth of all individuals at a given site. By crossmatching these synchronous growth “bar codes”, all growth increments can be correctly identified and assigned the correct calendar year, including the innermost year of recruitment. In this analysis, a total of 432 geoduck individuals were aged using crossdating methods as well as annual growth increment counts. The entire crossdating process was completed using visual techniques, requiring no additional equipment beyond a microscope or microprojector. When compared with crossdated ages, growth increment counts consistently underaged Pacific geoduck, particularly in the oldest individuals. These inaccuracies obscured major recruitment pulses and underestimated the rarity of strong recruitment events. To date, crossdating has been used to develop growth chronologies in a variety of marine and freshwater bivalve and fish species, but no study has demonstrated how the technique can be used to dramatically and economically improve accuracy in age data.

Growth Intercept Methods for Predicting Site Index in White Pine Plantations in the Glaciated Areas of Ohio

Growth intercept (GI) techniques were evaluated for estimating site quality in white pine stands planted on old-field sites in the Wisconsin-aged glaciated areas of northern and western Ohio. Correlations between growth of trees below the breast high (bh) annual growth increment andheight growth from bh and above were not statistically significant. Site index estimates were made using age at bh and height from the bh annual growth increment to the growing tip. Three-year and 5-year growth beginning 3 years above the bh annual increment and 10-year growth beginning oneinternode above bh were significantly more correlated with height than were intercepts beginning at bh. In multiple regression equations developed for predicting site index, 3-, 5- and 10-year intercepts, along with age at bh, accounted for 76, 77, and 80%, respectively, of the variationin tree heights and 35-year site indices varied from 60 to 83 ft. Combining clay content of the B2 soil horizon with GI and age increased the variation accounted for by 3-, 5-, and 10-year GI equations to 79, 78, and 81%, respectively, and the improvement in site index estimatesover those using GIs alone was not more than ±2 ft within any given GI measurement.

Seasonal growth pattern in the lichen Pseudocyphellaria berberina in north-western Patagonia

Seasonal growth increments (%) were measured in the foliose epiphytic lichen Pseudocyphellaria berberina in north-western Patagonia. Growth was determined by measuring increase in weight (expressed as percentage of the original biomass) in transplanted thalli. Transplants were either hung freely from wooden frames or attached to tree trunks in a Nothofagus dombeyi forest and then weighed every three months between January 2001 and April 2003. The influence on growth increment of treatment, donor thallus, temperature, and absolute and relative humidity was analysed. Mean annual growth increment after two years, in both treatments was 12±1·07% (±SE). Growth increment was greatest in winter and lowest in summer; the mean winter growth increment was 6±0·50%, representing half of the annual growth, whereas most of the remaining growth occurred during both spring and autumn. Growth increments were similar for freely-hanging lichens and for the transplants attached to tree trunks. Individual trees had no consistent effect on growth while the donor thallus had a significant effect in the first season which then diminished, indicating acclimation in the transplants. Initial transplant weight had no influence on final cumulative growth, nor was there any consistent correlation between one season and another in the growth of transplants. Both transplantation methods proved to be useful for experiments on the growth of P. berberina.

Norms of reaction and adaptational value considered in a tree breeding context

Separability of genetic from environmental effects on target traits is a central concern of each breeding program. This requires studies of norms of reaction, i.e., responses of genotypes to environmental conditions that potentially participate in the modification of the trait. Yet, in addition to this modifying environmental condition, achievement of the breeding goal can be affected by a second component of the environment, which decides upon the adaptedness of the desired trait expressions. These adaptive environmental conditions may also vary and may be associated in various ways with the modifying conditions with the result that the desired phenotype is adaptively inferior to less desired phenotypes. Therefore, it is important to know the prerequisites under which a consistent phenotypic superiority guaranteed by separability of the genetic effects transforms into consistent adaptational superiority relations among genotypes. After having recalled the system analytic basis of adaptational processes, this problem is tackled with the help of a paradigm model in which photoperiod dynamics modifies growth conclusion in forest trees and first frost decides upon the adaptedness of the time of growth conclusion in terms of the realized annual growth increment. In this paradigm, maximization of growth increment constitutes both the breeding goal and adaptational valuation of the trait "growth conclusion" under the adaptational condition "first frost." The central result of the analysis rests on the definition of a fictitious genotype, whose time of growth conclusion equals the time of first frost, and which thus characterizes the association between modifying and adaptive conditions that guarantees maximum adaptedness. The result then states that separability of the genetic effects on growth conclusion within the set of genotypes enlarged by the fictitious genotype implies consistent adaptive ranking among genotypes. The implications for common breeding practice and its evolutionary consequences are discussed.