Rates of plant growth and their reaction to main environmental factors such as temperature are difficult to determine under field conditions. By segmenting plant leaves from background in images taken from wheat plots, we were able to show significant variation among varieties for their response in canopy cover growth rates to changing temperatures. The developed approach is simple and fast and can be used to screen genetic mapping populations for growth response patterns to temperature and other environmental factors.

The regulatory mechanisms of biomass allocation and the morphological and physiological traits of leaves in response to light and N availability are not fully understood. We found that both gibberellins and cytokinins are closely involved in the regulatory mechanisms in Polygonum cuspidatum. The results will help to further our understanding of plant morphogenesis in response to light and N availability.

Stomata movements are regulated by air humidity. The aim of this work was to study the role of ethylene and abscisic acid in air humidity stomatal responses. We show that both ethylene production and sensitivity play a role in high air humidity promoted stomatal opening and that high level of abscisic acid can inhibit the opening. The results indicate an interaction between ethylene and abscisic acid and provide novel insight into the role of plant hormones in air humidity regulated stomatal movements.

Calcium-dependent protein kinase (CDPK) is an important member of Ca²⁺-signal transduction pathway for plants to resist environmental stress. It was first time to clone peanut CDPK gene and to analyse its function. That over-expressing AhCDPK improved the resistance of tobacco to salt stress will be helpful to improve peanut salt resistance and to further expand its cultivation in saline-alkali soil by transgenic or agronomic measure.

CLE peptides are critical regulators of plant development, and include members that control legume nodule numbers in symbiosis with nitrogen-fixing rhizobia bacteria. These peptides are essential for the host plant to maintain a balance between acquiring nitrogen and expending energy forming and maintaining nodules. The structure and function of all known nodulation-suppressing CLE peptides is the focus of this review.

Grapevine (Vitis vinifera) is known for its cultivar variability in response to deficit irrigation. A 3 year study, comparing Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon petioles anatomy, showed that Shiraz had larger vessels diameter that resulted in higher hydraulic conductivity and transpiration rates. These traits lead to lower water potentials and vulnerability to cavitation. Our results provide a link between xylem anatomy and plant performances.

Extreme high temperature can threaten rice (Oryza sativa L.) production by decreasing its seed setting percentage; however, sufficient nitrogen can alleviate this detrimental effect. Heat-tolerant cultivars show high leaf transpiration and nonstructural carbohydrates, and sufficient nitrogen can improve them. This suggests that sufficient leaf transpiration and nonstructural carbohydrates are beneficial for high-temperature tolerance in three rice cultivars and two N treatments.

This study sought to provide a biophysical basis for the common observation that shoot vigour in grapevines declines as the number of shoots per plant increases. We found that the plant’s capacity to supply water to its canopy adapts to the shoot number; however, limited adaptation, rather than competition with fruit growth, may constrain shoot growth and fruit growth. These findings may be used to optimise cultural practices that balance shoot and fruit growth for maximum quality.

Increased plant growth and yield response to elevated [CO₂] is closely associated with leaf area expansion. The main aim of this study was to investigate the mechanism of leaf area expansion and its genetic plasticity. Our results suggest that carbon supplies to growing leaves are cultivar dependent, and well correlated with leaf area expansion and whole-plant growth.

We investigated the formation of agarwood, a substance believed to have interesting medicinal properties and that is produced only by certain plants when they are responding to an injury or infection. We evaluated the effects of hydrogen peroxide on cells of the plant Aquilaria sinensis; as we expected, the plant cells responded to this damaging chemical with specific changes in gene expression and the production of compounds known to be linked with toxicity and programmed cell death. Our results indicate that exposure to a reactive oxygen species, such as hydrogen peroxide, produces multiple cellular responses that culminate in an effective defensive reaction on the part of the plant (i.e. production of agarwood).

The evaluation of root system recovery methods for X-ray microcomputed tomography images is a challenging task. In this work, we aim to raise awareness of the evaluation problem and to propose experimental approaches that allow the performance of root extraction methods to be assessed. This should help users to better understand the strengths and limitations of each method and should allow a better comparison.

Soil salinisation is a global issue that affects plant growth and limits agricultural production, and a comprehensive understanding of the mechanism of salt tolerance is essential for breeding salt-tolerant genotypes. Our results indicate that higher stomatal density and a predominant use of inorganic osmolytes are critical for the osmotic adjustment when barley exposed to salinity stress. These findings offer breeders new phenotyping methods for screening salt-tolerant genotypes, and provide a new insight into mechanisms of salt tolerance in this species.

Invasive plants pose serious risks for conservation of coastal habitats. Spartina patens revealed physiological mechanisms based on salt uptake and accumulation, and ability to control the capacity of the plant to transport water, thus allowing colonisation of both dunes and marshes. Studies are needed to investigate the eventual occurrence of similar mechanisms in native species outcompeted by alien ones.

High-throughput phenotyping facilities provide opportunities for plant development observation and monitoring on new scales, but also present new problems in automatic image analysis. This paper presents a solution to one such problem by automating the detection of flowering in oats. This demonstrates the applicability of state-of-the-art computer vision algorithms to phenotyping, which may well be of value in similar atlas-based measurement.

Pruning clearly influences subsequent growth and structure of trees; however, systematic studies on shoot structural responses to pruning severity have been difficult due to shoot structural complexity. This research used a statistical modelling approach to characterise shoot structural responses to pruning severity in ‘Nonpareil’ almond trees. Shoot responses to pruning were relatively consistent and predictable among similar shoot types within pruning treatments while pruning severity increased shoot structural complexity.

Potato production is threatened worldwide by late blight disease, which destroys crops and lays a heavy financial burden on producers. Diploid potatoes with high disease resistance were analysed for the first time to identify the resistance related metabolites and associated genes responsible for impeding the pathogen. Phenylpropanoids, flavonoids, fatty acids and alkaloids induced reinforcement of secondary cell walls deterring pathogen advancement, and the genes involved can be used in breeding following validation.

Extreme summer temperatures are increasingly frequent and are known to cause a loss in crop productivity. The aim was to test the photosynthetic performance of economically important Malus domestica (apple) trees under these conditions and discovered that extreme heat compromised the photosynthetic process but recovery occurred when the temperatures subsided. These results provide a basis for comprehending the impact of climate change.

Accurate and non-invasive measures of wheat grain morphometry can have impact on improvements in milling yield. An automated approach is presented to extract such measures from wheat CT data. The results show significant differences in measures between two disparate strains of wheat.

Ammonium and NO₃^– are the major nitrogen sources of plants. Although NH₄⁺ is preferred, plant growth is suppressed at higher concentrations. Here, the transcriptomes of seedlings grown on (NH₄)₂SO₄, KNO₃ or NH₄NO₃ were compared. A major difference in auxin-regulated genes was observed and the importance of auxin was confirmed using mutants in the auxin pathway.

Realistic virtual models of leaf surfaces are important for several applications in plant sciences, such as simulating agrichemical spray droplet motion on the leaf surface. Although there are effective approaches for reconstructing leaf surface from 3D scanned data, complications arise when dealing with wheat (Triticum aestivum) leaves, which tend to twist and bend. We present an algorithm that overcomes this topological difficulty, allowing significantly more leaf varieties to be modelled in this way.

Quantifying the colocalisation of labels is a major application of fluorescent microscopy in plant biology. Pixel-based quantification of colocalisation, such as Pearson’s correlation coefficient, gives limited information for further analysis. We show how applying bioimage informatics tools to a commonplace experiment allows further quantifiable results to be extracted. We use our object-based colocalisation technique to extract distance information, show temporal changes and demonstrate the advantages and pitfalls of using bioimage informatics for plant science.

The total area of the leaves on a plant is important in horticulture, but manually measuring it is tedious and destructive. Getting a computer to recognise and count leaves is difficult, so we have used statistical methods to relate leaf area to the variations in colour in an image. This has potential to be a big help for scientists developing and testing new crop cultivars.