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Seed Saving
In agriculture and gardening, seed saving (sometimes known as brown bagging) is the practice of saving seeds or other reproductive material (e.g. tubers, Grafting, scions, Cutting (plant), cuttings) from vegetables, grain, herbs, and flowers for use from year to year for annuals and Nut (fruit), nuts, Fruit, tree fruits, and Berry, berries for perennials and trees. This is the traditional way farms and gardens were maintained for the last 12,000 years (see Neolithic Revolution#Agricultural transition, first agricultural revolution). In recent decades, beginning in the latter part of the 20th century, there has been a major shift to purchasing seed annually from commercial seed suppliers. Most farmers regard seed saving as a risky practice. If farmers do not sanitize their seed, this can result in significant pest or disease damage when the saved seed is planted. Other reasons farmers generally do not save seed include inbreeding depression and certain plants not growing Open polli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Inbreeding Depression
Inbreeding depression is the reduced biological fitness caused by loss of genetic diversity as a consequence of inbreeding, the breeding of individuals closely related genetically. This loss of genetic diversity results from small population size, often stemming from a population bottleneck. Biological fitness refers to an organism's ability to survive and perpetuate its genetic material. In general, the higher the genetic variation or gene pool within a breeding population, the less likely it is to suffer from inbreeding depression, though inbreeding and outbreeding depression can simultaneously occur. Inbreeding depression seems to be present in most populations of organisms, but varies across mating systems. Remarkably, hermaphroditic species often exhibit lower degrees of inbreeding depression than outcrossing species, as repeated generations of selfing is thought to purge deleterious alleles from populations. For example, the outcrossing nematode (roundworm) '' Caen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Agreement On Trade-Related Aspects Of Intellectual Property Rights
The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) is an international agreement, international legal agreement between all the member nations of the World Trade Organization (WTO). It establishes minimum standards for the regulation by national governments of different forms of intellectual property (IP) as applied to nationals of other WTO member nations. TRIPS was negotiated at the end of the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) between 1989 and 1990 and is administered by the WTO. The TRIPS agreement introduced intellectual property law into the multilateral trading system for the first time and remains the most comprehensive multilateral agreement on intellectual property to date. In 2001, developing countries, concerned that developed countries were insisting on an overly narrow reading of TRIPS, initiated a round of talks that resulted in the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS agreement and public health, Doha Declarati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Germination
Germination is the process by which an organism grows from a seed or spore. The term is applied to the sprouting of a seedling from a seed of an angiosperm or gymnosperm, the growth of a sporeling from a spore, such as the spores of fungi, ferns, bacteria, and the growth of the pollen tube from the pollen grain of a seed plant. Seed plants Germination is usually the growth of a plant contained within a seed resulting in the formation of the seedling. It is also the process of reactivation of metabolic machinery of the seed resulting in the emergence of radicle and plumule. The seed of a vascular plant is a small package produced in a fruit or cone after the union of male and female reproductive cells. All fully developed seeds contain an embryo and, in most plant species some store of food reserves, wrapped in a seed coat. Dormant seeds are viable seeds that do not germinate because they require specific internal or environmental stimuli to resume growth. Und ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Seedbank
A seed bank (also seed banks, seeds bank or seed vault) stores seeds to preserve genetic diversity; hence it is a type of gene bank. There are many reasons to store seeds. One is to preserve the genes that plant breeders need to increase yield, disease resistance, drought tolerance, nutritional quality, taste, etc. of crops. Another is to forestall loss of genetic diversity in rare or imperiled plant species in an effort to conserve biodiversity ''ex situ''. Many plants that were used centuries ago by humans are used less frequently now; seed banks offer a way to preserve that historical and cultural value. Collections of seeds stored at constant low temperature and low moisture are guarded against loss of genetic resources that are otherwise maintained in situ or in field collections. These alternative "living" collections can be damaged by natural disasters, outbreaks of disease, or war. Seed banks are considered seed libraries, containing valuable information about evolved st ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plant Pathology
Plant pathology or phytopathology is the scientific study of plant diseases caused by pathogens (infectious organisms) and environmental conditions (physiological factors). Plant pathology involves the study of pathogen identification, disease etiology, disease cycles, economic impact, plant disease epidemiology, plant disease resistance, how plant diseases affect humans and animals, pathosystem genetics, and management of plant diseases. Plant pathogenicity Plant pathogens, organisms that cause infectious plant diseases, include fungi, oomycetes, bacteria, viruses, viroids, virus-like organisms, phytoplasmas, protozoa, nematodes and parasitic plants. In most plant pathosystems, virulence depends on hydrolases and enzymes that degrade the cell wall. The vast majority of these act on pectins (for example, pectinesterase, pectate lyase, and pectinases). For microbes, the cell wall polysaccharides are both a food source and a barrier to be overcome. Many path ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Selective Breeding
Selective breeding (also called artificial selection) is the process by which humans use animal breeding and plant breeding to selectively develop particular phenotypic traits (characteristics) by choosing which typically animal or plant males and females will sexually reproduce and have offspring together. Domesticated animals are known as breeds, normally bred by a professional breeder, while domesticated plants are known as varieties, cultigens, cultivars, or breeds. Two purebred animals of different breeds produce a crossbreed, and crossbred plants are called hybrids. Flowers, vegetables and fruit-trees may be bred by amateurs and commercial or non-commercial professionals: major crops are usually the provenance of the professionals. In animal breeding artificial selection is often combined with techniques such as inbreeding, linebreeding, and outcrossing. In plant breeding, similar methods are used. Charles Darwin discussed how selective breeding had been succ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Volunteer (botany)
In gardening and agronomy, agronomic terminology, a volunteer is a plant that grows on its own, rather than being deliberately planted by a farmer or Gardening, gardener. The action of such plants — to sprout or grow in this fashion — may also be described as volunteering. Background Volunteers often grow from seeds that float in on the wind, are dropped by birds, or are inadvertently mixed into compost. Some volunteers may be encouraged by gardeners once they appear, being watered, fertilized, or otherwise cared for, unlike weed, weeds, which are unwanted volunteers. Volunteers that grow from the seeds of specific cultivars are not reliably identical or similar to their parent and often differ significantly from it. Such Open pollination, open pollinated plants, if they show desirable characteristics, may be selected to become new cultivars. Agriculture In Crop rotation, agricultural rotations, self-set plants from the previous year's crop may become established as weeds ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Genetic Drift
Genetic drift, also known as random genetic drift, allelic drift or the Wright effect, is the change in the Allele frequency, frequency of an existing gene variant (allele) in a population due to random chance. Genetic drift may cause gene variants to disappear completely and thereby reduce genetic variation. It can also cause initially rare alleles to become much more frequent and even fixed. When few copies of an allele exist, the effect of genetic drift is more notable, and when many copies exist, the effect is less notable (due to the law of large numbers). In the middle of the 20th century, vigorous debates occurred over the relative importance of natural selection versus neutral processes, including genetic drift. Ronald Fisher, who explained natural selection using Mendelian inheritance, Mendelian genetics, held the view that genetic drift plays at most a minor role in evolution, and this remained the dominant view for several decades. In 1968, population geneticist Mot ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Landrace
A landrace is a Domestication, domesticated, locally adapted, often traditional variety of a species of animal or plant that has developed over time, through adaptation to its natural and cultural Environment (biophysical), environment of agriculture and pastoralism, and due to isolation from other populations of the species. Landraces are distinct from cultivars and from standard breeds. A significant proportion of farmers around the world grow landrace crops, and most plant landraces are associated with traditional agricultural systems. Landraces of many crops have probably been grown for millennia. Increasing reliance upon modern plant cultivars that are bred to be uniform has led to a reduction in biodiversity, because most of the genetic diversity of domesticated plant species lies in landraces and other traditionally used varieties. Some farmers using scientifically improved varieties also continue to raise landraces for agronomic reasons that include better adaptation to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Biodiversity
Biodiversity is the variability of life, life on Earth. It can be measured on various levels. There is for example genetic variability, species diversity, ecosystem diversity and Phylogenetics, phylogenetic diversity. Diversity is not distributed evenly on Earth. It is greater in the tropics as a result of the warm climate and high primary productivity in the region near the equator. Tropical forest ecosystems cover less than one-fifth of Earth's terrestrial area and contain about 50% of the world's species. There are latitudinal gradients in species diversity for both marine and terrestrial taxa. Since Abiogenesis, life began on Earth, six major mass extinctions and several minor events have led to large and sudden drops in biodiversity. The Phanerozoic aeon (the last 540 million years) marked a rapid growth in biodiversity via the Cambrian explosion. In this period, the majority of Multicellular organism, multicellular Phylum, phyla first appeared. The next 400 mil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grassroots
A grassroots movement is one that uses the people in a given district, region or community as the basis for a political or continent movement. Grassroots movements and organizations use collective action from volunteers at the local level to implement change at the local, regional, national, or international levels. Grassroots movements are associated with bottom-up, rather than top-down decision-making, and are sometimes considered more natural or spontaneous than more traditional power structures. Grassroots movements, using self-organization, encourage community members to contribute by taking responsibility and action for their community. Grassroots movements utilize a variety of strategies from fundraising and registering voters, to simply encouraging political conversation. Goals of specific movements vary and change, but the movements are consistent in their focus on increasing mass participation in politics. These political movements may begin as small and at the local le ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
