(Press-News.org) Quebec City, December 6, 2010—Researchers at Université Laval, in collaboration with Nova Scotia Agricultural College, have discovered what causes Christmas tree needles to drop off, and how to double the lifespan of Christmas trees in homes. The authors presented their findings in a recent issue of the scientific journal Trees.
The researchers have identified a plant hormone—ethylene—responsible for needle loss in balsam fir. They made the discovery by placing fir branches in containers of water inside a growth chamber. After ten days the branches began to produce ethylene and, three days later, the needles began to drop. After 40 days, the branches were completely bare.
To test that the needle loss was in fact due to the ethylene, the researchers used two chemical compounds that interfere with this hormone: 1-MCP and AVG. After exposing the branches to one of these two products, the needle retention period rose to 73 and 87 days, respectively.
"By Day 40, the branches that had been treated were still green, tender, and fresh-looking, while the untreated branches had lost virtually all their needles," explains Steeve Pépin, co-author of the study and professor at the Faculty of Agriculture and Food Sciences at Université Laval.
These findings could have a significant impact for Christmas tree producers and consumers alike. "Since 1-MCP is a gas, it would be feasible to release it into the trucks used to ship the trees," suggests Pépin. This would be particularly useful for the export market. In 2008, Christmas tree sales topped $65 million in Canada, and half of the sales were generated by exports of some 1.8 million trees to the United States, Mexico, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean.
Consumers also stand to benefit from this discovery since it would be possible to dissolve AVG in the water added to the tree stand, which would prolong the tree's lifespan indoors. "What is really encouraging is that we managed to double the needle retention period of the branches," notes Steeve Pépin. "However, we still have to prove that we can transpose these findings to the entire tree," he concluded.
###
In addition to Steeve Pépin, the study's co-authors are Mason MacDonald, Rajasekaran Lada, and Alex Martynenko (Nova Scotia Agricultural College); Martine Dorais and Yves Desjardins (Université Laval).
Information:
Steeve Pépin
Faculty of Agriculture and Food Sciences
Université Laval
(418) 656-2131 ext. 16238
Steeve.Pepin@fsaa.ulaval.ca
Source:
Jean-François Huppé
Media Relations
Université Laval
(418) 656-7785
Jean-Francois.Huppe@dc.ulaval.ca
END
Brand named hotels fare better than independently operated properties in economic downturns, according to a team of international researchers.
A study of the performance of hotels during both economic recessions and expansions indicates that brand named hotels are more profitable than independent hotels under all economic conditions, but the difference is particularly significant during recessions, said John O'Neill, associate professor of hospitality management, Penn State.
"There has been a lot of debate in the hotel industry about the advantages of brand affiliation ...
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Good news for control freaks! New research confirms that having some authority over how one takes in new information significantly enhances one's ability to remember it. The study, in the journal Nature Neuroscience, also offers a first look at the network of brain structures that contribute to this phenomenon.
"Having active control over a learning situation is very powerful and we're beginning to understand why," said University of Illinois psychology and Beckman Institute professor Neal Cohen, who led the study with postdoctoral researcher Joel Voss. ...
COLLEGE STATION — A team of Texas AgriLife Research engineers has developed a way to cut by as much as half the amount of irradiation needed to kill 99.999 percent of salmonella, E. coli and other pathogens on fresh produce.
By packing produce in a Mylar bag filled with pure oxygen, Dr. Carmen Gomes, AgriLife Research food safety engineer, and her colleagues found they could significantly reduce the amount of radiation needed to kill those pathogens. Reducing the amount of radiation is not so much a safety measure as it is a way to preserve quality of the produce, she ...
PITTSBURGH—Computer-related technology is increasingly driving the U.S. economy, yet computer science education is scant in most American elementary and secondary school classrooms and the number of introductory and Advanced Placement courses in computer science has actually declined in the last five years, according to a report released this fall.
"Some states and some schools are offering some really excellent courses," said Mark Stehlik, co-author of the report, "Running on Empty: The Failure to Teach K-12 Computer Science in the Digital Age," http://www.acm.org/runningonempty/. ...
How do ecosystems develop? No one really knows, yet. There is however one project, unique in the world, seeking to answer this question. In a former open-pit coal mining area in Brandenburg, Germany, a surface of six hectares was partitioned off and then left to its own resources. Scientists from the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM), in collaboration with researchers from other institutions, are studying the development of soil, flora, and fauna there. With this research they aim to establish the factors that have a particularly strong influence on developing ecosystems.
Young ...
CHICAGO --- Post-traumatic stress syndrome – when a severely stressful event triggers exaggerated and chronic fear – affects nearly 8 million people in the United States and is hard to treat. In a preclinical study, Northwestern Medicine scientists have for the first time identified the molecular cause of the debilitating condition and prevented it from occurring by injecting calming drugs into the brain within five hours of a traumatic event.
Northwestern researchers discovered the brain becomes overly stimulated after a traumatic event causes an ongoing, frenzied ...
New research at Rice University could ultimately show scientists the way to make batches of nanotubes of a single type.
A paper in the online journal Physical Review Letters unveils an elegant formula by Rice University physicist Boris Yakobson and his colleagues that defines the energy of a piece of graphene cut at any angle.
Yakobson, a professor in mechanical engineering and materials science and of chemistry, said this alone is significant because the way graphene handles energy depends upon the angle -- or chirality -- of its edge, and solving that process for ...
Investigators report no evidence of toxicity in the four hemophilia B patients enrolled to date in a gene therapy trial using a vector under development at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and UCL (University College London) to correct the inherited bleeding disorder.
This trial was designed primarily as a safety test, with low and intermediate doses of the vector expected to produce little detectable Factor IX. The Factor IX protein helps the blood form clots. Individual with hemophilia B lack adequate levels of this clotting factor. The first participant in the ...
People with psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, are 12 times more likely to commit suicide than average, according to research released today by King's Health Partners.
The research found that the rate of suicide was highest in the first year following diagnosis (12 times national average) and that high risk persisted – remaining four times greater than the general population ten years after diagnosis, a time when there may be less intense clinical monitoring of risk.
Neither the risk of suicide nor the long-term risk of suicide, as compared ...
CORVALLIS, Ore. – It's illegal for businesses and law enforcement to profile a person based on their race, gender, or ethnicity, yet millions of Americans are being profiled every day based on their online consumer behavior and demographics.
Known as consumer profiling for behavioral advertising purposes, this type of profiling is largely unregulated.
The result, according to two recent articles in the journal of Computer Law & Security Review, is that consumers have less privacy and are being targeted by advertisers using increasingly sophisticated measures, which ...
