User:Lengel08/sandbox

Assignment 7: Revised Wikipedia Assignment (12/15/15) Leymus mollis

As a result of strong anthropogenic pressures in today’s world, one response is to look at sustainable development of our vegetative environment. Biologists are continuously looking for new ways to combat these artificial pressures, and one of the species that has potential to be more closely looked at is Leymus mollis, an extremely adaptable plant species. Specific traits of L. mollis can be proven beneficial in the hybridization and domestication of this species or a hybrid species. These traits include the species’ ability to tolerate moderate burial intensity and sustain trampling, adapt to drought and water deficiency, resist many fungal diseases such as wheat stripe rust, contain high rhizome bud viability, and tolerate salt and various diseases.

Drought Tolerance: The first environmental stress factor that L. mollis exhibits tolerance to is drought and water deficiency. This wild relative of wheat has defense mechanisms that express several stress-responsive genes that allow the species to tolerate drought and water deficiency. These genetic factors leading to the adaptability of L. mollis to water deficiencies can be beneficial in artificial selection and hybridization.

Burial Tolerance: Although Leymus mollis adapts well to moderate and high drought intensities, it has shown to have even a greater tolerance for moderate burial intensity and sustain the trampling present in North American subarctic environments.

Fungal Disease Resistance: In addition to these tolerance factors, Leymus mollis is also resistant to many fungal diseases. One example of this tolerance is with wheat stripe rust, a plant infection caused by Puccinia striiformis. As one of the most widely distributed and destructive fungal diseases in the world, many wheat crops today need new effective resistance genes and development of new resistance germplasms. Multiple types of translocation wheat lines that possess resistance to multiple different races of stripe rust fungus have been found.

Rhizome Bud Viability: The strong rhizome bud viability of L. mollis also contributes to the species’ adaptability. Leymus mollis rhizomes have potential to spread and colonize a large distance from a source population due to their bud’s ability to survive in seawater during seawater submergence. Although L. mollis does not have as brittle of rhizomes as some species native to the same areas, such as Ammophilia arenaria, and therefore does not break into rhizome fragments as easily, many other rhizomes have a lower viability than L. mollis rhizomes.

Salt Tolerance and Disease Resistance: The genes for salt tolerance and disease resistance are also naturally found in L. mollis. In addition, this species has large spikes, strong rhizomes, and experiences vigorous growth in environments ranging from Siberia to Canada and Iceland and the northern parts of Japan.

All of these traits of L. mollis have the potential to be beneficial for crop improvement and domestication of new plant species in response to anthropogenic pressures and the increased need for food production.