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Tolerance is the ability of plants to mitigate the negative fitness effects caused by herbivory. It is one of the general plant defense strategies against herbivores , the other being resistance , which is the ability of plants to prevent damage (Strauss and Agrawal 1999).
Herbivores' effects on plant diversity vary across environmental changes. Herbivores could increase plant diversity or decrease plant diversity. [1] Loss of plant diversity due to climate change can also affect herbivore and plant community relationships [2] Herbivores are crucial in determining the distribution, abundance, and diversity of plant populations.
Soil is in close cooperation with the broader biosphere. The maintenance of fertile soil is "one of the most vital ecological services the living world performs", and the "mineral and organic contents of soil must be replenished constantly as plants consume soil elements and pass them up the food chain". [3]
If plants do not receive adequate rainfall or irrigation, the resulting dehydration stress can reduce growth more than all other environmental stresses combined. Drought can be defined as the absence of rainfall or irrigation for a period of time sufficient to deplete soil moisture and cause dehydration in plant tissues. Dehydration stress ...
The salt level is often taken as the soil salinity or the salinity of the irrigation water. Salt tolerance is of importance in irrigated lands in (semi)arid regions where the soil salinity problem can be extensive as a result of the salinization occurring here. It concerns hundreds of millions of hectares. [2]
Some chemical defenses once thought to be produced by the plant have since been shown to be synthesized by endophytic fungi. The chemical basis of insect resistance in endophyte-plant defense mutualisms has been most extensively studied in the perennial ryegrass and three major classes of secondary metabolites are found: indole diterpenes, ergot alkaloids and peramine.
Herbicides are designed and used to control unwanted plants such as agricultural weeds. However, the use of herbicides can cause phytotoxic effects on non-targeted plants through wind-blown spray drift or from the use of herbicide-contaminated material (such as straw or manure) being applied to the soil. [5]
Identifying the genes responsible for drought tolerance in barley plants and applying them to other plant species or other barley varieties via transgenics has also shown promising results. One study expressed the hva1 gene from barley in creeping bentgrass , and found that it improved drought tolerance by lessening the effects of water-deficit ...