The Fundamental Rights Agency and Civil Society: Reminding the Gardeners of their Plants' Roots. EDAP 02/2012, 2012

The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), the EU body responsible for advising EU institutions on fundamental rights, is equipped with a Fundamental Rights Platform (FRP) to ensure an on-going and structured exchange of information and feedback between the FRA and Civil Society. When the FRA was founded in 2007, there was little pre-existing knowledge on how to design such a Platform; hence, the development of the relationship between the FRA and Civil Society over the first five years proved an interesting experiment. Although the Platform was never intended as a mechanism of democratic co-decision making, it is far more than a loose marketplace where Civil Society actors across the spectrum of fundamental rights themes gather. The Platform offers channels of consultation and exchange not only among the participants but also with the FRA. It allows for cross-pollination, ensuring informed grassroots input into FRA work and FRA expertise flow to Civil Society actors. This synergetic relationship builds upon both the self-organising forces of Civil Society and the terms of references of the FRP as defined by the FRA. The Platform allows to find a certain unity in the remarkable diversity of fundamental rights voices. To what degree, however, the Platform’s dynamics allow the transformation of sometimes ‘compartmentalised’ single human rights discussions into wider trans-sectoral and transnational debates within the Human Rights Community depends on the motivation and the interest(s) of the different Civil Society players.

The Upper Valanginian (Early Cretaceous) positive carbon-isotope event recorded in terrestrial plants

Our understanding of the ancient ocean-atmosphere system has focused on oceanic proxies. However, the study of terrestrial proxies is equally necessary to constrain our understanding of ancient climates and linkages between the terrestrial and oceanic carbon reservoirs. We have analyzed carbon-isotope ratios from fossil plant material through the Valanginian and Lower Hauterivian from a shallow-marine, ammonite-constrained succession in the Crimean Peninsula of the southern Ukraine in order to determine if the Upper Valanginian positive carbon-isotope excursion is expressed in the atmosphere. delta(13)C(plant) values fluctuate around -23% to -22% for the Valanginian-Hauterivian, except during the Upper Valanginian where delta(13)C(plant) values record a positive excursion to similar to-18%. Based upon ammonite biostratigraphy from Crimea, and in conjunction with a composite Tethyan marine delta(13)C(carb) curve, several conclusions can be drawn: (1) the delta(13)C(plant) record indicates that the atmospheric carbon reservoir was affected; (2) the defined ammonite correlations between Europe and Crimea are synchronous; and (3) a change in photosynthetic carbon-isotope fractionation, caused by a decrease in atmospheric PCO2, occurred during the Upper Valanginian Positive delta(13)C excursion. Our new data, combined with other paleoenvironmental and paleoclimatic information, indicate that the Upper Valanginian was a cool period (icehouse) and highlights that the Cretaceous period was interrupted by periods of cooling and was not an equable climate as previously thought. (C) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Genotype x environment interaction in the uptake of Cs and Sr from soils by plants

The soil-plant transfer factors for Cs and Sr were analyzed in relationship to soil properties, crops, and varieties of crops. Two crops and two varieties of each crop: lettuce (Lactuca sativa L.), cv. Salad Bowl Green and cv. Lobjoits Green Cos, and radish (Raphanus sativus L.), cv. French Breakfast 3 and cv. Scarlet Globe, were grown on five different soils amended with Cs and Sr to give concentrations of 1 mg kg(-1) and 50 mg kg(-1) of each element. Soil-plant transfer coefficients ranged between 0.12-19.10 (Cs) and 1.48-146.10 (Sr) for lettuce and 0.09-13.24 (Cs) and 2.99-93.00 (Sr) for radish. Uptake of Cs and Sr by plants depended on both plant and soil properties. There were significant (P less than or equal to 0.05) differences between soil-plant transfer factors for each plant type at the two soil concentrations. At each soil concentration about 60% of the variance in the uptake of the Cs and Sr was due to soil properties. For a given concentration of Cs or Sr in soil, the most important factor effecting soil-plant transfer of these elements was the soil properties rather than the crops or varieties of crops. Therefore, for the varieties considered here, soil-plant transfer of Cs and Sr would be best regulated through the management of soil properties. At each concentration of Cs and Sr, the main soil properties effecting the uptake of Cs and Sr by lettuce and radish were the concentrations of K and Ca, pH and CEC. Together with the concentrations of contaminants in soils, they explained about 80% of total data variance, and were the best predictors for soil-plant transfer. The different varieties of lettuce and radish gave different responses in soil-plant transfer of Cs and Sr in different soil conditions, i.e. genotype x environment interaction caused about 30% of the variability in the uptake of Cs and Sr by plants. This means that a plant variety with a low soil-plant transfer of Cs and Sr in one soil could have an increased soil-plant transfer factor in other soils. The broad implications of this work are that in contaminated agricultural lands still used for plant growing, contaminant-excluding crop varieties may not be a reliable method for decreasing contaminant transfer to foodstuffs. Modification of soil properties would be a more reliable technique. This is particularly relevant to agricultural soils in the former USSR still affected by fallout from the Chernobyl disaster.

Effect of pH on the development of acidic sites in clayey and sandy loam Oxisol from the Cerrado Region, Brazil

Titration curves were determined for soil from horizon samples of a clayey and a sandy loam Oxisol by (a) adding NaOH to soil suspensions and (b) incubating moist soils with Ca(OH)(2). The organic fraction was primarily responsible for buffering in both soils. Humic acids were more important than fulvic acids in buffering against NaOH additions. With Ca(OH)(2), greater buffer capacities were found due to carboxyl sites, primarily on fulvic acids, becoming complexed with Ca2+ so that in the clay soil humic and fulvic acids were equally important as buffering components while fulvic acids were more important in the sandy loam soil. The buffer capacity of organic matter against Ca(OH)(2) additions was 1.1 mol(c) kg(-1) pH(-1). In the incubated soils, exchangeable cations were also determined and changes in the amounts of exchangeable and non-exchangeable Ca2+ acidity and effective cation exchange capacity were calculated. Up to half the added Ca2+ became complexed and was nonexchangeable. Aluminum complexed by organic matter appears to be an important buffering component, together with non exchangeable H+. With the increase of pH the dissociated sites from the carboxyl groups could complex Ca2+. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Influences of space, soil, nematodes and plants on microbial community composition of chalk grassland soils

Microbial communities respond to a variety of environmental factors related to resources (e.g. plant and soil organic matter), habitat (e.g. soil characteristics) and predation (e.g. nematodes, protozoa and viruses). However, the relative contribution of these factors on microbial community composition is poorly understood. Here, we sampled soils from 30 chalk grassland fields located in three different chalk hill ridges of Southern England, using a spatially explicit sampling scheme. We assessed microbial communities via phospholipid fatty acid (PLFA) analyses and PCR-denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) and measured soil characteristics, as well as nematode and plant community composition. The relative influences of space, soil, vegetation and nematodes on soil microorganisms were contrasted using variation partitioning and path analysis. Results indicate that soil characteristics and plant community composition, representing habitat and resources, shape soil microbial community composition, whereas the influence of nematodes, a potential predation factor, appears to be relatively small. Spatial variation in microbial community structure was detected at broad (between fields) and fine (within fields) scales, suggesting that microbial communities exhibit biogeographic patterns at different scales. Although our analysis included several relevant explanatory data sets, a large part of the variation in microbial communities remained unexplained (up to 92% in some analyses). However, in several analyses, significant parts of the variation in microbial community structure could be explained. The results of this study contribute to our understanding of the relative importance of different environmental and spatial factors in driving the composition of soil-borne microbial communities.

Effects of patch size and density on flower visitation and seed set of wild plants: a pan-European approach

1. Habitat fragmentation can affect pollinator and plant population structure in terms of species composition, abundance, area covered and density of flowering plants. This, in turn, may affect pollinator visitation frequency, pollen deposition, seed set and plant fitness. 2. A reduction in the quantity of flower visits can be coupled with a reduction in the quality of pollination service and hence the plants’ overall reproductive success and long-term survival. Understanding the relationship between plant population size and⁄ or isolation and pollination limitation is of fundamental importance for plant conservation. 3. Weexamined flower visitation and seed set of 10 different plant species fromfive European countries to investigate the general effects of plant populations size and density, both within (patch level) and between populations (population level), on seed set and pollination limitation. 4. Wefound evidence that the effects of area and density of flowering plant assemblages were generally more pronounced at the patch level than at the population level. We also found that patch and population level together influenced flower visitation and seed set, and the latter increased with increasing patch area and density, but this effect was only apparent in small populations. 5. Synthesis. By using an extensive pan-European data set on flower visitation and seed set we have identified a general pattern in the interplay between the attractiveness of flowering plant patches for pollinators and density dependence of flower visitation, and also a strong plant species-specific response to habitat fragmentation effects. This can guide efforts to conserve plant–pollinator interactions, ecosystem functioning and plant fitness in fragmented habitats.

Selection of candidate coding DNA barcoding regions for use on land plants

An in silico screen of 41 of the 81 coding regions of the Nicotiana plastid genome generated a shortlist of 12 candidates as DNA barcoding loci for land plants. These loci were evaluated for amplification and sequence variation against a reference set of 98 land plant taxa. The deployment of multiple primers and a modified multiplexed tandem polymerase chain reaction yielded 85–94% amplification across taxa, and mean sequence differences between sister taxa of 6.1 from 156 bases of accD to 22 from 493 bases of matK. We conclude that loci should be combined for effective diagnosis, and recommend further investigation of the following six loci: matK, rpoB, rpoC1, ndhJ, ycf5 and accD.

Haploids in flowering plants: origins and exploitation

The first haploid angiosperm, a dwarf form of cotton with half the normal chromosome complement, was discovered in 1920, and in the ninety years since then such plants have been identified in many other species. They can occur either spontaneously or can be induced by modified pollination methods in vivo, or by in vitro culture of immature male or female gametophytes. Haploids represent an immediate, one-stage route to homozygous diploids and thence to F(1) hybrid production. The commercial exploitation of heterosis in such F(1) hybrids leads to the development of hybrid seed companies and subsequently to the GM revolution in agriculture. This review describes the range of techniques available for the isolation or induction of haploids and discusses their value in a range of areas, from fundamental research on mutant isolation and transformation, through to applied aspects of quantitative genetics and plant breeding. It will also focus on how molecular methods have been used recently to explore some of the underlying aspects of this fascinating developmental phenomenon.