Article 1076 of bionet.plants:
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Message-ID: <1@soma.win.net>
Reply-To: wem@soma.win.net (William E. Milliken)
From: wem@soma.win.net (William E. Milliken)
Date: Sun, 04 Apr 1993 02:12:28 GMT
Subject: INFO NEEDED: BIO TECHNIQUES TO DETOX SOIL & WATER
Lines: 13

Need information on the use of plants to detoxify contaminated soil and water.
The CIS is heavily contaminated with every known hazardous
material,  The joke going around RIGA last time I was there was
that the radioactive pollution was so high, the poor people used
cucumbers as flashlights.  I have a number of contacts in the CIS
who need info.  Vast areas are unusable for food chain crop use.
Need to know alternative uses for potentially highly produtive land,
biomass-energy conversion, and effluent scrubbing. Crops that would
concentrate radiotoxins & ones that wouldn't.  Water a serious
problem, In some areas the recovery of the contaminates would be
economically profitable.  If anyone has any info please post it or
E-Mail me and I will pass it along.  THANK YOU 







Maybe this time, I will get my message through....

Along these lines, does anyone have any suggestions for plants that
can tolerate alkaline  (high pH) soil conditions?  Thanks.



Here are 2 refs pertaining to heavy metals:
Lepp, LW.  Uptake and accumulation of metals in bacteria and fungi; in
Bioegeochemistry of trace metals, DC Adriano, ed, Lewis Publishers Boca
Raton, FL; 1992.

Bioremediation of metal-contaminated surface and groundwater.  Brierley,
CL.  Geomicrobiology Journal 8:201-223. 1990,

On 4 Apr 1993, William E. Milliken wrote:

> Need information on the use of plants to detoxify contaminated soil and water.
> The CIS is heavily contaminated with every known hazardous
> material,  The joke going around RIGA last time I was there was
> that the radioactive pollution was so high, the poor people used
> cucumbers as flashlights.  I have a number of contacts in the CIS
> who need info.  Vast areas are unusable for food chain crop use.
> Need to know alternative uses for potentially highly produtive land,
> biomass-energy conversion, and effluent scrubbing. Crops that would
> concentrate radiotoxins & ones that wouldn't.  Water a serious
> problem, In some areas the recovery of the contaminates would be
> economically profitable.  If anyone has any info please post it or
> E-Mail me and I will pass it along.  THANK YOU 
> 






Newsgroups: bionet.plants
Subject: Somatic selection 

	I was wondering if somebody could help me with any  references
to papers which have considered (either experimentally or in the field)
the general subject of somatic selection in plants.  My fundamental
interest in this subject arises from the clear similiarity such
processes have to cultural evolution (but that is quite a different
thread, and not for here). 
	The basic idea I am approaching here is that somatic mutations
in a meristem are subject to selection in terms of adaptation to the
environment and that the results of such selection would mimic a
traditionally Lamarckian inheritance pattern.
	A simple example would be a "golden" cultivar of a shrub.  If a
reversion to normal chlorophyll production were to appear in a meristem,
then the shoot resulting from that apex will tend, over time, to
dominate the shrub, oftentimes overgrowing the rest of the plant (such
events are not uncommon and most gardeners have observed this happen).
	Now this process becomes quite interesting when put in terms of
enviornmental parameters.  Consider, for example, a grass growing in an
area with, say, a lot of heavy metals in the soil.  If a stolon
producing meristem were to appear with a greater resistance to growth
under such conditions, that branch would come to dominate the region by
means of greater adaptation to local conditions.  Where this becomes of
interest (and also goes quite against normal conceptualisations of
evolution which have been developed with an animal bias) is that the
flowering parts of these branches will contain the genes conferring
resistance to the heavy metals.  Hence, in terms of the classical models
for evolution, there will be "inheritance of acquired traits."  
	I note that, of course, this process is not "Lamarckian" in any
sense (since the mutations were not DIRECTED by the "needs" presented by
the environment), but instead arise solely from the fact that plants do
not have a separation of germ and soma.   Weismannian thought, of
course, does NOT apply to plants, and the meristem, hence, opens up new
avenues to evolutionary change.  In a more or less metaphoric sense,
behaviour in animals (e.g. culture in humans) allows the same
opportunities for "somatic" selection of phenotypes and transmission of
adaptive, new, behaviours to the next generation. 
	Can anybody help me on this (references, etc)??

Dave Rindos,
--
Archaeologist, University of Western Australia
   arkdr@uniwa.cc.uwa.edu.au
   D_RINDOS@fennel.wt.uwa.edu.au 




Article 1109 of bionet.plants:
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From: sw_shale@pat.uwe.ac.uk (SW Shales)
Newsgroups: bionet.plants
Subject: Water Hyacinth
Message-ID: <1993Apr15.212153.27424@gserv1.dl.ac.uk>
Date: 15 Apr 93 21:12:39 GMT
Sender: list-admin@daresbury.ac.uk
Distribution: bionet
Lines: 19
Original-To: plantbio%daresbury.ac.uk@uk.ac.daresbury


We are currently undertaking a programme of research into the use of the
water hyacinth in industrial effluent treatment.

Does anyone have a method for the successful culturing of these plants in
the laboratory?  In particularl I would like to know the nutritional and
lighting requiremnts as so far we have had some problems in the attempts
we have made!

Any help gratefully received.

Stuart Shales

University of the West of England, Bristol
United Kingdom

e-mail: sw_shale@uk.ac.uwe_b repeat

e-mail: sw_shale@uk.ac.uwe-bristol.pat



