Arabidopsis nucleoside diphosphate kinase 2 (AtNDPK2) is an upstream signaling molecule that has been shown to induce stress tolerance in plants. In this study, the AtNDPK2 gene, under the control of a stress-inducible SWPA2 promoter, was introduced into the genome of tall fescue (Festuca arundinacea Schreb.) plants. The induction of the transgene expression mediated by methyl viologen (MV) and NaCl treatments were confirmed by RT-PCR and northern blot analysis, respectively. Under salt stress treatment, the transgenic tall fescue plants (SN) exhibited lower level of H2O2 and lipid peroxidation accumulations than the non-transgenic (NT) plants. The transgenic tall fescue plants also showed higher level of NDPK enzyme activity compared to NT plants. The SN plants were survived at 300 mM NaCl treatment, whereas the NT plants were severely affected. These results indicate that stress-inducible overexpression of AtNDPK2 might efficiently confer the salt stress tolerance in tall fescue plants.

This study was conducted to develop a simple volume model for the Larix kaempferi species in the Central Region of South Korea. General volume model forms were used and validated using a subset of the data collected for the L. kaempferi species. A total of 550 trees were collected in the different L. kaempferi stands through destructive sampling. The dataset was randomly divided into two: 80% for initial model development(seven volume models) and 20% for model validation. The 100% dataset was used for the final model fitting. Evaluation statistics including bias(Ē), absolute mean deviation(AMD), root mean square error(RMSE), coefficient of determination(R2), and the Akaike Information Criterion values(AIC) and weight (AICw) were used to assess performance of the different volume models. Rank analysis was employed and the first five best volume models were chosen for the model validation and final model fitting. The evaluations showed that volume model 4(V=aDBHb*Hc) had the best performance, while volume model 3(V=aDBH+bDBH2), which has a single variable, had the poorest performance.