The presence of phytoplasmas and their associated diseases is an emerging threat to vegetable production which leads to severe yield losses worldwide. Phytoplasmas are phloem-limited pleomorphic ...bacteria lacking the cell wall, mainly transmitted through leafhoppers but also by plant propagation materials and seeds. Phytoplasma diseases of vegetable crops are characterized by symptoms such as little leaves, phyllody, flower virescence, big buds, and witches' brooms. Phytoplasmas enclosed in at least sixteen different ribosomal groups infecting vegetable crops have been reported thus far across the world. The aster yellows phytoplasma group (16SrI) is presently the prevalent, followed by the peanut witches' broom (16SrII). Wide and overlapping crop and non-crop host ranges of phytoplasmas, polyphagous insect vectors, limited availability of resistance sources and unavailability of environmentally safe chemical control measures lead to an arduous effort in the management of these diseases. The most feasible control of vegetable phytoplasma diseases is a consequence of the development and implementation of integrated disease management programs. The availability of molecular tools for phytoplasma identification at the strain level greatly facilitated this kind of approach. It is moreover essential to understand the molecular basis of phytoplasma-vector interaction, epidemiology and other factors involved in disease development in order to reduce the disease outbreaks. Information on the knowledge about the most widespread phytoplasma diseases in vegetable crops is reviewed here in a comprehensive manner.
In this research work, BaZr
0.85
Ho
0.10
Y
0.025
Nd
0.025
O
3-δ
(BZHYN) electrolyte ceramic was synthesized through a cost-effective flash pyrolysis route followed by conventional sintering for ...intermediate-temperature solid oxide fuel cells. The calcined powder and sintered pellet were characterized through various techniques like high-resolution X-ray diffraction (HRXRD), high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), energy-dispersive X-ray spectra (EDS), and Raman spectroscopy. The HRXRD pattern of calcined and sintered pellet shows the pure cubic phase with
P
m
3
¯
m
space group symmetry through the Rietveld refinement. The study of the electron-density distribution of calcined powder and sintered pellet calculated by the maximum entropy method reveals the presence of oxygen vacancies at the octahedral site in the sintered sample. The microstructure of the fracture surface of the sintered sample indicates two types of grain with a relative density of 93.7% through FESEM. The Raman analysis confirms the distortion along the c-axis and oxygen vacancies in the octahedral site of BZHYN ceramic. Impedance spectroscopy measurement was conducted in the temperature range of 50 to 700 °C and frequency range of 1 Hz to 10 MHz. The Nyquist plots obtained in the temperature range of 350–700 °C reveal three distinct relaxation processes attributed to grain, grain boundary, and electrode effect. The temperature-dependent exponent (n) associated with grain and grain boundary decreases with the increase in temperature, indicating that large polaron hopping is involved in the electrical conduction mechanism.
Water deficiency up to a certain level and duration leads to a stress condition called drought. It is a multi-dimensional stress causing alteration in the physiological, morphological, biochemical, ...and molecular traits in plants resulting in improper plant growth and development. Drought is one of the major abiotic stresses responsible for loss of crops including muskmelon (Cucumis melo. L). Muskmelon genotype SC-15, which exhibits high drought resistance as reported in our earlier reports, was exposed to deficient water condition and studied for alteration in physiological, molecular and proteomic profile changes in the leaves. Drought stress results in reduced net photosynthetic rate (Pn), stomatal conductance (Gs) and transpiration (E) rate. With expanded severity of drought, declination recorded in content of total chlorophyll and carotenoid while enhancement observed in phenol content indicating generation of oxidative stress. In contrary, activities of catalase (CAT), superoxide dismutase (SOD), ascorbate peroxidase (APX), and guaiacol (POD) were increased under drought stress. Peptide mass fingerprinting (PMF) showed that drought increased the relative abundance of 38 spots while decreases10 spots of protein. The identified proteins belong to protein synthesis, photosynthesis, nucleotide biosynthesis, stress response, transcription regulation, metabolism, energy and DNA binding. A drought-induced MADS-box transcription factor was identified. The present findings indicate that under drought muskmelon elevates the abundance of defense proteins and suppresses catabolic proteins. The data obtained exhibits possible mechanisms adopted by muskmelon to counter the impacts of drought induced stress.
Horticultural crops are an important part of agriculture for food as well as nutritional security. However, several pests and diseases along with adverse abiotic environmental factors pose a severe ...threat to these crops by affecting their quality and productivity. This warrants the effective and accelerated breeding programs by utilizing innovative biotechnological tools that can tackle aforementioned issues. The recent technique of genome editing by Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats/CRISPR associated 9 (CRISPR/Cas9) has greatly advanced the breeding for crop improvement due to its simplicity and high efficiency over other nucleases such as Zinc Finger Nucleases and Transcription Activator Like Effector Nucleases. CRISPR/Cas9 tool contains a non-specific Cas9 nuclease and a single guide RNA that directs Cas9 to the specific genomic location creating double-strand breaks and subsequent repair process creates insertion or deletion mutations. This is currently the widely adopted tool for reverse genetics, and crop improvement in large number of agricultural crops. The use of CRISPR/Cas9 in horticultural crops is limited to few crops due to lack of availability of regeneration protocols and sufficient sequence information in many horticultural crops. In this review, the present status of applicability of CRISPR/Cas9 in horticultural crops was discussed along with the challenges and future potential for possible improvement of these crops for their yield, quality, and resistance to biotic and abiotic stress.
Coal fly ash (CFA) and coal-based incense sticks ash (ISA) have several similarities and differences due to the presence of coal as a common component in both of them. CFA are produced from the ...combustion of pulverized coal during electricity production in the thermal power plants while ISA are produced from the burning of incense sticks at religious places and at houses. A typical black colored Indian, incense sticks are mainly are comprised of coal powder or potassium nitrate, wood chip, fragrance, binder or binding agent, and bamboo sticks. The black colored incense sticks have coal powder or charcoal as a facilitator for smoother burning of incense sticks. The detailed investigation of CFA and ISA by X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (XRF), electron diffraction spectroscopy (EDS), inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectroscopy (ICP-AES), Fourier transform-infrared (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), particle size analyzer (PSA), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) revealed the morphological, chemical, and elemental properties. Both the coal based ashes comprises minerals like calcites, silicates, ferrous, alumina, and traces of Mg, Na, K, P, Ti, and numerous toxic heavy metals as confirmed by the XRF, ICP-AES, and EDS. While, microscopy revealed the presence of well-organized spherical shaped particles, namely cenospheres, plerospheres, and ferrospheres of size varying from 0.02 μm to 7 microns in CFA. Whereas, ISA particles are irregular, aggregated, calcium to carbon rich whose size varies from 60 nm to 9 microns and absence of well-organized spherical structures. The well developed and crystalline structure in CFA is due to the controlled combustion parameter in thermal power plants during the burning of coal while incense sticks (IS) burning is under uncontrolled manner. So, FTIR and XRD confirmed that the major portion of fly ash constitutes crystalline minerals whereas ISA have mainly amorphous phase minerals. CFA have ferrospheres of both rough and smooth surfaced, which was absent from the ISA and hence ferrous particles of CFA are of high magnetic strength. The detailed investigation of ashes will lead to the applications of ashes in new fields, which will minimize the solid waste pollution in the environment.
Imaging sub-basalt Mesozoic sediments in the Deccan Volcanic Province (DVP) of India is a major challenge for hydrocarbon exploration. However, long-offset coincident seismic reflection (CDP) and ...refraction/wide-angle seismic reflection techniques may be applied for imaging sub-trappean Mesozoic sediments with proven success. The CSIR-NGRI executed several such deep seismic profiles with maximum offsets less than 100 km along with other geophysical methods like magneto-telluric, deep-resistivity-sounding and gravity surveys in the DVP covering Kutch, Saurashtra and Deccan Syneclise regions of India during the last three decades with an aim of integrated geophysical modeling. This has been sponsored and supported by the ONGC and OIDB. We used some of the selected deep seismic profile data in the DVP to image low-velocity-layer (LVL) like Mesozoic sediments, hidden below the high-velocity-layer (HVL) corresponding to basalts/traps. We applied ray-trace inversion of travel time data, robust tomographic inversion and advanced seismic imaging techniques to obtain seismic sections and velocity models. The derived velocity models delineate thick sub-basalt Mesozoic sediments in the south of Kutch, north-western part of Saurashtra and western segment of Deccan Syneclise along with extension of trap and basement configuration with details shown through fence diagrams. They are further constrained and corroborated by the corresponding density models obtained from inversion of residual Bouguer gravity anomaly data. The results provide an insight of the presence of hydrocarbon bearing sub-trappean Mesozoic sediments hidden in the DVP.
The disposal of biological waste into water bodies is a major global concern as it leads to water pollution resulting in the loss of plenty of revenue in the cleaning of water bodies. Here, in the ...present research work, sacred flowers were collected, segregated, sun-dried, and powdered. The dried floral powders (marigold and rose) were characterized by field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), electron diffraction spectroscopy (EDS), Fourier transforms infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The microscopy revealed the irregular spherical shape of the sheet-like structure whose size varies in microns. The EDS revealed the elemental composition which was dominated by mainly carbon and oxygen. The XRD shows the presence of carbon (10-25ɵ) in the amorphous form and the absence of any crystalline phase in the biosorbents. The FT-IR showed peaks that conformed to the presence of functional groups like -OH and a carbonyl group. The dried powders were used as an economical and eco-friendly biosorbent for the removal of methyl red (MR) dye from the aqueous solutions by batch adsorption study. After 60 minutes of contact time, the marigold powder (MGP) and rose petal powder (RPP) showed decolorization of 61.16% and 56.08% for 2 ppm of MR dye. The kinetic revealed that the dye removal reaction does not follow the pseudo-first-order as well as the pseudo-second-order. The utilization of such waste-based biosorbents will minimize solid waste and also will provide an economical biosorbent for the removal of environmental pollutants.
This study reports the development of a garden pea genotype 'VRPM-901-5' producing five flowers per peduncle at multiple flowering nodes, by using single plant selection approach from a cross 'VL-8 × ...PC-531'. In addition, five other stable genetic stocks, namely VRPM-501, VRPM-502, VRPM-503, VRPM-901-3 and VRPSeL-1 producing three flowers per peduncle at multiple flowering nodes were also developed. All these unique genotypes were of either mid- or late- maturity groups. Furthermore, these multi-flowering genotypes were identified during later generations (F4 onward), which might be because of fixation of certain QTLs or recessive gene combinations. Surprisingly, a common parent PC-531, imparting multi-flowering trait in ten cross combinations was identified. Thus, the genotype PC-531 seems to harbor some recessive gene(s) or QTLs that in certain combination(s) express the multi-flowering trait. The interaction between genotype and environment showed that temperature (11-20°C) plays a key role in expression of the multi-flowering trait besides genetic background. Furthermore, the possible relationship between various multi-flowering regulatory genes such as FN, FNA, NEPTUNE, SN, DNE, HR and environmental factors was also explored, and a comprehensive model explaining the multi-flowering trait in garden pea is proposed.
Begomoviruses (family
Geminiviridae
) cause severe diseases in many economically important crops and non-cultivated plants in the warmer regions of the world. Non-cultivated weeds have been reported ...to act as natural virus reservoirs. In January 2016,
Sida
plants with yellow mosaic symptoms were found at the edge of an agricultural field in Gujarat, India. Sequence analysis of the viral genomic components cloned from a diseased
Sida
plant indicated the presence of a distinct monopartite begomovirus (proposed as sida yellow mosaic Gujarat virus) along with a betasatellite (ludwigia leaf distortion betasatellite) and an alphasatellite (malvastrum yellow mosaic alphasatellite). Our results emphasize that this weed may harbor a begomovirus-alphasatellite-betasatellite complex. This host serves as a potential source of virus inoculum, which can be transmitted by whiteflies to other cultivated crops.
The aim of the study was to screen the metabolite profile of phalsa (
Grewia asiatica
), an underutilized fruit crop, using liquid chromatography-high resolution mass spectrometric analysis. A total ...of 50 compounds were tentatively identified based on their molecular mass and characteristic fragment ions, each with less than 5 ppm of mass error. These compounds included 21 flavonols, 2 dihydroflavonols, 7 flavones, 3 flavanols, 6 anthocyanins, 3 isoflavonoids, 2 phenolic acids, 2 flavanones, and 4 other phenolics. Flavonols were the predominant group of compounds, representing around 52.6% of the total phenolics. The paper has also discussed the potentiality of phalsa as an emerging functional food for the management of various human diseases in relation to the existing literature.
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