A Note from the New Editors

Special thanks go to Dr. Rosiland Morris for her many years of service to the Nebraska Ornithologists\u27 Union, especially for her exceptional editorship of The Nebraska Bird Review. I can only hope that the journal will continue to reflect Rosiland\u27s attention to detail and her devotion to excellence. As the Newsletter noted, I am an Associate Professor of English at Peru State College and an enthusiastic birder here in Nebraska—and during the summer in Ripon, Wisconsin, where my family lives; my wife is an Associate Professor of French at Ripon College. When Betty Allen notified me that NOU Board had named me Editor, I asked my good friend Tom Klubertanz to work on the journal with me. Tom has been a faculty member at Peru State since 1993 but now has accepted a new teaching position at the University of Wisconsin–Rock County starting this fall. Tom shares my enthusiasm for birds and has taught the undergraduate Ornithology course at Peru State. For this year, we will be sharing editorial responsibilities. Tom and I plan to make no major changes in The Nebraska Bird Review. We will appreciate, however, suggestions from members concerning things you would like us to do. In future issues, we hope to include on a regular basis both art work and black-and-white photography, so please send us material for consideration. With respect to articles, we ask that you continue to bear in mind that the journal has limited financial resources, so longer articles cannot be published on a regular basis; we presently consider creating a WWW page for longer articles and other things of special interest to NOU members. If possible, please send written work on disk; the college has excellent computer resources, allowing us to work with a variety of programs on Macintosh and IBM computers. While Tom and I prefer articles on disk, we will, of course, gladly accept written and typed articles. And people interested in doing book reviews for the journal, please contact us, for we hope to include reviews on a regular basis. Tom and I look forward to working with and serving you. Please send us your suggestions, advice, and ideas

Improved Soybean Oil for Biodiesel Fuel

The goal of this program was to generate information on the utility of soybean germplasm that produces oil, high in oleic acid and low in saturated fatty acids, for its use as a biodiesel. Moreover, data was ascertained on the quality of the derived soybean meal (protein component), and the agronomic performance of this novel soybean germplasm. Gathering data on these later two areas is critical, with respect to the first, soybean meal (protein) component is a major driver for commodity soybean, which is utilized as feed supplements in cattle, swine, poultry and more recently aquaculture production. Hence, it is imperative that the resultant modulation in the fatty acid profile of the oil does not compromise the quality of the derived meal, for if it does, the net value of the novel soybean will be drastically reduced. Similarly, if the improved oil trait negative impacts the agronomics (i.e. yield) of the soybean, this in turn will reduce the value of the trait. Over the course of this program oil was extruded from approximately 350 bushels of soybean designated 335-13, which produces oil high in oleic acid (>85%) and low in saturated fatty acid (<6%). As predicted improvement in cold flow parameters were observed as compared to standard commodity soybean oil. Moreover, engine tests revealed that biodiesel derived from this novel oil mitigated NOx emissions. Seed quality of this soybean was not compromised with respect to total oil and protein, nor was the amino acid profile of the derived meal as compared to the respective control soybean cultivar with a conventional fatty acid profile. Importantly, the high oleic acid/low saturated fatty acids oil trait was not impacted by environment and yield was not compromised. Improving the genetic potential of soybean by exploiting the tools of biotechnology to improve upon the lipid quality of the seed for use in industrial applications such as biodiesel will aid in expanding the market for the crop. This in turn, may lead to job creation in rural areas of the country and help stimulate the agricultural economy. Moreover, production of soybean with enhanced oil quality for biodiesel may increase the attractiveness of this renewable, environmentally friendly fuel

Solar application for Drying Woodchip in Scotland.

A novel solar dryer for drying woodchip has been developed in Scotland. In this paper, designs and performance of both solar collector and dryer have been presented separately. Woodchip drying performance has been analysed for a range of temperatures (10ºC to 51ºC) and flow rates (70m³/h to 280m³/h). Page model has been used for modelling the drying curves as a function of temperatures and drying velocities.The thermal solar system considered consisted of a solar collector based on the transpired plate type and a small 10We PV panel unit employed to run a 5We fan. The performance of the system is presented in terms of air flow rate and temperature increments as a function of irradiance levels.Keywords: Solar air heating, solar dryer, woodchi

Solar application for Drying Woodchip in Scotland.

A novel solar dryer for drying woodchip has been developed in Scotland. In this paper, designs and performance of both solar collector and dryer have been presented separately. Woodchip drying performance has been analysed for a range of temperatures (10ºC to 51ºC) and flow rates (70m³/h to 280m³/h). Page model has been used for modelling the drying curves as a function of temperatures and drying velocities.The thermal solar system considered consisted of a solar collector based on the transpired plate type and a small 10We PV panel unit employed to run a 5We fan. The performance of the system is presented in terms of air flow rate and temperature increments as a function of irradiance levels.Keywords: Solar air heating, solar dryer, woodchi

Molecular and phenotypic characterization of transgenic wheat and sorghum events expressing the barley alanine aminotransferase

Main conclusion — The expression of a barley alanine aminotransferase gene impacts agronomic outcomes in a C3 crop, wheat. The use of nitrogen-based fertilizers has become one of the major agronomic inputs in crop production systems. Strategies to enhance nitrogen assimilation and flux in planta are being pursued through the introduction of novel genetic alleles. Here an Agrobacterium-mediated approach was employed to introduce the alanine aminotransferase from barley (Hordeum vulgare), HvAlaAT, into wheat (Triticum aestivum) and sorghum (Sorghum bicolor), regulated by either constitutive or root preferred promoter elements. Plants harboring the transgenic HvAlaAT alleles displayed increased alanine aminotransferase (alt) activity. The enhanced alt activity impacted height, tillering and significantly boosted vegetative biomass relative to controls in wheat evaluated under hydroponic conditions, where the phenotypic outcome across these parameters varied relative to time of year study was conducted. Constitutive expression of HvAlaAT translated to elevation in wheat grain yield under field conditions. In sorghum, expression of HvAlaAT enhanced enzymatic activity, but no changes in phenotypic outcomes were observed. Taken together these results suggest that positive agronomic outcomes can be achieved through enhanced alt activity in a C3 crop, wheat. However, the variability observed across experiments under greenhouse conditions implies the phenotypic outcomes imparted by the HvAlaAT allele in wheat may be impacted by environment

InMut-finder: a software tool for insertion identification in mutagenesis using Nanopore long reads

Background: Biological mutagens (such as transposon) with sequences inserted, play a crucial role to link observed phenotype and genotype in reverse genetic studies. For this reason, accurate and efficient software tools for identifying insertion sites based on the analysis of sequencing reads are desired. Results: We developed a bioinformatics tool, a Finder, to identify genome-wide Insertions in Mutagenesis (named as “InMut-Finder”), based on target sequences and flanking sequences from long reads, such as Oxford Nanopore Sequencing. InMut-Finder succeeded in identify \u3e 100 insertion sites in Medicago truncatula and soybean mutants based on sequencing reads of whole-genome DNA or enriched insertion-site DNA fragments. Insertion sites discovered by InMut-Finder were validated by PCR experiments. Conclusion: InMut-Finder is a comprehensive and powerful tool for automated insertion detection from Nanopore long reads. The simplicity, efficiency, and flexibility of InMut-Finder make it a valuable tool for functional genomics and forward and reverse genetics. InMut-Finder was implemented with Perl, R, and Shell scripts, which are independent of the OS. The source code and instructions can be accessed at https:// github. com/ jsg20 0830/ InMut- Finder