Editorial: Role of Microbes in Climate Smart Agriculture

[No abstract available

Conventional and new-breeding technologies for improving disease resistance in lentil (Lens culinaris Medik)

Lentil, an important cool season food legume, is a rich source of easily digestible protein, folic acid, bio-available iron, and zinc nutrients. Lentil grows mainly as a sole crop in the winter after harvesting rice in South Asia. However, the annual productivity is low due to its slow growth during the early phase, competitive weed infestation, and disease outbreaks during the crop growth period. Disease resistance breeding has been practiced for a long time to enhance resistance to various diseases. Often the sources of resistance are available in wild crop relatives. Thus, wide hybridization and the ovule rescue technique have helped to introgress the resistance trait into cultivated lentils. Besides hybridization, induced mutagenesis contributed immensely in creating variability for disease tolerance, and several disease-resistant mutant lines have been developed. However, to overcome the limitations of traditional breeding approaches, advancement in molecular marker technologies, and genomics has helped to develop disease-resistant and climate-resilient lentil varieties with more precision and efficiency. This review describes types of diseases, disease screening methods, the role of conventional and new breeding technologies in alleviating disease-incurred damage and progress toward making lentil varieties more resilient to disease outbreaks under the shadow of climate change

Peroksidacija lipida i antioksidativni status u psa mješovite pasmine s kožnim metastazama prenosivoga veneričnoga tumora - prikaz slučaja.

A metastatic form of cutaneous transmissible venereal tumor was diagnosed in a mongrel dog. The dog had non-fluctuating and ulcerating neoplastic nodules throughout the subcutis with a history of spontaneous regression and recurrence of new growths at different sites. A presumptive diagnosis was made based on fine needle aspiration cytology of neoplastic nodules and an impression smear of ulcerated lesions, which was confirmed by histopathology. Erythrocyte oxidant-antioxidant status revealed increased lipid peroxidation and decreased antioxidant enzymes, which might have been due to the direct influence of the tumor or by associated factors such as tumor necrosis and/or the inflammatory changes. Increased early apoptosis was observed in peripheral blood leukocytes. Treatment with Vincristin along with other supportive therapy yielded an unfavorable outcome due to the advanced stage of malignancy.Metastaze kože prenosivoga veneričnoga tumora dijagnosticirane su u psa mješovite pasmine. Ustanovljeni su nefluktuirajući i ulcerativni neoplastični čvorovi u potkožju, koji su spontano nestajali, ali uz pojavu novih na različitim mjestima. Sumnja na pojavu tumora bila je postavljena na osnovi citološkoga nalaza aspiriranoga tkiva novotvorina, a potvrđena histopatološkom pretragom materijala uzetog iz ulceracijskih promjena. Antioksidacijski status eritrocita pokazao je povećanu peroksidaciju lipida i smanjenu aktivnost antioksidacijskih enzima što može biti zbog izravnoga utjecaja tumora ili zbog drugih čimbenika kao što je tumorska nekroza i/ili upalne promjene. Pojačana rana apoptoza zabilježena je u leukocitima periferne krvi. Primjena vinkristina uz potporno liječenje drugim lijekovima nije dala zadovoljavajuće rezultate zbog uznapredovaloga stupnja zloćudnosti

A Microsatellite Guided Insight into the Genetic Status of Adi, an Isolated Hunting-Gathering Tribe of Northeast India

Tibeto-Burman populations of India provide an insight into the peopling of India and aid in understanding their genetic relationship with populations of East, South and Southeast Asia. The study investigates the genetic status of one such Tibeto-Burman group, Adi of Arunachal Pradesh based on 15 autosomal microsatellite markers. Further the study examines, based on 9 common microsatellite loci, the genetic relationship of Adi with 16 other Tibeto-Burman speakers of India and 28 neighboring populations of East and Southeast Asia. Overall, the results support the recent formation of the Adi sub-tribes from a putative ancestral group and reveal that geographic contiguity is a major influencing factor of the genetic affinity among the Tibeto-Burman populations of India

Applications of polysaccharides in topical and transdermal drug delivery: A recent update of literature

The main aim of transdermal drug delivery (TDD) is to deliver a specific dose of drug across the skin and to reach systemic circulation at a controlled rate. On the other hand skin is the target for topical drug delivery. Mentioned drug delivery systems (DDS) have numerous advantages compared to oral and parenteral routes. Avoidance of first-pass metabolism, prevent drug degradation due to harsh environment of the stomach, allow controlled drug delivery, provide patient compliance, and pain-free administration are a few of them. To achieve all of them, a DDS with suitable polymer is the primary requisite. Based on the recent trends, natural polymers have been more popular in comparison to synthetic polymers because the former possesses favourable properties including nontoxic, biodegradable, biocompatible, low cost, sustainable and renewable resources. In this context polysaccharides, composed of chains of monosaccharides bound together by glycosidic bonds, have been successfully employed to augment drug delivery into and across the skin with various formulations such as gel, membrane, patches, nanoparticles, nanofibres, nanocomposite, and microneedles. In this chapter, various polysaccharides such as cellulose, chitosan, and their semisynthetic derivatives, alginate, pectin, carrageenan etc, were discussed with their diverse topical and TDD applications. In addition, various formulations based on polysaccharides and limitations of polysaccharides were also briefly discussed

An encryption-encoding architecture for security enhancement in 5G communication networks

This article introduces a hybrid architecture of cryptography and coding technique to provide security in 5G communication networks. There are various types of attacks in 5G communication systems. Apart from contemporary attacks, we refer some of the peculiar attacks including DOS, DDOS, bot attack, Mantis Botnet, Mirai Botnet etc. These attacks jeopardize the security systems. To overcome the situation, we propose an architecture, which makes use of modified DES encryption followed by Hamming code. In transmitter section, the 256-bit input data is encrypted by 224-bit cipher key, which is then encoded with Hamming code (448, 256) to produce 448-bit of encrypted data. The reverse scheme is applicable in receiver section. We have used Xilinx software to simulate the proposed model. Simulation results show that the duration of both the encryption and encoding are in nano seconds. The intruders shall get very less time to interfere. Therefore, the proposed architecture shall improve the security in current 5G communication systems

Composted Cattle Manure Increases Microbial Activity and Soil Fertility More Than Composted Swine Manure in a Submerged Rice Paddy

Livestock waste composts with minimum inorganic fertilizer as a soil amendment in low-input intensive farming are a feasible agricultural practice to improve soil fertility and productivity and to mitigate soil degradation. The key benefits of the practice rely on the activities of soil microorganisms. However, the role of different livestock composts [composted cattle manure (CCM) vs. composted swine manure (CSM)] on soil microbes, their activities and the overall impact on soil fertility and productivity in a flooded paddy remains elusive. This study compares the effectiveness of CCM and CSM amendment on bacterial communities, activities, nutrient availability, and crop yield in a flooded rice cropping system. We used deep 16S amplicon sequencing and soil enzyme activities to decipher bacterial communities and activities, respectively. Both CCM and CSM amendment significantly increased soil pH, nutrient availability (C, N, and P), microbial biomass, soil enzyme activities indicative for C and N cycles, aboveground plant biomass and grain yield. And the increase in above-mentioned parameters was more prominent in the CCM treatment compared to the CSM treatment. The CCM amendment increased species richness and stimulated copiotrophic microbial groups (Alphaproteobacteria, Betaproteobacteria, and Firmicutes) which are often involved in degradation of complex organic compounds. Moreover, some dominant species (e.g., Azospirillum zeae, Azospirillum halopraeferens, Azospirillum rugosum, Clostridium alkalicellulosi, Clostridium caenicola, Clostridium termitidis, Clostridium cellulolyticum, Magnetospirillum magnetotacticum, Pleomorphomonas oryzae, Variovorax boronicumulans, Pseudomonas xanthomarina, Pseudomonas stutzeri, and Bacillus niacini) which have key roles in plant growth promotion and/or lignocellulose degradation were enhanced under CCM treatment compared to CSM treatment. Multivariate analysis revealed that soil pH and available carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) were the major, while total organic carbon (TOC), total nitrogen (TN), and available phosphorus (P) were the minor drivers of variation in bacterial communities. Overall, our observations suggest that CCM amendment is better than CSM amendment to improve soil fertility and crop yield in a submerged rice cropping system

Photocatalysis by 3,6-Disubstituted‑<i>s</i>‑Tetrazine: Visible-Light Driven Metal-Free Green Synthesis of 2‑Substituted Benzimidazole and Benzothiazole

<i>s</i>-Tetrazine based molecules were prepared for visible-light-driven organic transformations. The 3,6-di­(pyridin-2-yl)-1,2,4,5-tetrazine (<b>pytz</b>) derivative shows visible light absorption and reversible one-electron reduction behavior. In the presence of <b>pytz</b> and aerial oxygen, aldehyde reacts with <i>o</i>-phenylenediamine or <i>o</i>-aminothiophenol under visible light irradiation at ambient temperature to produce corresponding 2-substituted benzimidazoles and benzothiazoles, respectively. <b>Pytz</b> catalyst demonstrates excellent catalytic activity for alkyl, aryl, organo-metallic substituted aldehydes and reducing sugar. The reaction yield is high for both the electron-donating and electron withdrawing substituents in aromatic aldehydes. The use of a metal-free catalyst and visible light energy, along with the mild reaction conditions, makes this reaction an environmentally benign and energy-saving chemical process