Antioxidant Protective Effect of Glibenclamide and Metformin in Combination with Honey in Pancreas of Streptozotocin-Induced Diabetic Rats

Hyperglycemia exerts toxic effects on the pancreatic β-cells. This study investigated the hypothesis that the common antidiabetic drugs glibenclamide and metformin, in combination with tualang honey, offer additional protection for the pancreas of streptozotocin (STZ)-induced diabetic rats against oxidative stress and damage. Diabetes was induced in male Sprague Dawley rats by a single dose of STZ (60 mg/kg; ip). Diabetic rats had significantly elevated levels of lipid peroxidation (TBARS), up-regulated activities of superoxide dismutase (SOD) and glutathione peroxidase (GPx) while catalase (CAT) activity was significantly reduced. Glibenclamide and metformin produced no significant effects on TBARS and antioxidant enzymes except GPx in diabetic rats. In contrast, the combination of glibenclamide, metformin and honey significantly up-regulated CAT activity and down-regulated GPx activity while TBARS levels were significantly reduced. These findings suggest that tualang honey potentiates the effect of glibenclamide and metformin to protect diabetic rat pancreas against oxidative stress and damage

Modelling dry matter production and resource use in intercrops of pea and barley

The FASSET whole farm model was extended with a sub-model for competition between several plant species for light, water and nitrogen. The new model was tested on intercrops of pea (Pisum sativum L.) and spring barley (Hordeum vulgare L.). A three-year dataset on pea and barley sole crop growth was used for calibration. Two datasets that included detailed measurements of crop production, nitrogen uptake and leaf area indices from two sites were used for testing. An arable organic experiment from three sites including several treatments over four years was also used for testing. The model predicted the increase in resource utilisation of pea and barley and effects on pea symbiotic nitrogen fixation satisfactorily. The effects of pea interspecific competition on barley production agreed with observations, but the simulated effect of barley interspecifc competition on pea was underestimated. Sensitivity analyses showed that the vertical distribution of barley leaf area had a great influence on the outcome of the interspecific competition between the barley and pea crops

Evaluation of the STICS crop model within the INTERCROP EU project to simulate pea-barley intercropping systems.

This work is devoted to the evaluation and utilization of the STICS intercrop/sole crop model taking into account the European environmental variability within an organic farming framework. The model ability to simulate intercropping systems was evaluated on the network of the INTERCROP EU project experiments. We first realized the difficulty to simulate relevant absolute production values in spite of a satisfactorily phase of parameterisation in conventional farming experiments. We attributed most of the discrepancies between simulations and measurements to the non accounting of biotic stresses. However, the relative values and in particular the Land Equivalent Ratios draw to the same results for simulation and observa-tion, i.e. the global advantage of intercropping compared to sole crops. Those conclusions caused us to think that the use of the model to test technical strategies was worthwhile. Among the different strategies we tested with the model, one showed that intercropping was very interesting in term of stability, and an other showed that the inter-row factor was a better driver factor for choosing density design than global density