The Pakistan Agricultural Research System: Present Status and Future Agenda

Alarming food supply and demand deficits are projected to the year 2020 and beyond for Pakistan, based on its current low investment/low growth agricultural sector. Evidence suggests that agricultural productivity growth and increases in production may not keep pace with past growth rates. Part of the problem is an underfunded and poorly managed agricultural research system that can not hope to contribute significantly to increasing agricultural productivity now or in the future. The World Bank-assisted Agricultural Research II Project (ARP-II) was initiated to partially overcome some of the funding problems and provide institutional development in the areas of organisation, planning, and management of the research system at both the federal and provincial levels. A National Master Agricultural Research Plan (NMARP) was one of the principal goals of the ARP-II as part of improving research planning and management. The objective of this paper is to review the reasons why the Pakistan agricultural research system needs to be revitalised, review the status and problems of the present agricultural research system, and outline a future agenda for Pakistan’s agricultural research system based on the plan developed for the NMARP.

Private Sector Investment in Agricultural Research in Pakistan

Private sector investment in agricultural research in Pakistan, although growing in importance, is limited at present and with a few exceptions, has not had a significant impact on agricultural production and productivity. The publicly funded agricultural research system has made the major contribution to increases in production and productivity growth. However the impressive gains of the past cannot be achieved with the current underfunded public research system which makes it all the more important for private sector investment in agricultural research to achieve its full potential in areas of its comparative advantage. This paper identifies the magnitude of private sector agricultural research investment in Pakistan and discusses some of the current policy constraints that hamper its scope. Information was gathered through informal and formal surveys of multinational and national firms conducting agricultural research in Pakistan in the areas of inputs and product processing. Although private sector investment in agricultural research has more than doubled in the past ten years, uncertainty persists surrounding privatisation issues, unresolved intellectual property rights regulation, and the enforcement of seed certification and truth-in-labelling rules and regulations.

Estimating the Yield Advantage of High-Yielding Wheat and Maize: The Use of Pakistani On-Farm Yield Constraints Data

This paper briefly reviews the index number approach to estimating the contribution made by crop development research and then discusses the use of on-farm yield constraint data to measure the rightward shift in the supply curve. Yield constraint data on wheat and maize from Pakistan are used as an illustration

Private Sector Investment in Agricultural Research in Pakistan

Private sector investment in agricultural research in Pakistan, although growing in importance, is limited at present and with a few exceptions, has not had a significant impact on agricultural production and productivity. The publicly funded agricultural research system has made the major contribution to increases in production and productivity growth. However the impressive gains of the past cannot be achieved with the current underfunded public research system which makes it all the more important for private sector investment in agricultural research to achieve its full potential in areas of its comparative advantage. This paper identifies the magnitude of private sector agricultural research investment in Pakistan and discusses some of the current policy constraints that hamper its scope. Information was gathered through informal and formal surveys of multinational and national firms conducting agricultural research in Pakistan in the areas of inputs and product processing. Although private sector investment in agricultural research has more than doubled in the past ten years, uncertainty persists surrounding privatisation issues, unresolved intellectual property rights regulation, and the enforcement of seed certification and truth-in-labelling rules and regulations

The Pakistan Agricultural Research System: Present Status and Future Agenda

Alarming food supply and demand deficits are projected to the year 2020 and beyond for Pakistan, based on its current low investment/low growth agricultural sector. Evidence suggests that agricultural productivity growth and increases in production may not keep pace with past growth rates. Part of the problem is an underfunded and poorly managed agricultural research system that can not hope to contribute significantly to increasing agricultural productivity now or in the future. The World Bank-assisted Agricultural Research II Project (ARP-II) was initiated to partially overcome some of the funding problems and provide institutional development in the areas of organisation, planning, and management of the research system at both the federal and provincial levels. A National Master Agricultural Research Plan (NMARP) was one of the principal goals of the ARP-II as part of improving research planning and management. The objective of this paper is to review the reasons why the Pakistan agricultural research system needs to be revitalised, review the status and problems of the present agricultural research system, and outline a future agenda for Pakistan’s agricultural research system based on the plan developed for the NMARP

Type studies and fourteen new North American species of Cortinarius section Anomali reveal high continental species diversity

Section is a species-rich group in North America belonging to , the most diverse genus in the Agaricales. This study is based on extensive morphological investigations and molecular methods using 191 nrDNA ITS sequence data and recovered 43 phylogenetic species from which 14 are described here as new to science. We sequenced ten type materials which belonged to eight species. The synonymy of with and with is proposed here. The North American occurrence of four species ( , , , and ), so far known only from Europe, was confirmed. Thirteen species were not formally described here due to lack of relevant information. An identification key to the known species in North America is provided

Structure based inhibitor design targeting glycogen phosphorylase b. Virtual screening, synthesis, biochemical and biological assessment of novel N-acyl-β-d-glucopyranosylamines

Glycogen phosphorylase (GP) is a validated target for the development of new type 2 diabetes treatments. Exploiting the Zinc docking database, we report the in silico screening of 1888 β- D-glucopyranose-NH-CO-R putative GP inhibitors differing only in their R groups. CombiGlide and GOLD docking programs with different scoring functions were employed with the best performing methods combined in a “consensus scoring” approach to ranking of ligand binding affinities for the active site. Six selected candidates from the screening were then synthesized and their inhibitory potency was assessed both in vitro and ex vivo. Their inhibition constants’ values, in vitro, ranged from 5 to 377 µM while two of them were effective at causing inactivation of GP in rat hepatocytes at low µM concentrations. The crystal structures of GP in complex with the inhibitors were defined and provided the structural basis for their inhibitory potency and data for further structure based design of more potent inhibitors

Biological hydropersulfides and related polysulfides – a new concept and perspective in redox biology

The chemical biology of thiols (RSH, e.g., cysteine and cysteine‐containing proteins/peptides) has been a topic of extreme interest for many decades due to their reported roles in protein structure/folding, redox signaling, metal ligation, cellular protection, and enzymology. While many of the studies on thiol/sulfur biochemistry have focused on thiols, relatively ignored have been hydropersulfides (RSSH) and higher order polysulfur species (RSSnH, RSSnR, n > 1). Recent and provocative work has alluded to the prevalence and likely physiological importance of RSSH and related RSSnH. RSSH of cysteine (Cys‐SSH) has been found to be prevalent in mammalian systems along with Cys‐SSH‐containing proteins. The RSSH functionality has not been examined to the extent of other biologically relevant sulfur derivatives (e.g., sulfenic acids, disulfides, etc.), whose roles in cell signaling are strongly indicated. The recent finding of Cys‐SSH biosynthesis and translational incorporation into proteins is an unequivocal indication of its fundamental importance and necessitates a more profound look into the physiology of RSSH. In this Review, we discuss the currently reported chemical biology of RSSH (and related species) as a prelude to discussing their possible physiological roles