Morphological Variation of Vegetative Phase among Ma Wee (Oryza sativa L.) Accessions during Non-Inductive Growing Season for Flowering

Ma wee (Oryza sativa L.) had been a popular traditional rice in the past due to desirableagronomic traits for adverse environments. Ma wee accessions (Accns) are known to bephotoperiod sensitive for flowering initiation which flower during Maha (short day) season.Understanding morphological variation of Ma wee is useful in future analysis for geneticdiversity. Thirty nine Accns of Ma wee varieties used for the present study with the objectiveof determining variation of morphological responses when Accns remained in vegetativephase under non-inductive photoperiod for flower initiation at 210 days after sowing. Thirtynine Accns from plant genetic resources center, Sri Lanka were grown in Kamburupitiya withfour replicates in a completely randomised design at the end of Maha season in 2013/2014.Quantitative characters of plant height (PH), total tiller number (TTN), total leaf number(TLN), culm number (CN) and ligules length (LL) and qualitative characters of ligule color(LC), ligule shape (LS), internode color (IC), culm strength (CS) were recorded. None of the39 Accns flowered by 210 days and PH, TTN, TLN, CN, and LL varied from 87.5±1.61 cm,2±0.37, 8±0.84, 2±0.43, 1.8±0.46 cm to 199±1.36 cm, 22±2.09, 136±2.20, 24±2.03 and4.18±0.25 cm respectively. The lowest PH, TTN, TLN, and CN were recorded from Accn6253. Except for Accn 6253, rests 38 Accns were over 1 m in PH.Qualitative characters varied among clusters without any uniformity for a given cluster. CSvaried among Accns from weak, intermediate to strong. LC and IC varied from green towhite and green to yellow respectively. Acute to acuminate and two cleft LS were alsoobserved. Principal Component Analysis followed by Cluster Analysis was performed usingdata from quantitative characters. First two of PCs explained over 80% of total morphologicalvariations. The first PC represented the PH, TTN, TLN and CN whereas PC2 represented theLL. Eight clusters were obtained at rescaled distance five in the dendogram. Variation amongAccns within clusters for qualitative characters may be an indication of genetic diversity.Keywords: Ma wee, Morphological variation, Vegetative phas

Determination of Candidate Breeding Resource from Sri Lankan Traditional Rice Mudukiri Al

Most of the traditional rice varieties conserved at Plant Genetic Resources Centre, Sri Lanka,possess more than one accession. Determination of morphological variation and yieldpotential among accession within same variety would be useful for breeding new varietiesand farmer introductions. Six accessions of Mudukiri Al variety were selected for this study.The objective of this study was to determine the morphological variation among accessionsof Mudukiri Al for selecting candidates for future breeding. Six accessions obtained from thePlant Genetics Resources Centre, Sri Lanka, were grown in Kamburupitiya with threereplicates in a completely randomised design from November 2013. Days to fifth leaf (DFL),seedling height at fifth leaf (SHT), leaf area of fifth leaf (LA), days to flowering (DF), plantheight at flowering (PH), culm number at flowering (CN), total number of panicles (PN),number of grains per first panicle (GN), grain length (GL) and width (GW) were recordedwhich varied from 51 to 59 days, 63.8 to 80.3 cm, 6.5 to 44.4 cm2, 86 to 102 days, 112.7 to148.6 cm, 16 to 38, 7 to 29, 103 to 255, 0.7 to 0.9 cm and 0.3 to 0.4 cm respectively.Accession 4,144 produced significantly higher GN of 255 while accession 3,970, 4,145 and3,758 produced 184, 160 and 166 respectively. Accessions 3,970 and 5,536 were with shortawns. A positive correlation between DFL and PH (0.870) had been observed. Higher GNand the highest CN (38) would be favourable for selecting accession 4,144 as a candidatebreeding resource.Keywords: Mudukiri Al, Morphological variation, Breeding resourc

Valuation of Ecosystem Services for Driving Community-assisted Forest Landscape Restoration in Endane Biodiversity Corridor, Sri Lanka

The ecosystem services: direct or indirect benefits of ecosystems to human well-being, need to be recognized in conservation and restoration decision-making. In the human-dominated southwest Sri Lanka, we have established a forest landscape restoration project (Endane Biodiversity Corridor) linking a peripheral forest reserve to Sinharaja Rainforest Complex. The ecosystem services provided by tea monocultures, abandoned tea lands, and lowland home gardens were estimated employing a range of methods for estimating respective ecosystem service values with data collected from household surveys, key stakeholder interviews, and survey of tree flora in 20 m × 20 m plots for estimating aboveground carbon stock. The benefit transfer approach was used to value the supporting and regulating services. The total value of ecosystem services provided by this forest corridor landscape was 6,465 USD ha/yr in 2021. This amount included: provisioning services of 1,950 USD ha/yr, supporting services of 645 USD ha/yr, regulating services of 3,807 USD ha/yr, and cultural services of 38.8 USD ha/yr. Overall, our forest corridor landscape of 59.3 ha provided 382,362 of USD of ecosystem services a year. In comparison to tea monoculture, species-rich home gardens generate a high amount of provisioning services. Our study site is prone to ecosystem degradation due to human activities like forest land encroachment, illegal gem mining, and over- harvesting of forest products. However, we recognize the opportunity of enhancing the biodiversity of monoculture tea gardens and home gardens of the corridor following the principles of agroforestry and enrichment planting. These results i.e., the ecosystem service values among different land uses, are imperative for financing and encouraging community participation for forest restoration activities. Keywords: Forest resources assessment, Forest restoration, Common-based restoratio

Modelling of red blood cell morphological and deformability changes during in-vitro storage

© 2020 by the authors. Storage lesion is a critical issue facing transfusion treatments, and it adversely affects the quality and viability of stored red blood cells (RBCs). RBC deformability is a key indicator of cell health. Deformability measurements of each RBC unit are a key challenge in transfusion medicine research and clinical haematology. In this paper, a numerical study, inspired from the previous research for RBC deformability and morphology predictions, is conducted for the first time, to investigate the deformability and morphology characteristics of RBCs undergoing storage lesion. This study investigates the evolution of the cell shape factor, elongation index and membrane spicule details, where applicable, of discocyte, echinocyte I, echinocyte II, echinocyte III and sphero-echinocyte morphologies during 42 days of in-vitro storage at 4 °C in saline-adenine-glucose-mannitol (SAGM). Computer simulations were performed to investigate the influence of storage lesion-induced membrane structural defects on cell deformability and its recoverability during optical tweezers stretching deformations. The predicted morphology and deformability indicate decreasing quality and viability of stored RBCs undergoing storage lesion. The loss of membrane structural integrity due to the storage lesion further degrades the cell deformability and recoverability during mechanical deformations. This numerical approach provides a potential framework to study the RBC deformation characteristics under varying pathophysiological conditions for better diagnostics and treatments

A Three-Component Gene Expression System and Its Application for Inducible Flavonoid Overproduction in Transgenic Arabidopsis thaliana

Inducible gene expression is a powerful tool to study and engineer genes whose overexpression could be detrimental for the host organisms. However, only limited systems have been adopted in plant biotechnology. We have developed an osmotically inducible system using three components of plant origin, RD29a (Responsive to Dehydration 29A) promoter, CBF3 (C-repeat Binding Factor 3) transcription factor and cpl1-2 (CTD phosphatase-like 1) mutation. The osmotic stress responsible RD29a promoter contains the CBF3 binding sites and thus RD29A-CBF3 feedforward cassette enhances induction of RD29a promoter under stress. The cpl1-2 mutation in a host repressor CPL1 promotes stress responsible RD29a promoter expression. The efficacy of this system was tested using PAP1 (Production of Anthocyanin Pigment 1) transgene, a model transcription factor that regulates the anthocyanin pathway in Arabidopsis. While transgenic plants with only one or two of three components did not reproducibly accumulate anthocyanin pigments above the control level, transgenic cpl1 plants containing homozygous RD29a-PAP1 and RD29a-CBF3 transgenes produced 30-fold higher level of total anthocyanins than control plants upon cold treatment. Growth retardation and phytochemical production of transgenic plants were minimum under normal conditions. The flavonoid profile in cold-induced transgenic plants was determined by LC/MS/MS, which resembled that of previously reported pap1-D plants but enriched for kaempferol derivatives. These results establish the functionality of the inducible three-component gene expression system in plant metabolic engineering. Furthermore, we show that PAP1 and environmental signals synergistically regulate the flavonoid pathway to produce a unique flavonoid blend that has not been produced by PAP1 overexpression or cold treatment alone

Modelling the deformation behavior of stomatocyte, discocyte and echinocyte red blood cell morphologies during optical tweezers stretching

A coarse-grained (CG) red blood cell (RBC) membrane model is used to investigate the deformation behavior of stomatocyte, discocyte and echinocyte morphologies during optical tweezers stretching. First, the numerically predicted discocyte deformation behavior is validated against analogous experimental observations, and then the numerically predicted stomatocyte and echinocyte deformation behavior is compared to the discocyte deformation behavior. The findings indicate that the CG-RBC membrane model is capable of accurately predicting the deformation behavior of stomatocyte, discocyte and echinocyte RBC morphologies during optical tweezers stretching, and an applicable tool to investigate the evolution of RBC behavior and membrane properties for different morphologies

Data for: ARCHITECTURES AND ALGORITHMS OF AN AUTONOMOUS SMALL-SCALE DRILLING AGENT.

Laboratory data collected through drilling granite, cement and sandstone samples

Vegetative growth and yield associated flowering time variation in Sri Lankan rice 'Hondarawala'

Breeding new varieties adaptable for changing climate is an essential need in sustainable rice production. Around 2000 Sri Lankan rice accessions at Plant Genetic Resources Centre (PGRC), Sri Lanka have not been fully characterized for the yield potential and sensitivity to mild photoperiodic differences for days to flowering (DF). DF is a candidate key determinant in yield components in rice and understanding the physiological and molecular nature for DF is important to manipulate crop yield through breeding programmes. The objective of this study was to assess the genetic diversity of 15 Hondarawala accessions from PGRC using selected 37 morphological characters and DF. DF varied from 58-189 days while accession number 3988 did not flower until 200th day of seed germination. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) revealed that four principle components (PA) explained 86.5% of total observed variation. Variation of DF positively associated with most of morphological characters of vegetative growth while a few characters were negatively associated. In the dendogram, 10 clusters formed at rescale distance of 5. Widely variable DF accessions distributed among clusters

A coarse-grained red blood cell membrane model to study stomatocyte-discocyteechinocyte morphologies

10.1371/journal.pone.0215447PLoS ONE144e021544