Optimization of regeneration and transformation parameters in tomato and improvement of its salinity and drought tolerance

As part of our efforts to improve tomato tolerance to abiotic stress, we have undertaken this study to introduce two candidate genes encoding: a sodium antiporter and a vacuolar pyrophosphatase, previously shown to enhance drought and salt tolerance in transgenic Arabidopsis plants. First, we evaluated the potential of primary leaves from three to four week-old in vitro-grown tomato seedlings as alternative explants to cotyledons for tomato transformation. Our results demonstrated that primaryleaves are three times more efficient then cotyledons in terms of regeneration percentage, productivity, and transformation frequencies independently of the medium and genetic construct used. Second,primary leaves were used to introduce the genes of interest using Agrobacterium-mediated transformation. Many transgenic tomato plants were easily recovered. The presence of the transgenes and their expression were confirmed by PCR and RT-PCR analysis. The transformation frequencies for primary leaf explants ranged from 4 to 10% depending on the genetic construct used. The time requiredfrom inoculation of primary leaves with Agrobacterium cells to transfer of transgenic tomato plants to soil was only 2 months compared to 3 to 4 months using standard tomato transformation protocols. The transgenic tomato plants obtained in the current study were more tolerant to salinity and drought stress than their wild-type counterparts

Integrated Maintenance-Quality strategies taking into account the impact of the system degradation on the quality of output products.

This paper deals with integrated models joining maintenance and quality. We consider a manufacturing system composed of a single machine subject to an increased random failure rate and producing conforming and non-conforming items. In order to decrease the random failure rate and its impact on the quality of output products, a bloc type preventive maintenance strategy with minimal repair is considered. Our study consists in developing integrated analytical models joining maintenance and quality in order to determine the optimal preventive maintenance plan taking into account the progressive quality perturbation and the economic impact of reworking activities. Two strategies are developed. In fact, for the first strategy, we propose reworking activities for all non-conforming products in order to improve their quality condition and to sell all batches at the best price Pmax. The aim of this strategy is to found the optimal number of batches produced and reworked N* before each preventive maintenance action, maximizing the total net profit per time unit PT1. For the second strategy, the same problem is studied but for a finite horizon. Two mathematical models are developed in order to find the optimal value of the decision variable N* for both strategies. Numerical examples are presented in order to illustrate proposed models and a sensitivity study is developed to evaluate the influence of the variation of some parameters.