Factors affecting the production of sugarcane yield and sucrose accumulation: suggested potential biological solutions

Environmental stresses are the main constraints on agricultural productivity and food security worldwide. This issue is worsened by abrupt and severe changes in global climate. The formation of sugarcane yield and the accumulation of sucrose are significantly influenced by biotic and abiotic stresses. Understanding the biochemical, physiological, and environmental phenomena associated with these stresses is essential to increase crop production. This review explores the effect of environmental factors on sucrose content and sugarcane yield and highlights the negative effects of insufficient water supply, temperature fluctuations, insect pests, and diseases. This article also explains the mechanism of reactive oxygen species (ROS), the role of different metabolites under environmental stresses, and highlights the function of environmental stress-related resistance genes in sugarcane. This review further discusses sugarcane crop improvement approaches, with a focus on endophytic mechanism and consortium endophyte application in sugarcane plants. Endophytes are vital in plant defense; they produce bioactive molecules that act as biocontrol agents to enhance plant immune systems and modify environmental responses through interaction with plants. This review provides an overview of internal mechanisms to enhance sugarcane plant growth and environmental resistance and offers new ideas for improving sugarcane plant fitness and crop productivity

A Quantum Blind Multi-Signature Method for the Industrial Blockchain

Traditional anti-quantum methods and multi-signature technologies to secure the blockchain against quantum attacks will quickly reduce the efficiency and scalability of the industrial blockchain, where the computational resources will experience a polynomial rise with the increasing number of traders. Here, a quantum blind multi-signature method is proposed for the multi-party transaction to provide anti-quantum security. First, the proposed multi-party transaction frame and quantum key distribution in the industrial blockchain are introduced. It integrates a novel quantum blind multi-signature algorithm that is based on the quantum entanglement mechanism, and it is absolutely secure in theory. Second, the anti-quantum multi-signature algorithm is illustrated, where there are four phases, i.e., initialization, signing, verification, and implementation. Third, the security and complexity of the proposed framework are analyzed and compared with related methods in references, and our proposed method is verified to be able to offer good computational performance and blockchain scalability for multi-party transaction. Last, the paper is summarized and future research directions are proposed

A State Transition Diagram and an Artificial <i>Physarum polycephalum</i> Colony Algorithm for the Flexible Job Shop Scheduling Problem with Transportation Constraints

In many flexible job shop scheduling problems, transportation scheduling problems are involved, increasing the difficulty in problem-solving. Here, a novel artificial Physarum polycephalum colony algorithm is proposed to help us address this problem. First, the flexible job shop scheduling problem with transportation constraints is modeled as a state transition diagram and a multi-objective function, where there are ten states in total for state transition, and the multi-objective function considers the makespan, average processing waiting time, and average transportation waiting time. Second, a novel artificial Physarum polycephalum colony algorithm is designed herein with two main operations: expansion and contraction. In the expansion operation, each mycelium can cross with any other mycelia and generate more offspring mycelia, of which each includes multiple pieces of parental information, so the population expands to more than twice its original size. In the contraction operation, a fast grouping section algorithm is designed to randomly group all mycelia according to the original population size, where each group selects the best fitness one to survive, but the other mycelia are absorbed to disappear, so the population size recovers to the original size. After multiple iterations, the proposed algorithm can find the optimal solution to the flexible job shop scheduling problem. Third, a series of computational experiments are conducted on several benchmark instances, and a selection of mainstream algorithms is employed for comparison. These experiments revealed that the proposed method outperformed many state-of-the-art algorithms and is very promising in helping us to solve these complex problems

Research Advance in the Regulatory Mechanism of Phytohormone for Plant Responses to Aluminum Toxicity Stress

Aluminum is the most abundant metal element in the crust. Soil acidification will cause great increase of the aluminum solubility to produce a large number of Al3+, which is toxic to plants. The activated aluminum will inhibit root growth, affect nutrient absorption and many physiological and biochemical metabolism processes, and further reduce crop yield. Aluminum toxicity has been the most important limiting factor for crop growth in acid soils which account for about 40% of cultivated land in the world. Phytohormones are the key endogenous factors that regulate plant responses to various environmental stresses, and are crucial to the improvement of plant resistance and plant survival under various stresses. It is well known that abscisic acid, auxin, ethylene, cytokinin, jasmonic acid and other major plant hormones play an important role in regulating plant responses to aluminum toxicity stress. A large number of studies have shown that plant hormones can also improve the adaptability of plants to aluminum stress by regulating the activities of cell wall-modifying enzymes, reactive oxygen species metabolism and organic acid secretion. In addition, there are complex interactions between different plant hormone signals, which jointly mediate and regulate the adaptive response of plants to aluminum stress. In order to have a more comprehensive and in-depth understanding of the mechanism of plant hormones in aluminum toxicity response, and to provide new ideas for molecular genetic improvement of plants tolerance to aluminum toxicity, in the study, the signal transduction and regulation of plant hormone signals in the process of plant response to aluminum toxicity stress are reviewed, and the future research direction of plant hormones under aluminum toxicity stress is prospected

An Image Edge Detection Algorithm Based on an Artificial Plant Community

Image edge detection is a difficult task, because it requires the accurate removal of irrelevant pixels, while retaining important pixels that describe the image’s structural properties. Here, an artificial plant community algorithm is proposed to aid in the solving of the image edge detection problem. First, the image edge detection problem is modeled as an objective function of an artificial plant community searching for water sources and nutrients. After many iterations, the artificial plant community is concentrated in habitable areas that are rich in water sources and nutrients, that is, the image edges, and the nonhabitable zones that are not suitable for living are deserted, that is, the nonedges. Second, an artificial plant community algorithm is designed to solve the objective function by simulating the growth process of a true plant community. The living behavior of the artificial plant community includes three operations: seeding, growing, and fruiting. The individuals in the plant community also correspond to three forms, namely seeds, individuals, and fruit. There are three fitness comparisons in each iteration. The first fitness comparison of each iteration is carried out during the seeding operation. Only the fruit with higher fitness levels in the last iteration can become seeds, while the fruit with low fitness levels die, and some new seeds are randomly generated. The second fitness comparison is implemented in the growing operation. Only the seeds with higher fitness levels can become individuals, but the seeds with lower fitness levels will die; thus, the community size will decrease. The third fitness comparison is in the fruiting operation, where the individual with the greatest fitness can produce an identical fruit through parthenogenesis, and the individuals with higher fitness levels can learn from each other and produce more fruit, so the population size can be restored. Through the continuous cycle of these three operations, the artificial plant community will finally determine the edge pixels and delete the nonedge pixels. Third, the experiment results reveal how the proposed algorithm generates the edge image, and the comparative results demonstrate that the proposed artificial plant community algorithm can effectively solve the image edge detection problems. Finally, this study and some limitations are summarized, and future directions are suggested. The proposed algorithm is expected to act as a new research tool for solving various complex problems

Bikeway provision and bicycle commuting: City-level empirical findings from the US

The growing worldwide awareness of the significant benefits of bicycling as an urban transport mode has aroused great interest in exploring the role that bikeways play in promoting utilitarian bicycling. However, few studies assess the contribution of citywide bikeway provision with the inclusion of all facility types and differentiation of facility utilities. This study provides new evidence by evaluating the collective effects of bikeway kilometers per square kilometer, bikeway kilometers per 10,000 population, and low-stress bikeway proportion on the bicycle-commuting share in 28 US cities between 2005 and 2017. Using linear panel regression models, we found that the expansion of citywide bikeway infrastructure positively influences the share of commute trips by bicycle. The results also indicated that the proportion of low-stress bikeways has a stronger impact on the bicycling-to-work share than bikeway kilometers per 10,000 population, while the impact of bikeway kilometers per square kilometer ranks last. These findings may aid policy makers and planners in formulating sound city-level bikeway policies favoring sustainable urban transportation scenarios