An overview of enhancing drought tolerance in cotton through manipulating stress resistance genes

Drought stress affects the normal growth of plant by influencing Physiological, morphological molecular and biochemical traits at cellular level. It is a polygenic trait, controlled by multiple genes, which makes its manipulation difficult by genetic engineering. It seems drought could be major threat in future to high yield of cotton in Pakistan as well around the globe because it is spontaneous and cannot be controlled with manuring and skilled agricultural practices. Gene manipulation could be a solution of this threat by producing transgenic cotton plants. As it is polygenic trait, so, understanding about cellular mechanism of drought tolerance is crucial to impart tolerance by controlling gene expression under stressed conditions. Universal Stress Proteins (USP) genes have already been identified in drought stressed leaves of Gossypium arboreum which make this variety of cotton a rich source of stress tolerance genes. USP genes could be manipulated for drought tolerant transgenic cotton with high yielding as well and it is most important family of proteins in this regard. This family encompasses a conserved group of proteins that has been reported in different organisms which are activating under various abiotic stress conditions. USP is also a regulatory protein; its activity can be increased by manipulating its interactions

Cobalt availability in the soil plant and animal food chain: a study under a peri-urban environment

Abstract Cobalt metal is considered as an essential trace element for the animals. Present investigation was undertaken in the peri-urban area to analyze the cobalt availability in animal food chain by using different indices. Cow, buffalo and sheep samples along with forage and soil samples were collected from the three different sites of District Jhang and analyzed through atomic absorption spectrophotometer. Cobalt values differed in soil samples as 0.315-0.535 mg/kg, forages as 0.127-0.333 mg/kg and animal samples as 0.364-0.504 mg/kg. Analyzed cobalt concentration in soil, forage and animal samples was found to be deficient in concentration with respect to standard limits. Soil showed the minimum cobalt level in Z. mays while maximum concentration was examined in the forage C. decidua samples. All indices examined in this study has values lesser than 1, representing the safer limits of the cobalt concentration in these samples. Enrichment factor (0.071-0.161 mg/kg) showed the highly deficient amount of cobalt enrichment in this area. Bio-concentration factor (0.392-0.883) and pollution load index (0.035-0.059 mg/kg) values were also lesser than 1 explains that plant and soil samples are not contaminated with cobalt metal. The daily intake and health risk index ranged from 0.00019-0.00064 mg/kg/day and 0.0044-0.0150 mg/kg/day respectively. Among the animals, cobalt availability was maximum (0.0150 mg/kg/day) in the buffaloes that grazed on the C. decidua fodder. Results of this study concluded that cobalt containing fertilizers must be applied on the soil and forages. Animal feed derived from the cobalt containing supplements are supplied to the animals, to fulfill the nutritional requirements of livestock

Drought tolerance studies in wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)

Wheat is a foremost staple food crop of Pakistan and plays a vital role for stability of country’s economy and people’s food requirement. Shortage of water has remained a consistent problem for the farmers over past few years and different agronomic techniques have been introduced into the limelight. But there is an immense scope of making some genetic manipulations to improve/enhance the drought tolerance of wheat. It has been observed by many researchers that yield in drought stress conditions, is a fine fusion of the traits like days taken by crop to reach physical maturity, water use efficiency, crop water use and harvest index. Drought being one of the main limiting factors of wheat production should be highly preferred in the future wheat improvement programs

Flexible carbon capture using MOF fixed bed adsorbers at an NGCC plant

Novel carbon capture systems are necessary to help natural gas power plants approach net zero CO2 emissions. We propose a hybrid carbon capture system attached to a natural gas combined cycle (NGCC) power plant that consists of a membrane system and a solid sorbent system, with this work focusing on the design of the solid sorbent system. We modeled fixed bed adsorbers that are packed with metal-organic framework (MOF) solid sorbents that adsorb CO2 and undergo temperature swing desorption using steam from the power plant. Parametric simulation of adsorber conditions showed that ten 5-m diameter beds adsorbing in parallel with 4.9 bars inlet gas pressure and 1.5 bars of steam pressure at a flow rate of 0.15 kmol/s led to optimized performance. This study enabled us to determine that the MOF bed adsorber can attain 86.6 % and 85.4 % carbon capture during peak and off-peak operation, respectively. When combined with the membrane capture system, this results in overall capture rates of 98.4 % and 98.9 % during peak and off-peak operation, respectively. Although we were unable to attain net-zero or net-negative emissions in this study, we are confident that net-negative operation could be obtained in future work by selecting a solid sorbent better suited to direct air capture conditions so that more air could be processed by the solid sorbent system

CaWRKY30 positively regulates pepper immunity by targeting CaWRKY40 against Ralstonia solanacearum inoculation through modulating defense-related genes

The WRKY transcription factors (TFs) network is composed of WRKY TFs’ subset, which performs a critical role in immunity regulation of plants. However, functions of WRKY TFs’ network remain unclear, particularly in non-model plants such as pepper (Capsicum annuum L.). This study functionally characterized CaWRKY30—a member of group III Pepper WRKY protein—for immunity of pepper against Ralstonia solanacearum infection. The CaWRKY30 was detected in nucleus, and its transcriptional expression levels were significantly upregulated by R. solanacearum inoculation (RSI), and foliar application ethylene (ET), abscisic acid (ABA), and salicylic acid (SA). Virus induced gene silencing (VIGS) of CaWRKY30 amplified pepper’s vulnerability to RSI. Additionally, the silencing of CaWRKY30 by VIGS compromised HR-like cell death triggered by RSI and downregulated defense-associated marker genes, like CaPR1, CaNPR1, CaDEF1, CaABR1, CaHIR1, and CaWRKY40. Conversely, transient over-expression of CaWRKY30 in pepper leaves instigated HR-like cell death and upregulated defense-related maker genes. Furthermore, transient over-expression of CaWRKY30 upregulated transcriptional levels of CaWRKY6, CaWRKY22, CaWRKY27, and CaWRKY40. On the other hand, transient over-expression of CaWRKY6, CaWRKY22, CaWRKY27, and CaWRKY40 upregulated transcriptional expression levels of CaWRKY30. The results recommend that newly characterized CaWRKY30 positively regulates pepper’s immunity against Ralstonia attack, which is governed by synergistically mediated signaling by phytohormones like ET, ABA, and SA, and transcriptionally assimilating into WRKY TFs networks, consisting of CaWRKY6, CaWRKY22, CaWRKY27, and CaWRKY40. Collectively, our data will facilitate to explicate the underlying mechanism of crosstalk between pepper’s immunity and response to RSI