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Wild vegetables can contribute to people’s food security and health. In northwest Pakistan, almost 40% of the households are classified as food insecure, due to increasing population and natural and man-made catastrophes. There is an urgent need to get an overview of still existing practices of wild vegetable use and to incorporate such knowledge into agricultural policies. The present study, therefore, aims to collect and analyze information on the most widely and commonly used wild vegetables in northwest Pakistan. Semistructured interviews were performed with 126 informants (26–78-year old) from all 24 districts of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province. Information on culinary and medicinal use, cooking methods, and growing and harvest season were collected. A rating scale was used to get the opinion on quality, abundance, and use frequency of wild vegetables. Information on trading was gathered on local and regional markets. Transect walks were done with key informants for specimen collection. A total of 25 wild vegetable species (21 genera, 13 families) were documented. Most of them are herbs (22 spp.). One third of the species needs processing or detoxification prior to cooking. Taste and food quality as perceived by the local people are the main driver for use frequency and commercialization. Length of availability varies from 2 to 7 months with <em>Rumex dentatus</em> and <em>Vicia faba</em> also available during the winter season. Overall, 21 spp. are also used medicinally, mainly for gastrointestinal diseases. Leaves are the preferred plant part for both vegetables and medicines. Nine species are sold in markets, <em>Bauhinia variegata</em> and <em>Caralluma tuberculata</em> throughout the whole province. Local communities in northwest Pakistan have a broad knowledge of local plant use, especially on wild vegetables and their adequate processing. The present study suggests that the most commonly used wild vegetables should be promoted to reinforce food safety and most of them may also be commercialized. Conservation priority has to be given to the commercially harvested <em>Caralluma tuberculata</em>, which is presently overexploited.

BackgroundPresent investigation deals with antimicrobial screening of ten medicinally important plants used by the inhabitants of district Haripur, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) for different infectious diseases.MethodsAqueous, n-hexane and ethanolic extracts of each plant were tested for their antimicrobial activity against both Gram positive and Gram negative strains of bacteria, as well as strain of yeast. Agar well diffusion and broth dilution methods were used to determine the antimicrobial activity of different plant extracts.ResultsThe results indicated that all plants exhibited antimicrobial activity against one or more test pathogens. Interestingly, extracts of three plants showed strong and broad spectrum activity as compared to rest of the extracts which demonstrated the moderate activity. On the whole ethanolic extracts exhibited maximum antimicrobial effect than their corresponding aqueous and n-hexane extracts, when compared with standard antibiotics i.e., Streptomycin and Tetracycline. Among various extracts, only ethanloic extract of Azadirachta indica and aqueous and ethanolic extracts of Eucalyptus globulus and Bergenia ciliata and ethanolic extract of Punica granatum were found to have potentially promising activity against test microorganisms.ConclusionDifferent plant extracts show promising antimicrobial activity justifying their usage in traditional medicines. This study will be continued to identify more plants with potential antimicrobial components.

Hepatitis C is a serious health issue and cause liver disorders in millions of people. Available therapeutic agents require long term administration with numerous side effects. Therefore, there is a dire need to find alternative treatment options for this disease. Since ancient times, medicinal plants are widely used to cure various diseases with no or less harmful effects. Therefore, this study was designed to find out phytochemicals and investigate antiviral activity of methanol extract of Ajuga bracteosa, Ajuga parviflora, Berberis lycium and Citrus lemon against Hepatitis C Virus (HCV infection). Phytochemical analysis of the plant extract was performed using various chemical tests. Toxicity of the plant extract was determined against using trypan blue exclusion method. Antiviral activity of the selected plant extract was find out against HCV infected HepG2 cells. For this purpose, HepG2 cells were seeded with HCV positive and negative serum and nontoxic doses of plant extract for 24 and 48 h. After this RNA was extracted and viral load was determined using Real-time PCR. Phytochemical analysis showed the presence of flavonoids and phenols in all plant extracts while amino acids, alkaloids and tannins were present in B. lycium and saponins were detected in C. lemon. Toxicity assay showed that all plant extracts were nontoxic at maximum concentration of 200 μg/ml except B. lycium, which showed mild toxicity at 40 μg/ml and were extremely toxic at 60 μg/ml and above doses. Real-time PCR quantitation result revealed that after 24 h treatments A. parviflora showed highest antiviral activity, followed by A. bracteosa, while B. lycium extract had low (35%) and C. lemon has no antiviral effects. The 48 h treatments showed an increase antiviral activity by A. bracteosa followed by A. parviflora and B. lycium while C. lemon showed negative effect. Our results depicted that mentioned plants might be used as an alternative therapeutic regime or in combination with existing treatments against HCV.

This is a repository copy of OFF-eNET: An optimally fused fully end-to-end network for automatic dense volumetric 3D intracranial blood vessels segmentation.

The morphology of pollen grains of the 06 species of tribe Acacieae (Mimosaceae) belonging to one genus were investigated using scanning electron microscopic (SEM) and light microscopic (LM) approach. Lactic acid acetolysis method was used for (LM) while non‐acetolysis for (SEM). The species were examined for the both qualitative and quantitative palynological features. Qualitatively the pollen was studied for the shape, exine sculpturing, pollen shape, and pollen type. Oblate spheroidal shape of pollen was observed in Accacia modesta. Subprolate shape in Accaca nilotica. In Accacia farnesiana, prolate pollen was examined while prolate spheroidal in Acacia tortilis and spheroidal pollen grains were studied in Acacia catechu, respectively. Pollen exine sculpturing of the studied tribe possesses novel variation. Foveolate, reticulate, foveolate‐psilate, faint reticulate, fossulate, perforate, and scrabate exine sculpturing were noticed. Colpi were absent in all species. Excessive variation was observed in both qualitative and quantitative character of pollen. SPSS software was use for the quantitative measurement of the pollen grains. The current study will be helpful for the identification of the problematic species and phylogenetic studies of family Mimosaceae.

Palynological features as well as comparative foliar epidermal using light and scanning electron microscope (SEM) of 17 species (10genera) of Amaranthaceae have been studied for its taxonomic significance. Different foliar and palynological micro-morphological characters were examined to explain their value in resolving the difficulty in identification. All species were amphistomatic but stomata on abaxial surface were more abundant. Taxonomically significant epidermal character including stomata type, trichomes (unicellular, multicellular, and capitate) and epidermal cells shapes (polygonal and irregular) were also observed. Pollens of this family are Polypantoporate, pores large, spheroidal, mesoporous region is sparsely to scabrate, densely psilate, and spinulose. All these characters can be active at species level for identification purpose. This study indicates that at different taxonomic levels, LM and SEM pollen and epidermal morphology is explanatory and significant to identify species and genera.