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Smoke produced from burning of plant material elicits a striking increase in seed germination in various plant species. In present work, effect of plant derived smoke exposure on wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) seeds germination and post germination response has been studied in laboratory. Plant derived smoke was generated by burning of plant material (leaf, straws etc.) in a special designed furnace. Non-imbibed and imbibed seeds of wheat were exposed to plant derived smoke for 1 hr time duration. Best results were observed in non-imbibed seeds treated with plant derived smoke while imbibed seeds showed poor response to germination percentage, germination index, seedling vigor index and root shoot length. It has been proved from present study that plant derived smoke has stimulatory effect on germination & post germination response of non-imbibed seeds while it may cause inhibitory effect in imbibed seeds of wheat.

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Indian jujube (Zizyphus mauritiana Lamk.) is mostly cultivated in tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world. Many native and exotic jujube cultivars are grown for fruit production in Pakistan. However, little research work has been conducted on various aspects of jujube i.e. morphological and biochemical characterization of available germplasm. Therefore, fruits of thirteen genotypes were collected to study the biodiversity through physico-chemical analysis during the years 2015 and 2016. The aim of the present study was to investigate the relationship among various physico-chemical attributes of the jujube through Pearson's correlation that may have greater importance for breeders during the selection of desirable genotype. The cultivar Foladi had the maximum fruit weight (30.49 g), pulp weight (28.42 g) and fruit diameter (36.75 mm) among all the cultivars. The maximum fruit length was recorded in Umran-13 (45.16 mm), while the maximum seed weight (2.70 g) was found in Dilbahar. Khobani had the maximum TSS (14.92 ºBrix). The highest level of acidity (0.74%) was recorded in Gorh. Akasha had highest vitamin C content (72.53 mg 100 mL -1 juice). The cultivars Sadqia, Umran-13, Mehmood wali, Yazman local and Gorh were much sweeter due to the maximum total sugars content (9.74-10.09%). The maximum antioxidant capacity was measured in Mahmood wali (616.13 mM Trolox 100 mL -1 ), Pak white (615.02 mM Trolox 100 mL -1 ) and Seedless (600.46 mM Trolox 100 mL -1 ), while antioxidant activity was significantly higher in Sadqia (40.604%). The maximum amount of total phenolic content was determined in Umran-13 and Sadqia (243.06 and 239.25 µg GAE mL -1 juice, respectively). The highly significant correlation (0.99) was observed between the fruit weight and pulp weight. Antioxidant activity and total phenolic content were also strongly correlated (0.70). Principal component analysis was made to determine the relationship among the genotypes and their variables. Dendrogram constructed on the basis of morphological attributes, divided 13 genotypes into four main clusters. Among the cultivars, Khobani and Mehmood wali share the maximum similarity (78%). Biochemical characteristics also divided the genotypes into three main clusters. The cultivars Pak white and Seedless had the maximum similarity (75%) among all the cultivars.Anjum, M.A., Rauf, A., Bashir, M.A., Ahmad, R. (2018). The evaluation of biodiversity in some indigenous Indian jujube (Zizyphus mauritiana) germplasm through physico-chemical analysis.

Abstract. The possible impact of El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events on the main components of CO 2 and H 2 O fluxes between the tropical rainforest and the atmosphere is investigated. The fluxes were continuously measured in an old-growth mountainous tropical rainforest in Central Sulawesi in Indonesia using the eddy covariance method for the period from January 2004 to June 2008. During this period, two episodes of El Niño and one episode of La Niña were observed. All these ENSO episodes had moderate intensity and were of the central Pacific type. The temporal variability analysis of the main meteorological parameters and components of CO 2 and H 2 O exchange showed a high sensitivity of evapotranspiration (ET) and gross primary production (GPP) of the tropical rainforest to meteorological variations caused by both El Niño and La Niña episodes. Incoming solar radiation is the main governing factor that is responsible for ET and GPP variability. Ecosystem respiration (RE) dynamics depend mainly on the air temperature changes and are almost insensitive to ENSO. Changes in precipitation due to moderate ENSO events did not have any notable effect on ET and GPP, mainly because of sufficient soil moisture conditions even in periods of an anomalous reduction in precipitation in the region.

Current study investigated the fermentative production of cell mass and crude protein using an axenic culture of the thermotolerant strain of Chlorella vulgaris grown mixotrophically in an illuminated 10-l glass bioreactor. The process was then upscaled to 1,000-l bioreactor. The organism supported maximum specific growth rate, crude protein volumetric productivity, and specific productivity of 1.2 day -1 , 2.26 g l -1 day -1 , and 0.76 g g -1 day -1 , respectively, with urea as nitrogen source. Gibbs free energy, enthalpy, and entropy values for its formation were 74.3, 56. 2 kJ mol -1 , and -59.1 J mol -1 K -1 , respectively, in both reactors and corresponded to those of thermotolerant organisms. Algal biomass grown in 10-l bioreactor contained 0.52 ± 0.03, 12.6 ± 2.0, 60.0 ± 4.5, 0.4 ± 0.02, 4.5 ± 0.2, 12 ± 0.5, and 3.81 ± 0.5% carotenoids, carbohydrates, crude protein, DNA, RNA, lipids, and total chlorophyll, respectively. Dry biomass supported good growth of fish larvae comparable with that on commercial diet.Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (

Rhizoctonia solani Kühn (teleomorph = Thanatephorus cucumeris (Frank) Donk) is one of the important soil-borne fungal pathogen, which infects tomato with typical symptoms of seedling damping-off and foot rot. During surveys (2014 and 2015 crop season) of nine tomato growing areas in Pothohar region of Pakistan, symptoms of foot rot were noted on approximately 33.4% of the plants observed at soil line level of the stem. Lesions on infected plant stems were irregular in shape, water-soaked, brown in colour manifesting sunken appearance. Fungal colonies isolated from stem portions of the diseased plants on malt extract agar medium were light grey to brown in colour with abundant mycelial growth and branched hyphae. A septum was always present in the branch of hyphae near the originating point with a slight constriction at the branch. No conidia or conidiophores were observed. All isolates were multinucleate when subjected to DAPI (4′,6-diamidino-2-phenylindole) stain. Based on morphological characteristics of fungal hyphae, isolates were identified as R. solani . Restriction analysis of PCR-amplified ribosomal DNA with four discriminant enzymes ( MseI, AvaII, HincII , and MunI ) and hyphal interactions with known tester strains confirmed these isolates belong to AG-3-PT (64.2%), AG-2-1 (14.2%), AG-2-2 (9.5%), AG-5 (7.1%) and AG-4-HGI (4.7%). AG-3-PT was widely distributed to major tomato growing areas while other groups were confined to distinct locations. Internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region of rDNA was amplified with the primers ITS1/ITS4 and sequenced which had 99–100% identity with the corresponding gene sequences of respective R. solani AGs. To confirm Koch’s postulates, four week old tomato plants were transplanted into 1.5 L plastic pots containing sterilized potting mixture i.e. sand: clay: farmyard manure, at the rate of 1:1:1. Soil inoculum containing 10 g of barley grains colonized with each isolate of R. solani for 14 days was mixed in the upper 2 cm layer of soil (Taheri and Tarighi, 2012). A set of uninoculated plants was used as a control. Ambient conditions were provided under the greenhouse. 21 days after inoculation, water-soaked greyish to brown lesions similar to the symptoms of the previous infection were observed on stem portions of all inoculated plants while control plants remained symptomless. Fungus re-isolated from infections was confirmed as R. solani by microscopic appearance of the hyphae. Present study is the first report of AG composition of R. solani infecting tomato in Pakistan which will be useful to breeding programs working on varietal evaluation.

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