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Thymus serpyllum L., a well-known aromatic plant of the Himalayan region is often used in pharmaceutical, cosmetic, flavoring and fragrance industries because of its phenolic and non-phenolic constituents. The amount of these compounds varies with the origin, the climatic conditions and the developmental stage of harvesting time of the plant. Under different environmental conditions, plant specimen of the same species respond differently through production and accumulation of the primary and secondary metabolites. In the present work, T. serpyllum L. was collected from its natural habitat and grown at different agro-climatic zones, i.e., Auli (higher Himalayas; 2744 m asl), Pithoragarh (lower Himalayas; 1524 m asl) and Haldwani (foothill areas; 412 m asl). The essential oil from fresh aerial parts of cultivated plants at full blooming stage was obtained using Clevenger apparatus and analyzed by GC-FID and GC-MS. The amount of thymol was also quantified by HPTLC. The data were statistically analyzed using MS Excel and SPSS 16.0. The percentage yield of the essential oils varied from 0.20 to 0.84%. Thymol was the major compound found in all the three cultivations, being the highest for Haldwani (84.63%) followed by Auli (50.80%) and Pithoragarh (41.15%) cultivations. Camphor was the second major compound, only identified in Pithoragarh (36.34%) region. Alpha-thujene, p-cymene, alpha-terpineol, (E)-caryophyllene, beta-bisabolene, alpha-pinene and carvacrol were also identified in significant amounts. HPTLC quantification suggested the similar pattern of thymol percentage as obtained from GC-FID. The study revealed that there was a significant difference in the terpenoid constituents of the plant grown at different agro-climatic zones. Thymus serpyllum grown at lower altitude area (warm climatic zone) can be a potential source of thymol along with high essential oil yield.

Fruit flies are the most serious economic insect pests of mango in India and other parts of the world. Under future climate change, shifts in temperature will be a key driver of ecosystem function especially in terms of insect pest dynamics. In this study, we predicted the voltinism of the three economically important fruit fly species viz., Bactrocera dorsalis (Hendel), Bactrocera correcta (Bezzi) and Bactrocera zonata (Saunders) of mango from 10 geographical locations in India using well established degree day approaches. Daily minimum and maximum temperature data were generated by using seven General Circulation Models (GCMs) along with their ensemble, in conjunction with the four representative concentration pathways (RCPs) scenarios (RCP 2.6, RCP 4.5, RCP 6.0 and RCP 8.5) and three time periods (2020, 2050 and 2080) generated from MarkSim® DSSAT weather file generator. Historical data from 1969–2005 of these 10 locations were considered as baseline period. Under future predicted climates, model outputs indicates that all three fruit fly species will produce higher number of generations (1–2 additional generations) with 15–24% reduced generation time over the baseline period. The increased voltinism of fruit fly species due to increased temperature may lead to ≃5% higher infestation of mango fruits in India by the year 2050. Analysis of variance revealed that ‘geographical locations’ explained 77% of the total variation in voltinism followed by ‘time periods’ (11%). Such increase in the voltinism of fruit flies and the consequent increases in the infestation of mango fruits are likely to have significant negative impacts on mango protection and production.

A green and eco-friendly method for preparation of oleochemicals from Camelina oil was developed for possible application for bio-lubricant basestocks, The steps involved are consisting of epoxidation of Camelina oil based fatty acid followed by further branching with wide range of alcohol such as 2-propanol, n-butanol, isoamyl alcohol and 2-ethylhexanol. These products were evaluated with physico-chemical properties such as acid value, oxirane oxygen content (OOC), hydroxyl value, low temperature properties, viscosity at 40 and 100 °C, viscosity index and characterized by FTIR, 1H NMR. The appearance of peak at 824 cm–1 in the FTIR spectra was due to the formation of epoxy group and broad peak appeared at 3500-3300 cm–1 is for hydrogen bonded O-H stretching vibration of hydroxy group. The 1H NMR spectra showed a signal at 2.9-3.2 ppm region indicated CH-proton attached to the oxygen atom of the both epoxy group for epoxidized product, peaks for newly formed secondary alcohols emerged at 4.25-3.35 in alkoxy derivatives. The Camelina based synthetic product may find application in biolubricants base stock.

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Poultry farming is gaining strength in mitigating livelihood and nutritional security to the poor farmers which constitute 60% of the India’s population. Thus eggs of superior quality is prerequisite for profitable marketing and for hatchability too. The present study was conducted on two improved varieties, Vanaraja (dual purpose type) and Gramapriya (the layer type) chicken developed at PDP, Hyderabad and their crosses on random mating. The genetic groups taken were Gramapriya (male) x Gramapriya (female),Vanaraja(male) x Vanaraja(female), Gramapriya(male) x Vanaraja(female)and Vanaraja (male) x Gramapriya(female). 6 males and 30 females were taken from each genetic group and maintained separately under deep litter system with a mating ratio of 1 male : 5 females. To study the genetic effect on external and internal egg quality traits, a total of more than 50 eggs were collected at random from each of 4 genetic groups upto 28 weeks of age. The average shell thickness obtained to be ranged from 0.36 to 0.39 mm. The average albumen and yolk indices were found to be ranged from 7.396 to 8.656 and 41.749 to 43.888 respectively. The average shell weight and percentage of shell weight observed to be ranged from 4.147 to 5.627 g and 17.266 to 18.003% respectively.