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MADS-box gene family members play multifarious roles in regulating the growth and development of crop plants and hold enormous promise for bolstering grain yield potential under changing global environments. Bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is a key stable food crop around the globe. Until now, the available information concerning MADS-box genes in the wheat genome has been insufficient. Here, a comprehensive genome-wide analysis identified 300 high confidence MADS-box genes from the publicly available reference genome of wheat. Comparative phylogenetic analyses with Arabidopsis and rice MADS-box genes classified the wheat genes into 16 distinct subfamilies. Gene duplications were mainly identified in subfamilies containing unbalanced homeologs, pointing towards a potential mechanism for gene family expansion. Moreover, a more rapid evolution was inferred for M-type genes, as compared with MIKC-type genes, indicating their significance in understanding the evolutionary history of the wheat genome. We speculate that subfamily-specific distal telomeric duplications in unbalanced homeologs facilitate the rapid adaptation of wheat to changing environments. Furthermore, our in-silico expression data strongly proposed MADS-box genes as active guardians of plants against pathogen insurgency and harsh environmental conditions. In conclusion, we provide an entire complement of MADS-box genes identified in the wheat genome that could accelerate functional genomics efforts and possibly facilitate bridging gaps between genotype-to-phenotype relationships through fine-tuning of agronomically important traits.

Salinity is a serious problem that limits crop growth and yield. The present study used plotting to evaluate 25 tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) accessions for various morpho-physiological parameters at the seedling stage and identify significantly salt-tolerant tomato lines at three different salinity levels. The pot experiment had a completely randomized design with three replicates in a factorial arrangement under greenhouse conditions. Tomato plants were exposed to 0 (control), 8, and 12 dS m-1 as NaCl stress at the seedling stage. The morpho-physiological traits, such as root and shoot length, root/shoot ratio, number of leaves, fresh and dry shoot weight, fresh and dry root weight, leaf area, Na + and K + concentrations, K + /Na + ratio, and tolerance index, were recorded to examine salt tolerance. According to principal component analysis (PCA), there were six principal components (PCs) with Eigen values > 1 and 77.2% of total cumulative variability. The PC1 (24.3%) revealed the highest variability followed by PC2 (16.2%).

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Rice is the staple food for half of the world"s population, however, its edible grain part is deficient in essential micronutrients, especially Fe and Zn. Breeding for micronutrient dense rice demands exploration of available genetic diversity for grain Fe, Zn and β-carotene contents. In this study, we analysed brown and polished grain samples of 26 traditional rice genotypes for Fe and Zn concentration. Fe concentration varied from 13.23 ppm to 45.83 ppm and 1.10 ppm to 36.45 ppm in brown and polished rice, respectively. Whereas, Zn concentration in brown and polished rice ranged from 18.67 ppm to 38.01 ppm and 5.86 ppm to 23.88 ppm, respectively. The landraces had higher Fe and Zn contents than improved varieties and advance uniform lines. Significant positive correlation was present between Fe and Zn concentration in brown (r = 0.694, P < 0.01) and polished rice (r = 0.533, P < 0.01). Fe concentration was greatly reduced by the polishing process than Zn concentration and approved varieties lost less Fe and Zn contents than advance uniform lines. Minimal levels of beta-carotene were detected in rice genotypes indicating need for genetic modifications to enhance pro-vitamin A contents in rice endosperm.

Paddy blast, brown leaf spot and bacterial leaf blight of rice are the most devastating diseases of rice worldwide causing serious threats to food security. For the purpose field trials were conducted for the evaluation of different available fungicides at Rice Research Institute, Kala Shah Kaku during season of 2016. Application of different fungicide to control the disease and their effect on paddy yield under field condition were studied. The results showed that fungicide application not only controlled the disease but also improved the paddy yield as compared to control. In this study, Amistar Top 325 SC performed best to control the Paddy blast that leaf to high yield. In the case of Brown leaf spot, application of Switch DF 80 WG revealed the lowest incidence of disease along with highest protection value. Similarly, Nativo was most effective to control the Bacterial Leaf Blight incidence. Conclusively, these chemical can be used to control the studied bacterial and fungal diseases for high paddy yield.

Rice is critical for sustainable food and nutritional security; however, nominal micronutrient quantities in grains aggravate malnutrition in rice-eating poor populations. In this study, we evaluated genetic diversity in grain iron (Fe) and zinc (Zn) contents using trait-linked simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers in the representative subset of a large collection of local and exotic rice germplasm. Results demonstrated that aromatic fine grain accessions contained relatively higher Fe and Zn contents in brown rice (BR) than coarse grain accessions and a strong positive correlation between both mineral elements. Genotyping with 24 traitlinked SSR markers identified 21 polymorphic markers, among which 17 demonstrated higher gene diversity and polymorphism information content (PIC) values, strongly indicating that markers used in current research were moderate to highly informative for evaluating the genetic diversity. Population structure, principal coordinate and phylogenetic analyses classified studied rice accessions into two fine grain specific and one fine and coarse grain admixture subpopulations. Single marker analysis recognized four ZnBR and single FeBR significant marker-trait associations (MTAs) contributing 15.41-39.72% in total observed phenotypic variance. Furthermore, high grain Fe and Zn contents linked marker alleles from significant MTAs were also identified. Collectively, these results indicate a wide genetic diversity exist in grain Fe and Zn contents of studied rice accessions and reveal perspective for marker-assisted biofortification breeding.