With a long-term plan to develop transgenic pigeonpea with resistance to fungal disease, the transfer of a rice chitinase gene to pigeonpea [Cajanus cajan (L.) Millsp.] is reported here. The rice chitinase gene harboured in the plasmid pCAMBIA 1302:RChit was delivered via the Agrobacterium-mediated method to the cotyledonary node explants followed by subsequent regeneration of complete plants on selection media containing hygromycin. Putative transformed pigeonpea plants were recovered with stringent selection pressure and confirmed using molecular techniques. Stable integration and expression of the chitinase gene has been confirmed in the T0 and T1 transgenics through molecular analysis.

A diverse group of rhizobacteria persists in the rhizospheric soil, on the surface of roots, or in association with rice plants. These bacteria colonize plant root systems, enhance plant growth and crop yield. Indigenous rhizobacteria are known to promote soil health, grain production quality and serve as sustainable bioinoculant. The present study was aimed to isolate, identify and characterize indigenous plant growth promoting (PGP) diazotrophic bacteria associated with the rhizosphere of rice fields from different areas of Jammu and Kashmir, India. A total of 15 bacteria were isolated and evaluated for various PGP traits, antagonistic activity against phytopathogens, production of hydrolytic enzymes and biofilm formation under in-vitro conditions. The majority of the isolated bacteria were Gram-negative. Out of 15 bacterial isolates, nine isolates produced IAA (12.24 ± 2.86 to 250.3 ± 1.15 μg/ml), 6 isolates exhibited phosphate solubilization activity (36.69 ± 1.63 to 312.4 ± 1.15 μg/ml), 7 isolates exhibited rock phosphate solubilization while 5 isolates solubilized zinc (10–18 mm), 7 isolates showed siderophore production, 8 isolates exhibited HCN production, 6 isolates exhibited aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylate (ACC) deaminase activity, 13 isolates exhibited cellulase activity, nine isolates exhibited amylase and lipase activity and six isolates exhibited chitinase activity. In addition, 5 isolates showed amplification with the nifH gene and showed a significant amount of nitrogenase activity in a range of 0.127–4.39 μmol C2H4/mg protein/h. Five isolates viz., IHK-1, IHK-3, IHK-13, IHK-15 and IHK-25 exhibited most PGP attributes and successfully limited the mycelial growth of Rhizoctonia solani and Fusarium oxysporum in-vitro. All the five bacterial isolates were identified based on morphological, biochemical and 16S rDNA gene sequencing study, as Stenotrophomonas maltophilia, Enterobacter sp., Bacillus sp., Ochrobactrum haematophilum and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Rice plants developed from seeds inoculated with these PGP strains individually had considerably higher germination percentage, seed vigor index and total dry biomass when compared to control. These findings strongly imply that the PGP diazotrophic bacteria identified in this work could be employed as plant growth stimulators in rice.

Saraca asoca (Roxb.) De Wilde. is an endangered medicinal tree that has immense medicinal importance. Six accessions of S. asoca were analyzed for phytochemicals to identify the accessions with the highest content of medicinal compou nds and to characterize two pharmaceutically important compounds. The chloroform and ethanol extracts of bark and the ethanol a nd chloroform extracts of flowers of the accessions were qualitatively tested for secondary metabolites. Total phenolics and flavonoids were also estimated to select the accessions with the highest content, which was further investigated by a sensitive and reliable high performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) method for the pharmacologically important quercetin and catechin. The accession, Sa-O, identified based on the results of phytochemical analysis incidentally is the fifty-year-old ornamental tree on

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It is important to analyse the degree of genetic variation existing within the genome to extend   the genetic base of linseed/flaxseed accessions in order to preserve, evaluate and use genetic resources accurately and successfully. The main aim of the current investigation was to evaluate the scope and spread of genomic variation across different linseed accessions by employing molecular markers (RAPD). The genomic DNA of 12 linseed accessions was amplified with 16 decamer RAPD primers that generated 81 total bands, among which 75 bands were polymorphic and 6 bands were monomorphic. Polymorphic band numbers varied from least 2 (OPS-11) to highest 10 (OPS-07). The magnitude of polymorphism ranged from 75% to 100% among all accessions with a mean of 93.15 % across all the accessions. The value of Polymorphic Information Content (PIC) varied from 0.133% to 0.708% with a mean of 0.45% for each primer. The maximum PIC value (0.708) was found with the primer OPS-07 and (0.702) with OPM-13. The primer OPS-03 showed the minimum PIC value (0.133). Two main different clusters -I and -II were seen in the cluster analysis depending on RAPD data. Cluster-II comprises one accession (IC 564585) that was the highly varied accession, whereas Cluster-I comprises of some sub clusters with all the remaining accessions. The Jaccard's similarity coefficient varied from 8.2 to 96.3%. The accessions BHU-A and BHU-B had the highest genetic similarity (96.3%), followed by BHU-B and IC 564605 (96.2%). More divergent accessions were discovered to be IC 564585, IC 564616, IC 564631, IC 564622, and IC 564630. The current investigation provides innovative knowledge to breeders on the germplasm of linseed that would be employed in subsequent research to improve linseed genotypes.