Pre-transplant nephrectomy was done in a 25-year-old man for calculous pyelonephritis using a retroperitoneal laparoscopic approach with a newly devised ligature applicator-dissector- kidney retractor.

The start of commercial exploitation of soybean in India is nearly four decades old. In this period, the crop has shown unparallel growth in area and production. Soybean has established itself as a major rainy season crop in the rainfed agro-ecosystem of central and peninsular India. Introduction of soybean has resulted in an enhancement in the cropping intensity and resultant increase in the profitability per unit land area. In India, soybean will continue to remain a major rainfed oilseed crop. A number of varieties that have been bred have resulted in this unprecedented growth. The simulation studies and on-farm demonstrations indicate that with current varieties, the rainfed potential of soybean in India is about 2.1 t/ha against the national average productivity of just 1.2 t/ha. Hence, large yield gaps exist between the potential and the actual yields harvested by the farmers. Narrowing of this yield gap may lead to doubling of soybean production. National Agricultural Research System has so far been successful in meeting the research demands of agrarian and industrial community. Further improvements in the yield of soybean grain and quality of soybean oil are possible by use of new research methodologies and by exploitation of recent advances in biology.

Retroperitoneal laparoscopic pyelolithotomy was successful in 5 of 8 patients using the recently described balloon technique of retroperitoneal laparoscopy. All patients were considered for this new minimally invasive procedure only on economic grounds. However, with improved technique and instrumentation, the retroperitoneal laparoscopic approach could become a practical alternative for the management of patients with medium sized pelvic stones not amenable to extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy nor ideally suitable for percutaneous nephrolithotomy, or when both of these facilities are not available.

OBJECTIVE To examine the safety and effectiveness of holmium laser enucleation of the prostate (HoLEP), as a day‐case procedure for selected patients. PATIENTS AND METHODS Thirty‐eight men underwent HoLEP as a day‐case procedure; they were discharged with an indwelling catheter for 48 h with ‘Hospital In The Home’ nursing management. They were evaluated for symptomatic and flow rate improvements after 3 months. Morbidity, length of stay, the duration of catheterization and readmission rates were evaluated. RESULTS The objective symptom score and flow‐rate improvements were equivalent to those previously published for transurethral resection of the prostate (TURP). There were five minor complications, three of which required readmission to hospital and one repeat surgery. The mean stay after surgery was 302 min. CONCLUSIONS Day‐case HoLEP is a safe and effective treatment for symptomatic benign prostatic hyperplasia. The outcomes are equivalent to those from TURP. Whilst there were three re‐admissions to hospital, two only required an overnight stay and no patient required a blood transfusion.

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Molecular characterization and genetic diversity among 82 soybean accessions was carried out by using 44 simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers. Of the 44 SSR markers used, 40 markers were found polymorphic among 82 soybean accessions. These 40 polymorphic markers produced a total of 119 alleles, of which five were unique alleles and four alleles were rare. The allele number for each SSR locus varied between two to four with an average of 2.97 alleles per marker. Polymorphic information content values of SSRs ranged from 0.101 to 0.742 with an average of 0.477. Jaccard's similarity coefficient was employed to study the molecular diversity of 82 soybean accessions. The pairwise genetic similarity among 82 soybean accessions varied from 0.28 to 0.90. The dendrogram constructed based on genetic similarities among 82 soybean accessions identified three major clusters. The majority of genotypes including four improved cultivars were grouped in a single subcluster IIIa of cluster III, indicating high genetic resemblance among soybean germplasm collection in India.

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Soybean is a leading oilseed crop in India, which contains about 40% of protein and 20% of oil. Core collection will accelerate the management and utilization of soybean genetic resources in breeding programmes. In the present study, eight agromorphological traits of 3443 soybean germplasm were analysed for the development of core collection using the principal component score (PCS) strategy and the power core method. The PCS strategy yielded core collection (CC1) of 576 accessions, which accounted for 16.72% of the entire collection (EC). The analysis based on the power core programme resulted in CC2 of 402 accessions, which accounted for 11.67% of the EC. Statistical analysis showed similar trends for the mean and range estimated in both core collections and EC. In addition, the variance, standard deviation and coefficient of variance were in general higher in core collections than in the EC. The correlations observed in the EC in general were preserved in core collections. A total of 311 and 137 unique accessions were found in CC1 and CC2 in addition to 265 accessions that were found to be common in both core collections. These 265 common accessions were the most diverse core sets, which accounted for 7.64% of the EC. We proposed to constitute an integrated core collection (ICC) by integrating both common and unique accessions. The ICC comprised 713 accessions, which accounted for about 20.62% of the EC. Statistical analysis indicated that the ICC captured maximum variation than CC1 and CC2. Therefore, the ICC can be extensively evaluated for a large number of economically important traits for the identification of desirable genotypes and for the development of mini core collection in soybean.