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With the fast development of industry, large amounts of organic and inorganic pollutants are inevitably released to the natural environment, which results in the pollution of environment and thereby are...

Fritillaria is a perennial herb with medicinal properties. There are 158 Fritillaria species worldwide, 33 of which have reported therapeutic efficacy. Alkaloids are the principal constituents in Fritillaria. Fritillaria species growing at 2700–4000 m are the sources of extract namely Chuan Beimu (the Pharmacopoeia of the People’s Republic of China, 2020 Edition), with low biomass, mainly containing more 5α-cevanine isosteroidal alkaloids with cis-configuration. In contrast, species growing below 1500 m are usually taller than 50 cm, and they mainly contain more trans-configuration isosteroidal alkaloids. There are two schemes of the biosynthetic pathways of steroidal alkaloids with different frameworks and catalytic reactions and combined high-throughput omics data. Based on the distributed elevations, Fritillaria species were divided into three major categories, which met classification features based on phylogenetic analysis or morphological features. Artificial or in vitro cultivations are effective strategies for balancing economical requirements and ecological protection. Fritillaria species growing at lower altitudes can be cultivated by bulb reproduction, but species growing at higher altitudes still rely mainly on gathering a large number of wild resources. Integration of asexual tissue culture and bulb reproduction with sexual artificial or imitated wild cultivation may create a very promising and effective way to maintain sustainable industrial development of Fritillaria.

Alfalfa planting is threatened by limited arable land, salinization, water shortage, and soil nutrient deprivation. To deal with this challenge, we previously introduced the Arabidopsis type I H⁺-pyrophosphatase gene AVP1 into alfalfa and found that transgenic lines exhibited enhanced tolerance to short-term salinity or drought. In this study, the growth performances of two transgenic lines were further investigated under long-term salinity or drought conditions, as well as under phosphate deficiency (low-Pi). Compared with wild-type (WT) plants, the transgenic alfalfa showed better growth performance with taller plants and more biomass accumulation after being treated with either long-term salinity, long-term drought, or low-Pi. Most importantly, the overexpression of AVP1 significantly increased the root dry weight and the root/shoot ratio of transgenic alfalfa. A more robust root system facilitates the transgenic alfalfa to absorb nutrients, and in turn promotes the growth of the plants. Whether being treated with low-Pi or not, transgenic plants showed higher total phosphorus concentrations by 16.5–35.5% than WT plants. This study laid a foundation for breeding alfalfa cultivars adapted to saline, arid and nutrient-deprived marginal land.

In the holographic superfluid disk, when the rotational frequency is large enough, we find the formation of giant vortex in the center of the system at some specific rotational frequency, with a phase stratification phenomenon. Keep increasing the rotational frequency the giant vortex will disappear and there will be an appearance of the superfluid ring. However, even with the giant vortex the number of vortices measured from winding number and rotational frequency always satisfies the linear Feynman relation, when the superfluid ring starts to appear, the number of vortices in the disk will decrease though the rotational frequency is increasing.