Over consumption of seeds of Lathyrus sativus causes lathyrism, a paralytic disease of legs/hind limbs, in human and animals. Some of these aminoacids and their amine derivatives are neurotoxic to both human and animals. Lathyrism, a paralytic disease is caused by the extensive use of seeds of Lathyrus sativus. A nonprotein aminoacid, P-N-Oxalylamino-L-alanine (BOAA) present in these seeds is found to be responsible for this effect. Though it has been banned in many countries from cultivation, there is every possibility of its use as a part of diet during adverse climatic conditions like flood, drought etc. when other crops get ruined but it survives. In this article the authors have reviewed and documented the lethal manifestation of seeds of Lathyrus sp. to create an awareness against the use of this as human diet and animal fodder and the present status of research for developing toxin free species of this agronomically important plant by use of genetic engineering.
Performance of full-scale upflow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) reactors treating distillery spentwash was evaluated. The plant was designed to handle 650 m 3 day -1 of distillery spentwash having an average chemical oxygen demand (COD) concentration of 112,400 mg l -1 with a HRT of 6 days. In the plant, the pH level of the influent varied from 3.50 to 4.40 but the pH of the treated effluent stabilized to a range of 7.36 to 7.68 during the study period. The operation of the reactors during study period revealed the stable conditions of the reactors, which is evident from the low COD, biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) and total solids (TS) contents in treated effluent. In the plant, the COD, BOD 5 and TS removal efficiencies were stabilized to the range of 62. 19-66.59, 72.42-77.11, and 58.47-60.46%, respectively at an organic loading rate of 2.15-4.60 kg COD m -3 day -1 . The biogas production was stabilized to the range of 48,290-135,115 m 3 week -1 with 60% methane content. The total quantity of biogas produced ranged from 0.40 to 0.57, 1.04 to 1.71 and 0.40 to 0.56 m 3 kg -1 removals of COD, BOD and TS, respectively. This study concluded that the treatment of distillery spentwash using UASB reactors contributed significantly for pollution load reduction besides generating renewable in-house bio-energy.
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