Agarwood is studied as the resinous secondary metabolites produced by the natural microbial infection. The current study investigated the range of microbial infection in agarwood trees collected from various parts of India. A total of 17 isolates were collected and identified based on the morphological and molecular studies. The study revealed that the agarwood was naturally infected with Aspergillus, Lasiodiploidia, Chaetomium, Fusarium and Penicillium species. Further studies on enzyme activities involved in the pathogenesis process showed the higher cellulase, ligninolytic and laccase activities in Aspergillus isolate AR13 when compared to other isolates. The current study has offered a potential opportunity to further strengthen the research on possible development of microbial strains for artificial inoculation in agar trees to induce agarwood formation.Europe. The agarwood is reputed to be the most expensive wood in the world and in the consumer countries it ranged from a few dollars per kg for low quality material to more than US$30,000 per kg of top quality wood [1]. The formation of agarwood is mainly attributed to the defense reaction of trees either physically or chemically when they are exposed to biotic and abiotic stresses [2]- [4]. The agarwood causal agents so far studied as physical [5], chemical and biological agents [6]. The form of mechanical injury is considered as physical inducer of agarwood formation while the induction of chemicals, viz. oil, sugar and methyl jasmonate are reserved as chemical inducers. However, the quality and quantity of agarwood formation were not found to be greater in case of the physical and chemical inducers. Later, the studies on the biological agents in rainforest areas on the infection site of the agarwood trees revealed that the fungal microbes could be the potential agents to induce the formation of agarwood [7] [8]. As a response to the fungal infection, the tree produces a high resin in volatile organic compounds that aids in suppressing or retarding the growth of the fungus. As the fungi caused injury to the tree trunk, the tree underwent several biochemical reactions and produced a white, milky substance called oleoresin. Once the production of aromatic trunk or agarwood is complete, the tree slowly starts drying up, signaling its readiness to be harvested. From this, it is understood that resin wood or agarwood is the result of oleoresin accumulation in response to fungal infection. However, little information is available on the potential fungi and its enzymatic activities that are associated with the formation of agarwood. In this circumstance, it is believed that the study on isolation and characterization of fungi associated with agarwood formation could be the first step in proceeding further research work on the standardization and development of artificial inoculation agents so as to produce the high quality agarwood. With this background information, the current study was carried out with the objectives: 1) identification of fungi from naturally i...
Extraction of nanocellulose is challenging, especially from hardwoods due to its complex chemical structure as well as structural hierarchy. In this study, nanocellulose was isolated from wood pulp of two hardwood species, namely Eucalyptus tereticornis Sm. and Casuarina equisetifolia L. by steam explosion process. Pure cellulose wood pulp was obtained through Kraft pulping process followed by alkaline and bleaching pre-treatments. Isolated nanocellulose was characterized by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM), Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM), Fourier Transformed Infrared (FTIR) Spectra, Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA), and X-ray diffraction (XRD) studies. Nanocellulose obtained from both species showed non-significant difference with average diameter of 27.801 nm for eucalyptus and 28.690 nm for casuarina, which was confirmed from TEM and AFM images. FTIR spectra of nanocellulose showed prominent peaks corresponding to cellulose and absence of peaks corresponding to lignin. The elemental purity of nanocellulose was confirmed with EDAX detector. XRD analysis showed the enrichment of crystalline cellulose in nanocellulose, and also confirmed the significant conversion of cellulose I to cellulose II. During TG analysis the untreated fibres started to degrade earlier than the nanocellulose which indicated the higher thermal stability of nanocellulose. Highly entangled network like structure along with high aspect ratio make the nanofibres a versatile material for reinforcing the composites. This successful method can be replicated for industrial level production of cellulose nanofibres.
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