Soil salinity is the biggest problem which hinders the productivity of agricultural crops, causing adverse effects on plant growth and development. In this regard, it has been shown that the arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) can establish a symbiosis with most agricultural plants improving water and nutrient absorption under salinity stress conditions. The functional contribution of AMF strains (Claroideoglomus claroideum (Cc) and a native consortium of AMF (HM) isolated from saline soils) on the growth and nutrition of lettuce plants (Lactuca sativa var. longifolia) was evaluated under increasing salt stress conditions (0, 40, and 80 mM NaCl). At 60 days of growth, biomass production, nutrient content (N, P), ions (Ca 2+ , Mg 2+ , Na + , K +), chlorophyll, proline content, and AMF propagules were evaluated. The highest growth was observed in plants inoculated with Cc, which produced a higher percentage of root colonization and hyphal length at all levels of salinity, compared to plants inoculated with HM or non-inoculated plants. These results were directly related to higher biomass production, increased synthesis of proline, increased N uptake, and noticeable changes in ionic relations, based in a diminishing Na + , compared to non-mycorrhizal plants. Our results suggest that this improved ionic balance is due to a filtering effect of AMF structures both in the soil and in the root that prevents the entry of toxic Na + ions, which is important due to the level of lettuce production on saline soils improving the crop by means of directed inoculation with efficient AMF strains.
Raman microimaging, as a product of Raman microspectroscopy mapping and multivariate analysis, was used for the localization and quantification of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) in tablets made in laboratory. This was done to develop an analytical strategy to simultaneously recover qualitative and quantitative information of solid dosage forms at a microscopic level by using a nondestructive method. A chemical system, composed of acetaminophen (AMP), caffeine, and one excipient (microcrystalline cellulose), was subjected to chemometric analysis through principal component analysis (PCA) and multivariate curve resolution with alternating least squares (MCR–ALS). This was done by using Raman spectra obtained from microscopic images with pixel sizes of 15 × 15 μm to localize the APIs in the tablets. Partial least squares (PLS) was applied as a calibration method to obtain bulk and single‐pixel concentrations of APIs in the samples. MCR–ALS provided better results than PCA for the localization of APIs. PLS achieved satisfactory root mean standard error values in the external validation set (<4% w/w) in bulk concentration determinations of AMP. This method also achieved concentrations for each pixel of the images, reconstructing images very similar to those obtained by MCR–ALS. Consequently, simultaneous localization and quantification of AMP was possible. Finally, the performance of Raman microimaging was evaluated through estimation of analytical figures of merit (AFOMs) of the technique used to assess the quantification of APIs. This included different calculus of uncertainty in the signal in a technique where the signal/noise ratio is low, and AFOMs for multivariate quantification are not often reported.
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