Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by SARS-CoV-2 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome - Coronavirus-2) of the family Coronaviridae, appeared in Wuhan, Hubei province, China being its epicenter in December 2019. This disease was declared as posing Public Health International Emergency by World Health Organization on January 30, 2020, attained the status of a very high-risk category on February 29, and now having a pandemic status (March 11, 2020). COVID-19 has presently spread to more than 195 countries/territories while killing nearly 19,600 humans out of cumulative confirmed cases accounting to more than 430,000 within a short period of just a few weeks. The majority of deaths have been reported in Italy and China. Researchers worldwide are pacing with high efforts to counter the spread of this virus and to design effective vaccines and therapeutics/drugs. Few of the studies have shown the potential of animal-human interface and zoonotic links in the origin of SARS-CoV-2. Exploring the possible zoonosis and revealing the factors responsible for its initial transmission from animals to humans will pave ways to design and implement effective preventive and control strategies to counter COVID-19. The present review presents an overview of COVID-19 and the causative virus SARS-CoV-2, with particular emphasis on the role of animals and their jumping the cross-species barriers, experiences learned from SARS- and MERS-CoVs, zoonotic links, and spillover events, transmission to humans and rapid spread., highlighting in very brief the preventive and control measures along with a few of the recent research developments to counter this pandemic virus/disease.

A field experiment consisting of 6 treatment combinations of two levels of Ni (@ 1 and 2 kg ha -1 ) with two nitrogen sources and three replications was conducted under randomized block design at research plot of Udai Pratap (Autonomous) College, Varanasi (U.P.).The main objective of study was to find out the effect of Ni with different sources of nitrogen on growth and yield of rice (Oryza sativa L.).The experiment was laid out in a randomized block design (RBD) having 6 treatments and 3 replications. Treatments were T0= control, T1 = nitrogen through ammonium sulphate + Ni@ 1 kg ha -1 , T2 = nitrogen through ammonium sulphate + Ni @ 2 kg ha -1 , T3 = nitrogen through urea + Ni @ 1 kg ha -1 , T4 = nitrogen through urea + Ni @ 2 kg ha -1 and T5 = 50% nitrogen through Urea and 50% nitrogen through ammonium sulphate + Ni @ 2 kg ha -1 . The results revealed that the growth, yield, organic carbon and available N, P and K status of soil was significantly increased by application of Ni @ 1 and 2 kg ha -1 with different nitrogen sources (urea and ammonium sulphate) as compared to control. Similar results were also observed with nutrients (N, P and K) content and uptake by the rice.

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