Sustainability in livestock production system is largely affected by climate change. An imbalance between metabolic heat production inside the animal body and its dissipation to the surroundings results to heat stress (HS) under high air temperature and humid climates. The foremost reaction of animals under thermal weather is increases in respiration rate, rectal temperature and heart rate. It directly affect feed intake thereby, reduces growth rate, milk yield, reproductive performance, and even death in extreme cases. Dairy breeds are typically more sensitive to HS than meat breeds, and higher producing animals are, furthermore, susceptible since they generates more metabolic heat. HS suppresses the immune and endocrine system thereby enhances susceptibility of an animal to various diseases. Hence, sustainable dairy farming remains a vast challenge in these changing climatic conditions globally.

Nitrogen (N) is the most critical externally added input for any crop production system. The half of the global population directly or indirectly depends on nitrogenous fertilizers for food supply. Today, Rice, wheat, and maize are consuming more than 90% of total nitrogenous fertilizer used in cereals. Underuse of nitrogen is associated with lower crop production while overuse leads to several soil and environmental related consequences. Therefore, response to applied nitrogen and its use efficiency have to be monitored properly for obtaining the maximum potential and sustainable yield. Efficiency of applied nitrogenous fertilizers is very low due to its various losses i.e. volatilization, leaching, surface runoff and denitrification from soil-plant system. Therefore, the proper understanding of advanced soil and plant management practices which helps in enhancement of nitrogen recovery efficiency is one of the key factors to enhance crop output, decreasing cost of cultivation, and to maintain environmental quality which ultimately adds towards the goal of achieving long term sustainable production system. In this review, an attempt has been made summarize the locally as well as scientific soil and crop management technologies used for improving use efficiency of applied N. This paper also discusses nitrogen cycling in soil-plant systems, various N losses pathways, present status and most possible management options at the farm level for enhancing nitrogen use in crop production system.

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BackgroundThe buffalo, despite its superior milk-producing ability, suffers from reproductive limitations that constrain its lifetime productivity. Male sub-fertility, manifested as low conception rates (CRs), is a major concern in buffaloes. The epididymal sperm surface-binding proteins which participate in the sperm surface remodelling (SSR) events affect the survival and performance of the spermatozoa in the female reproductive tract (FRT). A mutation in an epididymal secreted protein, beta-defensin 126 (DEFB-126/BD-126), a class-A beta-defensin (CA-BD), resulted in decreased CRs in human cohorts across the globe. To better understand the role of CA-BDs in buffalo reproduction, this study aimed to identify the BD genes for characterization of the selection pressure(s) acting on them, and to identify the most abundant CA-BD transcript in the buffalo male reproductive tract (MRT) for predicting its reproductive functional significance.ResultsDespite the low protein sequence homology with their orthologs, the CA-BDs have maintained the molecular framework and the structural core vital to their biological functions. Their coding-sequences in ruminants revealed evidence of pervasive purifying and episodic diversifying selection pressures. The buffalo CA-BD genes were expressed in the major reproductive and non-reproductive tissues exhibiting spatial variations. The Buffalo BD-129 (BuBD-129) was the most abundant and the longest CA-BD in the distal-MRT segments and was predicted to be heavily O-glycosylated.ConclusionsThe maintenance of the structural core, despite the sequence divergence, indicated the conservation of the molecular functions of the CA-BDs. The expression of the buffalo CA-BDs in both the distal-MRT segments and non-reproductive tissues indicate the retention the primordial microbicidal activity, which was also predicted by in silico sequence analyses. However, the observed spatial variations in their expression across the MRT hint at their region-specific roles. Their comparison across mammalian species revealed a pattern in which the various CA-BDs appeared to follow dissimilar evolutionary paths. This pattern appears to maintain only the highly efficacious CA-BD alleles and diversify their functional repertoire in the ruminants. Our preliminary results and analyses indicated that BuBD-129 could be the functional ortholog of the primate DEFB-126. Further studies are warranted to assess its molecular functions to elucidate its role in immunity, reproduction and fertility.

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Nitrogen (N) fertilization plays a pivotal role in physiomorphological attributes and yield formation of field-grown cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.), but little is known of its interaction with irrigation levels. Therefore, this study was conducted with an objective of evaluating the impact of irrigation and nitrogen levels on growth attributes and nitrogen use efficiency of Bt cotton (Gossypium spp.) in the hot arid region. The experiment consisted of a factorial arrangement of three irrigation levels (200, 400, and 600 mm) and four nitrogen rates (0, 75, 150, and 225 kg ha–1) in a split-plot design with three replications. Nitrogen fertilization and irrigation levels influenced cotton growth attributes and yield. The highest leaf area index, dry matter accumulation, crop growth rate, and relative growth rate were achieved at 225 kg N ha–1 and irrigation level 600 mm as compared to other experimental treatments. Similarly, nitrogen uptake and content by seed, lint, and stalk and total nitrogen uptake recorded maximum at 225 kg N ha–1 and irrigation level 600 mm. Interestingly, the treatment of 600 mm of irrigation and 150 kg N ha–1 displayed significant increase in nitrogen use efficiency indices such as agronomic efficiency of nitrogen (AEN) and recovery efficiency of nitrogen (REN), while partial factor productivity of nitrogen (PFPN) and internal nitrogen use efficiency (iNUE) were significantly higher with application of 600 mm of irrigation and nitrogen application rate of 75 kg ha–1. Application of 600 mm of irrigation along with 225 kg N ha–1 resulted in significant increase in gross return, net return, and B:C ratio than any other treatment combinations. So, application of 600 mm of irrigation along with 225 kg N ha–1 could be recommended for achieving higher growth and yield, as well as profitability of Bt cotton under hot arid region and similar agroecologies.

Background Low conception rate (CR) despite insemination with morphologically normal spermatozoa is a common reproductive restraint that limits buffalo productivity. This accounts for a significant loss to the farmers and the dairy industry, especially in agriculture-based economies. The immune-related proteins on the sperm surface are known to regulate fertility by assisting the spermatozoa in their survival and performance in the female reproductive tract (FRT). Regardless of their importance, very few studies have specifically catalogued the buffalo sperm surface proteome. The study was designed to determine the identity of sperm surface proteins and to ascertain if the epididymal expressed beta-defensins (BDs), implicated in male fertility, are translated and applied onto buffalo sperm surface along with other immune-related proteins. Results The raw mass spectra data searched against an in-house generated proteome database from UniProt using Comet search engine identified more than 300 proteins on the ejaculated buffalo sperm surface which were bound either by non-covalent (ionic) interactions or by a glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI) anchor. The singular enrichment analysis (SEA) revealed that most of these proteins were extracellular with varied binding activities and were involved in either immune or reproductive processes. Flow cytometry using six FITC-labelled lectins confirmed the prediction of glycosylation of these proteins. Several beta-defensins (BDs), the anti-microbial peptides including the BuBD-129 and 126 were also identified amongst other buffalo sperm surface proteins. The presence of these proteins was subsequently confirmed by RT-qPCR, immunofluorescence and in vitro fertilization (IVF) experiments. Conclusions The surface of the buffalo spermatozoa is heavily glycosylated because of the epididymal secreted (glyco) proteins like BDs and the GPI-anchored proteins (GPI-APs). The glycosylation pattern of buffalo sperm-surface, however, could be perturbed in the presence of elevated salt concentration or incubation with PI-PLC. The identification of numerous BDs on the sperm surface strengthens our hypothesis that the buffalo BDs (BuBDs) assist the spermatozoa either in their survival or in performance in the FRT. Our results suggest that BuBD-129 is a sperm-surface BD that could have a role in buffalo sperm function. Further studies elucidating its exact physiological function are required to better understand its role in the regulation of male fertility.