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The ability of cyanobacteria to be useful as matrices for agriculturally important bacteria was evaluated. Biofilms were generated with the selected strain Anabaena torulosa after co-culturing with Azotobacter chroococcum, Pseudomonas striata, Serratia marcescens, and Mesorhizobium ciceri. The biochemical attributes were compared with individual bacterial and cyanobacterial cultures. The biofilms were characterized in terms of proteins, chlorophyll, IAA production, acetylene-reducing activity, phosphate solubilization, and antagonism towards selected phytopathogenic fungi. An enhancement in the population counts was recorded in A. torulosa-S. marcescens and A. torulosa-P. striata biofilms. The A. torulosa-A. chroococcum and A. torulosa-M. ciceri biofilms were also able to utilize new saccharides as compared to the individual cultures. Such novel biofilms with agriculturally useful traits can provide additional advantages including the broader spectrum of activity and the presence or formation of biologically active compounds; they also suggest the way to effective inoculants for sustainable and environment friendly agriculture.

Identification of a small core germplasm set representing the available genetic diversity is essential for its proper evaluation and subsequent utilization in rice improvement programmes. For constituting a small diverse mini-core panel of Indian rice germplasm, a representative set of 6912 accessions drawn based on their geographic origin from the whole rice germplasm collection available in the National Gene Bank was genotyped using 36 microsatellite markers. Automated fragment analysis of amplicons yielded a total of 435 alleles, with an average 12.4 and range of 3-29 alleles per locus. Polymorphism information content (PIC) ranged from 0.08 (RGNMS190) to 0.86 (RM552) with an average of 0.528. Based on genotyping data, a mini-core consisting of 98 genotypes was identified. Ninety-four per cent of the alleles present in the core set were present in the mini-core. The identified small but diverse panel will be useful for further intensive trait-specific evaluation and utilization in allele mining.

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Here, we present the draft genome (377.3 Mbp) of Corchorus olitorious cv. JRO-524 (Navin), which is a leading dark jute variety developed from a cross between African (cv. Sudan Green) and indigenous (cv. JRO-632) types. We predicted from the draft genome a total of 57,087 protein-coding genes with annotated functions. We identified a large number of 1765 disease resistance-like and defense response genes in the jute genome. The annotated genes showed the highest sequence similarities with that of Theobroma cacao followed by Gossypium raimondii. Seven chromosome-scale genetically anchored pseudomolecules were constructed with a total size of 8.53 Mbp and used for synteny analyses with the cocoa and cotton genomes. Like other plant species, gypsy and copia retrotransposons were the most abundant classes of repeat elements in jute. The raw data of our study are available in SRA database of NCBI with accession number SRX1506532. The genome sequence has been deposited at DDBJ/EMBL/GenBank under the accession LLWS00000000, and the version described in this paper will be the first version (LLWS01000000).

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Rice hybrids are known to withstand moisture deficit stress better than their parental purelines. To study the effect of water deficit stress in rice hybrids, in terms of productivity related traits and physiological parameters pertaining to drought stress, 22 rice hybrids and their parental lines were evaluated under well irrigated and water deficit conditions. Sixteen F 1 hybrids showed positive heterosis over their respective mid-parental means for yield and spikelet fertility. Pusa 6A and Vandana was the best cross combination for developing high yielding hybrid rice varieties under drought since they had the highest positive standard heterosis and heterobeltiosis for grain yield, spikelet fertility and membrane stability index (MSI). Among the physiological parameters, MSI was found to reflect the drought tolerance ability of a genotype (pureline/hybrid) better. A set of 60 genome-wide SSR markers were used for prediction of heterotic potential of genotypes under well irrigated and water deficit conditions which revealed that genetic distances and spikelet fertility had a positive and significant correlation.