Stevia rebaudiana (S. rebaudiana) is a herbaceous and perennial plant belonging to Asteraceae family. The genus stevia is well known as a natural producer of sweetener comprising non-caloric and non-carcinogenic steviol glycosides. In recent years, the capability in producing natural sweetner has increased the demand for S. rebaudiana as substitute of processed sugars. Flowering phase of S. rebaudiana has shown to affect the content of steviol glycosides in the leaves. Steviol glycosides level is the highest at the time of flower bud formation and lowest at time preceding and following flower bud formation. Therefore, sequencing and analysing the genes that are involved in flowering phase will provide platform for gene manipulation in increasing steviol glycosides content. The Stevia transcriptome data that include two stages of growth (before flowering and after flowering), were obtained using Illumina RNA-seq technology and can be accessed at NCBI Sequence Read Archive under Accession No. SRX6362785 and SRX6362784.

The study focuses on investigating kapok fiber as an adsorbent for oily industrial wastewater. Kapok fiber, KF (Ceiba Pentandra) is a natural plant fiber that poses excellent hydrophobic-oleophilic characteristics, due to the presence of penetrable   hollow   lumen   structure   and   waxy   material on its surface. The objectives of this study are to investigate the morphology of raw and treated kapok fiber (KF) before and after adsorption of wastewater as well as to study the sorption capacity of KF (including raw KF, ethanol-treated KF and chloroform-treated KF) in wastewater. Hence, the morphology of raw KF and KF treated with oil are analysed using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Besides, the sorption condition of different types of wastewater including emulsified wastewater, immiscible oil-and-liquid wastewater and non-oily wastewater on raw KF are studied in this experiment. From the study, the raw KF shows the best sorption capacity of oil (29.00g/g) compared to the ethanol-treated KF (18.22g/g) and Chloroform-treated KF (16.58g/g) as the treated KF has larger amount of cellulosic content (hydroxyl group) present on the wall of kapok, making it less oleophilic. On the other hand, raw KF has the lowest sorption capacity of water (0.59g/g) followed by ethanol-treated KF (3.05g/g) and chloroform-treated KF (3.20g/g) on non-oily wastewater. Kapok fiber shows great potential as oil sorbent on any type of oil owing to its excellent hydrophobicity-oleophilicity characteristic. In conclusion, the raw KF shows the best sorption capacity of oil compared to the ethanol-treated KF and chloroform-treated KF because the effectiveness is resulted from the hydrophobic waxy coating on the kapok surface. Besides that, the lower sorption capacity of water than oil is due to the incomplete removal of wax from the wall of kapok, making it a little hydrophilic (likes water) as compared to oleophilic (likes oil).

Agarwood has been used for its fragrance and medicinal properties in Asian culture for centuries. In recent years, agarwood gains its popularity in the west due to its usage in perfume formulation. Unfortunately its supply not meets the augmentation market demand. This is mostly because of depleting nature agarwood reservoir and lack of induction technique that can produce agarwood consistently in the plantation. In this study, we look into a case where artificial inducing technique successfully produced high quality agarwood. To assure its quality, agarwood chip was analysed by Gas Chromatography for its chemical profiles. Discovered compounds were identified as sesquiterpene group which also had been characterized as major agarwood compound listed on previous studies. Few compounds that are detected such as δ-cadinene (0.20%), jinkoh-eremol (22.09%), epi-α-cadinol (4.74%), agarospirol (3.75%) and others. Soil condition that contributes into this agarwood formation; soil analysis on physical properties, chemical properties and nutrients content of the soil have been analyzed. Based on the findings, soil condition is an important factor to successfully induced high quality agarwood.

Aquilaria malaccensis or gaharu is one of Malaysia’s top tropical resources that is being protected and conserved. Somatic embryogenesis is a plant tissue culture method used most extensively in commercial micropropagation systems and conservation purposes. This study aims to optimize callus induction techniques for somatic embryogenesis study using Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) and Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) analysis. In this study, callus was induced on Murashige and Skoog’s (MS) medium supplemented with a combination of plant growth regulators and optimized parameters (explant used, sterilization techniques, media content, pH media, plant growth regulators, incubation condition, and incubation temperature). The cells were subcultured for long-term callus maintenance and subjected to SEM analysis for somatic embryogenesis confirmation. Four set of genes associated to somatic embryogenesis (SERK, BBM, LEC1, and WOX) were studied based on National Centre for Biotechnology Information database and literatures. The data obtained were used for primer design and gene amplification using 3 different tissues (leaf, stem, callus).The highest frequencies of callus induction were observed on Murashikage and Skoog medium supplemented with 6-Benzylaminopurine and 1-Naphthaleneacetic acid together with optimized growth parameters. SEM analysis showed embryogenic characteristics in cells of the yellow compact calli evidenced by the presence of small and isodiametric cells. Only SERK gene was successfully amplified and enable to proceed with in silico analysis. This study provides fundamental results for genetic conservation effort of A. malaccensis related to somatic embryogenesis study.