This study aimed at assessing the climatic factors influencing the wolfberry fruit morphology, and the composition of its nutritious metabolites. The cultivar Ningqi1, widely grown in Northwest China was collected from three typical ecological growing counties with contrasting climatic conditions: Ningxia Zhongning (NF), Xinjiang Jinghe (XF) and Qinghai Nomuhong (QF). During the ripening period, 45 fruits from different plantations at each location were sampled. A total of 393 metabolites were detected in all samples through the widely targeted metabolomics approach and grouped into 19 known classes. Fruits from QF were the biggest followed by those from XF and NF. The altitude, relative humidity and light intensity had negative and strong correlations with most of the metabolites, suggesting that growing wolfberry in very high altitudes and under high light intensity is detrimental for the fruit nutritional quality. Soil moisture content is highly and negatively correlated with vitamins, organic acids and carbohydrates while moderately and positively correlated with other classes of metabolites. In contrast, air and soil temperatures exhibited positive correlation with majority of the metabolites. Overall, our results suggest high soil and air temperatures, low altitude and light intensity and moderate soil moisture, as the suitable conditions to produce Lycium fruits with high content of nutritious metabolites.

Semiconductor engineering has remained a prominent growing field over the past several decades. Modulating electronic structures and surface properties has sparked considerable interest in -modified photocatalysts. Given -mediated photocatalysis has...

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H 2 O 2 is an environmentally friendly chemical for a wide range of water treatments. The industrial production of H 2 O 2 is an anthraquinone oxidation process, which, however, consumes extensive energy and produces pollution. Here we report a green and sustainable piezocatalytic intermediate water splitting process to simultaneously obtain H 2 O 2 and H 2 using single crystal vanadium (V)-doped NaNbO 3 (V-NaNbO 3 ) nanocubes as catalysts. The introduction of V improves the specific surface area and active sites of NaNbO 3 . Notably, V-NaNbO 3 piezocatalysts of 10 mg exhibit 3.1-fold higher piezocatalytic efficiency than the same catalysts of 50 mg, as more piezocatalysts lead to higher probability of aggregation. The aggregation causes reducing active sites and decreased built-in electric field due to the neutralization between different nano-catalysts. Remarkably, piezocatalytic H 2 O 2 and H 2 production rates of V-NaNbO 3 (10 mol%) nanocubes (102.6 and 346.2 µmol·g −1 ·h −1 , respectively) are increased by 2.2 and 4.6 times compared to the as-prepared pristine NaNbO 3 counterparts, respectively. This improved catalytic efficiency is attributed to the promoted piezo-response and more active sites of NaNbO 3 catalysts after V doping, as uncovered by piezo-response force microscopy (PFM) and density functional theory (DFT) simulation. More importantly, our DFT results illustrate that inducing V could reduce the dynamic barrier of water dissociation over NaNbO 3 , thus enhancing the yield of H 2 O 2 and H 2 . This facile yet robust piezocatalytic route using minimal amounts of catalysts to obtain H 2 O 2 and H 2 may stand out as a promising candidate for environmental applications and water splitting. Electronic Supplementary Material Supplementary material (typical Raman spectra of NaNbO 3 and V-NaNbO 3 with various doping concentrations (Fig. S1). XPS spectra of Na 1s (Fig. S2). PL spectra of solution obtained from the piezocatalytic system using NaNbO 3 and V-NaNbO 3 (10 mol%) as the catalysts after 1 h (Fig. S3). The length of NaNbO 3 and V-NaNbO 3 nanocubes calculated from XRD data of their (101) planes (Table S1)) is available in the online version of this article at 10.1007/s12274-022-4506-0.

Wolfberry (Lycium barbarum L.) is an important economic crop widely grown in China. The effects of salt-alkaline stress on metabolites accumulation in the salt-tolerant Ningqi1 wolfberry fruits were evaluated across 12 salt-alkaline stress gradients. The soil pH, Na+, K+, Ca2+, Mg2+, and HCO3− contents decreased at a gradient across the salt-alkaline stress gradients. Based on the widely-targeted metabolomics approach, we identified 457 diverse metabolites, 53% of which were affected by salt-alkaline stress. Remarkably, soil salt-alkaline stress enhanced metabolites accumulation in wolfberry fruits. Amino acids, alkaloids, organic acids, and polyphenols contents increased proportionally across the salt-alkaline stress gradients. In contrast, nucleic acids, lipids, hydroxycinnamoyl derivatives, organic acids and derivatives and vitamins were significantly reduced by high salt-alkaline stress. A total of 13 salt-responsive metabolites represent potential biomarkers for salt-alkaline stress tolerance in wolfberry. Specifically, we found that constant reductions of lipids and chlorogenic acids; up-regulation of abscisic acid and accumulation of polyamines are essential mechanisms for salt-alkaline stress tolerance in Ningqi1. Overall, we provide for the first time some extensive metabolic insights into salt-alkaline stress tolerance and key metabolite biomarkers which may be useful for improving wolfberry tolerance to salt-alkaline stress.

The climatic and ecological environment is a complex phenomenon, involving various environmental factors that regulate the diversity and population distribution structure of AMF communities affecting plant growth, crop composition, and yield. Current studies on the effects of environmental factors on AMF communities have mainly focused on soil conditions and host plants.

Lycium barbarum L. is a well-known traditional geoherb in Ningxia, China. The fruits of L. barbarum contain several dietary constituents, and thus, they exert many beneficial effects on human health. However, a few studies have been conducted on the geoherb L. barbarum and its rhizosphere soil fungal community. In this study, we determined the physicochemical properties and fungal community structure of rhizosphere soil of L. barbarum from three regions of China, namely Ningxia (NX), Qinghai (QH), and Xinjiang (XJ), during three development stages of L. barbarum. Soil pH varied between 7.56 and 8.60 across the three regions, indicating that alkaline soil is conducive to the growth of L. barbarum. The majority of soil properties in NX, an authentic geoherb-producing area, were substantially inferior to those in XJ and QH during all three developmental stages. Total sugar, polysaccharide (LBP), and flavonoid contents were the highest in wolfberry fruits from NX. High-throughput sequencing showed that the abundance of the soil fungal population in NX was higher than that in QH and XJ during the flowering and fruiting stage and summer dormant stage. Moreover, the soil fungal diversity increased with the development of wolfberry. Ascomycota and Mortierellomycota were the predominant phyla in the rhizosphere fungal communities in all samples. Redundancy analysis showed a significant correlation of the soil-available phosphorus and LBP of wolfberry fruits with the fungal community composition. The characteristics of rhizosphere fungal communities determined in the present study provide insights into the mechanism of geoherb formation in NX wolfberry.

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