Current Research in Agriculture and Horticulture Vol. 1

Challenging Road to Seed Propagation of Sweet Potato (Ipomoea batatas (L.) Lam): A Case Study in Direct Gene Transformation System to Seeds of Sweet Potato Using Electroporation Method

2021-08-10T11:43:47+00:00

Apomixis bypasses meiosis to produce seed. And it is considered to bring economic benefits over than the “Green Revolution” by using to fixation of F1 variety in agriculture. In our laboratory, we have been successful in cloning the apomixis-specific gene of ASG-1, isolated from Panicum maximum. In order to do functional analysis of the ASG-1, we have been carrying out the gene transformation of ASG-1 in sweet potato, a vegetative reproductive crop. In this study, the purpose is getting transformants by using the seeds of sweet potato and the instrument of NEP21, an electroporation. As the first step, we used the Ipomoea nil cv. [Kitachiasagao] as stock and Ipomoea batatas (L.) cv. [Koganesengan], [Narutokintoki] and [Beniazuma] as graft to get seeds. And then, the transformants of GUS was induced into sweet potato seeds by using the instrument of NEP21. As the results, 1) according to the standard of selecting variety based on the cross incompatibility referred from Kyushu-Okinawa Agricultural Research Center, we selected 3 varieties out from 6 ones held; 2) according to the standard of selection suitable to be used as either seed side or pollen side, we have gotten matured seeds successfully from the 3 varieties; 3) using the sweet potato seeds collected and the instrument of NEP21, GUS gene expression was detected in the transformant by GUS dyeing with blue color appeared on the surface of the seeds and young buds.

Melliferous Plants Threatened to Disappearance in Togo

2021-08-10T11:48:33+00:00

Melliferous plants are plants whose flowers provide nectar or pollen for honey production to bee colonies. Besides their role in honey production or provision of pollen, some have other uses. Pollinic analysis and apicol surveys conducted between 2009 and 2014 on honey sampled directly in beekeeping areas or outlets have permitted discovery of 330 melliferous species Including 45 species (13.64%) which are threatened to extinction in Togo. Compared with Togolese flora, these plants threatened represent 1.29%.

Belong to 43 genres, these species threatened which are foods plants can be grouped into 24 families and most at risk are the Malvaceae, Anacardiaceae, Fabaceae and Annonaceae.

These plants can be divided into two classes: wild and crops plants. The routinely used parts of these plants are the fruits and leaves. In general, nectar plants are the most represented. From this study, it appears that 45 species of melliferous and alimentary interest were targeted endangered in Togo. These species, which represent approximately 24% of the national melliferous flora, correspond to 43 genres and belong to 24 families. These melliferous families were divided into four groups based according to their composition in endangered plants: the highly threatened families, families moderately threatened, endangered families and families low risk.

Optimization of High Density Planting with Drip Irrigation in Rabi Onion

2021-08-10T11:53:48+00:00

Irrigation scheduling is necessary for increasing onion production in an Agro-climatic zone III A and B of Bihar, where water is becoming scarce gradually and a limiting factor for onion production. Field experiments were conducted during the Rabi season of 2013-14 and 2014-15 at the experimental farm, Nalanda College of Horticulture, Noorsarai, Nalanda. The objectives were to standardize high density planting with drip irrigation and to study the yield performance and storability on onion in Nalanda region. The treatments consisted of factorial combination of three irrigation intervals (2, 4 and 6 days) and four population densities (2000000, 1333333, 1000000 and 666666 plants/ha) corresponding to 10 x 5, 10 x 7.5, 10 x 10 and 15 x 10 cm respectively. The experiments were laid out in randomized block design replicated three times. Results revealed that the highest marketable yield was significantly favoured by 2 days interval followed by 4 days. However, lower plant spacing 10 x 5 cm recorded higher plant height, minimum maturity days, grass and marketable bulb yield were significantly higher with plant spacing 10 x10 cm followed by 15 x10 cm. The marketable bulb yield was significantly higher with interaction of T₇ (10 x10 cm with 2 days irrigation interval) 1000000 plant density and 2 days irrigation interval than other treatment combinations. From the results of the study, it can be concluded that 2 days interval irrigation with a plant density of 1000000 (10 x 10 cm) plants per hectare can be practised for maximum onion bulb yield.

Medicinal Properties of Dacryodes edulis against Selected Clinical Bacterial Isolates

2021-08-10T12:07:14+00:00

The medicinal properties of Dacryodes edulis was investigated to determine the antimicrobial properties of the collected raw D. edulis pulp and seed extracts on some medically important human pathogens. The research was investigated against the selected human pathogens using standard microbiological and biochemical procedures. The D. edulis samples were harvested aseptically between the periods of April to June 2016 from its tree located at IBB way, Calabar Municipality, Nigeria. The aqueous and ethanolic extracts of the seed and pulp at varying concentrations of 1 g/10 ml, 2 g/10 ml, 4 g/10 ml, 5 g/10 ml was tested against some selected human pathogens such as Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumonia, Enterococcus faecalis, Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Proteus vulgaris. The antimicrobial susceptibility results of the ethanol extracts of D. edulis seed showed marginally higher zones of inhibition to the clinical bacterial isolates tested than the ethanol extract of the pulp tested against the same clinical isolates. The organisms were resistant to the aqueous extracts of both the pulp and seed. The seed ethanol extracts showed a higher zone of inhibition of 21 mm against K. pneumoniae and 18 mm against P. vulgaris as compared to 18 mm as against K. pneumoniae and 17 mm against P. vulgaris showed by Gentamycin used as standard antibiotic control. The result of these has shown that D. edulis could be of immense importance in our nation’s young pharmaceutical industry for the development of new chemotherapeutic agent to address unmet therapeutic needs.

Insecticidal Activity of Four Essential Oils on the Survival and Oviposition of Two Sympatric Bruchid Species: Callosobruchus maculatus F. and Callosobruchus subinnotatus PIC. (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidea: Bruchinae)

2021-08-10T12:16:17+00:00

Callosobruchus maculatus F. and Callosobruchus subinnotatus Pic. are two pest species of stored cowpeas and bambara groundnuts. Methods of controlling their populations remain the use of chemical insecticides that have ecotoxicological effects. The aim of this work is to look for alternative methods using essential oils extracted from four aromatic plants (Bidens borianiana, Chromolaena odorata, Cymbopogon giganteus and Cymbopogon nardus) to control these pests. Essential oils GC/MS analysis revealed differences in their composition. The major components of the essential oils of the two congeneric Poaceae species C. giganteus and C. nardus are totally different. Limonene (23.03%), cis-p-mentha-2, 8-dien-1-ol (14.26%) and p-mentha-1(7), 8-dien-2-ol isomer (14.06%) were the main compounds in C. giganteus oil whereas citronellal (30.58%) and geraniol (23.93%) were identified in C. nardus oil. In the essential oils of the other two plants, the major components are respectively geyrene (19.44%), α-pinene (15.96%), and germacrene D (14.03%) for Chromolaena odorata essential oil and trans-β-ocimene (31.58%) for Bidens borianiana essential oil. Toxicity tests were performed by fumigation on adult survival and female oviposition in C. maculatus and C. subinnotatus by evaluating the LD₁₀; LD₅₀ and LD₉₀ of the four essential oils. These tests showed that only essential oils extracted from Cymbopogon species are efficient. The essential oil of C. giganteus was the most toxic to adults of both bruchid species. The LD₅₀ were 20.06 and 34.62 µL/L, respectively for C. maculatus and C. subinnotatus while C. nardus essential oil showed the best ovicidal activity with female oviposition reduction in both bruchid species of more than 80% at a lower concentration (10 µL/L). C. giganteus and C. nardus essential oils can thus be used in stocks of cowpea and bambara groundnuts for adult control and prevent female oviposition.

Morphological Characterization of Certain Ornamental Cacti Genera Suitable for Tropical Climatic Regimes

2021-08-10T12:19:59+00:00

Cacti are ornamental, perennial, succulent and slow growing plants, especially known for their drought tolerant characters (xerophyte). The wide range of forms, shapes, and sizes of their stems and flowers and certain specific characters viz., areoles, spines, glochids etc. make this group of plants unique in the indoor as well as in outdoor gardens, parks and landscapes. An experiment on assessing cacti belonging to different genera for their morphological traits was conducted at the Department of Floriculture and Landscaping, Horticultural College and Research Institute, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore during 2017-2018. In the experiment for the morphological characterization of certain ornamental cacti genera viz., Hylocereus triangularis, Myrtillocactus geometrizans, Mammillaria beneckei, Hamatocactus setispinus, Ferocactus latispinus, Melocactus caesius and Gymnocalycium mihanovichii, various morphological parameters viz., growth form, characteristic features of ribs, areoles and spines, stem colour, plant height, plant girth, number of areoles have been evaluated for their suitability to be used in tropical landscaping. The morphological characterization of the above said cacti has revealed that Hylocereus triangularis and Myrtillocactus geometrizans can be used as potential rootstocks whereas Mammillaria beneckei, Hamatocactus setispinus, Ferocactus latispinus, and Gymnocalycium mihanovichii can be used as suitable scions in grafting programme.

Nutrient Cycling by Cover Crops in Vegetable Growing under Conservation Agriculture

2021-08-10T12:30:00+00:00

Nutrient cycling for crop production is desired to reduce environment impact, enhance nutrients use efficiency and reduce cost production. Several agriculture techniques are available to support this possibility for grower and so give the sustainable production driving for the better nutrient using. Conservation Agriculture is a current system for crop production that provide this possibility and it is based in three agronomic principles that are minimum disturbance of soil or no-tillage for crop establishment, permanent residue on soil surface and crop rotation. In this context, cover crops is use as crop rotation in vegetable production and this possibilities the nutrients cycling, straw production to protect soil surface and improving in soil fertility, among another benefits to agricultural environment. Because your vigorous root growth they achieve nutrients that were being lost by leaching in the soil profile e come back to their shoot recycling nutrients into the system. After, nutrients will be mineralized and so available to the soil solution and crop nutrition. Many horticulturists around the world have been using successfully cover crops as crop rotation to get sustainable in their production and here in this work we approach some results that support rational using of cover crops for recycling nutrients in horticultural crops in the context of Conservation Agriculture. So we certified this efficient function of cover crops to straw production and nutrient recycling in some crop like tomato, broccolis and watermelon to get high yield with reduced environmental impacts and improvement of soil fertility.

Characterization of Heading Times and Duration of Heading Time of an Individual Using a Wide Range of Variety of Rice (Oryza sativa L.) in One of the Northern-limit Regions of Rice Cultivation, Hokkaido Islands

2021-08-10T12:33:02+00:00

Aims: Hokkaido islands are one of northern limit regions of rice cultivation. There is about 170-year history about cultivation and breeding of Hokkaido rice and the history was well described in Japanese. Hence, cultivation and breeding of rice in Hokkaido islands can be a model case for the history in high latitudes. However, there is no English references about the history with hard data and the cultivars studied in the reports written in English have been limited to modern cultivars. Plant breeders in Hokkaido have mainly genetically improved earliness due to small range of suitable flowering times. Then, heading times and heading time duration need to be characterized using wide range of cultivar from introduced to modern cultivars. I provided basic knowledge of total nature of heading time of Hokkaido cultivars with hard data in this report.

Study Design: The seven land races and six modern cultivars were used. In each genotype, plants were divided into high-density (H) and low-density (L) condition. Two replicates were prepared. In each of replicates, genotypes were placed according to plant height to avoid intergenotypic competition.

Place and Duration of Study: The place of this study is Hokkaido Agricultural Research Center (HARC) in Sapporo (43°N). Duration of the study was summer season in year 2006.

Methodology: In each of replicates of a genotype, middle three plants were measured in both H and L conditions. In each plant, the first, second and third heading times were recorded based on daily observation. After the records, days to the first heading time from germination (DFH), days to the second heading time from germination (DSH) and days to the third flowering time from germination (DTH) were calculated. Heading-time duration (HTD) of each plant was conveniently defined as the equation: HTD = DTH – DFH.

Results: From frequency distribution of DFH, DSH and DTH, DFH showed larger variation of days to heading time than DSH and DTH, suggesting that genetic control of DFH might differ from that of DSH and DTH. Analysis of variance revealed that DFH was deterministically dependent on genotype, while the other flowering time can respond to environment, showing genotype × environment interaction, suggesting DFH specific genetic controlling. To examine that each of components of HTD, DFH and DTH, contributes to HTD, regression analyses were performed. As a result, HTD was primarily determined by DFH. As for HTD and DFH, comparison between land race and modern cultivar was performed. Modern breeding decreased HTD by genetically modifying the first flowering time from earliness to lateness, and as a result, HTD decreased due to the negative correlation relationship between HTD and DFH.

Conclusion: As shown in Results, it was clarified that rice breeders genetically modified rice population fitted to Hokkaido island as to heading time. This report will be essential reference of heading time of Hokkaido cultivars. Total nature of heading time of Hokkaido cultivars was unknown because existence of land race has been neglected until the present study.

Are Nonwoven Synthetic Pollination Bags a Better Choice for Sorghum Breeding?

2021-08-10T12:37:26+00:00

This work investigated the effects of seven pollination bag treatments on three varieties of sorghum for: grain loss to birds; total weight of five panicles (g); total grain weight of five panicles (g); average grain weight per panicle (g); germination per cent; and occurrence of grain mold during 2016. Varieties were: 1167048 hybrid (brown seeded); BR007B (red seeded); and P9401 (white seeded). The bag treatments were: 1. No bagging; 2. Kraft paper; 3. Kraft paper + plastic bag screen; 4 Used duraweb® SG1; 5. Used duraweb® SG2; 6. New duraweb® SG1; 7. New duraweld® SG2. High bird pressure resulted in 100% seed loss on uncovered panicles and 75% under Kraft paper pollination bags. Birds preferred white seeded P9401, which led to no seed recovery under Kraft paper bags. There was virtually no bird damage with all other pollination bags. For panicle and grain yields the varieties performed in the order 1167048>BR007B>P9401. Unprotected panicles and paper bag treatments had the lowest yields. Panicles covered with the new synthetic bags exhibited 195 to 652% higher yields compared to Kraft paper bags. Varieties x bag type interactions were not important as they contributed 4 to 6% to the total sum of squares for yield traits. Germination test under normal and stress conditions showed no significant adverse effect of bag treatments on seed health. Reused bags performed as well as new bags for all of these traits. Varieties differed significantly for the occurrence of five grain mold pathogens, with highest occurrence of Alternaria, up to 40%, on 1167048 hybrid. Of the five pathogens, bag types differed significantly for Phoma with the highest occurrence of 9% on re-used duraweb®SG2 bags. Thus bags require disinfecting and cleaning before re-use. It is concluded that nonwoven synthetic bags are a better choice than the Kraft paper pollination bags for increasing the grain yield and virtually eliminating the bird damage in sorghum.

Modification of Surface Structure and Crystallinity of Water Hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) Following Recombinant α-L-arabinofuranosidase (ABFA) Treatment

2021-08-10T12:41:59+00:00

This research was aimed to investigate the modification of surface structure and crystallinity of water hyacinth after recombinant α-L-arabinofuranosidase treatment. The process of water hyacinth hydrolysis was optimized first, by determination of the most optimal intracellular enzyme (P) and extracellular enzyme (S) mixture ratio, and its incubation time. The optimum of water hyacinth hydrolysis process was achieved at ratio P:S = 1:2, after 8 h incubation. The surface structure of water hyacinth after recombinant α-L-arabinofuranosidase treatment was analyzed by scanning electron microscope (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD), using untreated water hyacinth as control. This research showed that enzymatic hydrolysis damaged the surface structure of water hyacinth and changed its crystallinity. Similar result also indicated that, the α-L-arabinofuranosidase could also damaged the surface structure of rice straw at the optimum ratio of enzyme mixture was 1:1, also after 8 h incubation. The enzyme used in this research can be applied further for bio-bleaching of paper pulp and animal feed stock, while the sugar product can be applied for bioethanol production.

Quality Evaluation of Pickled Ivy Gourd (Coccinia grandis)

2021-08-10T12:50:00+00:00

Ivy gourd is an underutilized vegetables found in the North of Minas Gerais State-Brazil. It is mainly consumed raw as salad. Pickling fruits can enhance the commercial exploitation of this species. However, no information on the processing techniques of the ivy gourd fruits in Brazil is found in literature. The objective of this study was to evaluate the quality parameters in the production of pickled ivy gourd. The treatments consisted of three bleaching times (3, 6 and 9 minutes), using a completely randomized design, with seven replicates. We evaluated the traits: instrumental analyzes of pH, color, total titratable acidity, soluble solids, texture and sensorial affective tests. The pH is within the indicated range (below 4.5) and the bleaching time influenced the color and texture alteration since the sample under 3-minute bleaching presented a greater tendency for green and greater firmness. For the sensory analysis, no significant difference related to sensory scoring was noticed; in relation to mode value, we concluded that the 6- minute sample was more preferable, though. For titratable total acidity and soluble solids analyses, no significant differences between the samples was noticed, considering that both parameters were within the standard when compared to other literature. We concluded that heat treatment influenced only the texture and color intensity and the preserved product showed good acceptability.