Plant Methods

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Improper management of agricultural and industrial cotton wastes causes environmental pollution and worsens the climate change challenge. Green recycling of cotton could contribute to a circular economy. One of the economic values of cotton wastes lies in their bioactive components. Two types of cotton wastes-agricultural and industrial-of the species Gossypium barbadense L. Giza 95 were targeted in the current study, aiming to maximize their medicinal value and investigate the anti-inflammatory, hepatoprotective, and antioxidant activities of their phytochemical extracts...

BACKGROUND QUERCUS: seeds that are recalcitrant to desiccation and freezing temperatures cannot be stored in gene banks under conventional conditions. However, the germplasm of some recalcitrant seeded species can be stored in liquid nitrogen (-196 °C). Unfortunately, for many species, among them for almost the whole genus Quercus, an effective cryostorage method is still unknown. In this study, we propose a successful cryostorage protocol for Quercus petraea (Matt.) Liebl. germplasm using plumules (a shoot apical meristem of an embryo) frozen on aluminium cryo-plates...

BACKGROUND: Salsola laricifolia is a typical C3 -C4 typical desert plant, belonging to the family Amaranthaceae. An efficient single-cell system is crucial to study the gene function of this plant. In this study, we optimized the experimental conditions by using Box-Behnken experimental design and Response Surface Methodology (RSM)-Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model based on the previous studies. RESULTS: Among the 17 experiment groups designed by Box-Behnken experimental design, the maximum yield (1...

BACKGROUND: Stemphylium blight incited by Stemphylium botryosum poses a significant threat to lentil crops worldwide, inducing severe defoliation and causing substantial yield losses in susceptible varieties under favorable conditions. While some moderate levels of resistance have been identified within lentil germplasm, a low number of resistant cultivars are available to farmers. Adding to the common constraints of resistance breeding, a notable challenge is generating a sufficient number of spores for large-scale screenings, which are essential for pinpointing additional sources of resistance for integration into breeding programs...

BACKGROUND: The root of a plant is a fundamental organ for the multisensory perception of the environment. Investigating root growth dynamics as a mean of their interaction with the environment is of key importance for improving knowledge in plant behaviour, plant biology and agriculture. To date, it is difficult to study roots movements from a dynamic perspective given that available technologies for root imaging focus mostly on static characterizations, lacking temporal and three-dimensional (3D) spatial information...

BACKGROUND: Mechanical damage to plants triggers local and systemic electrical signals that are eventually decoded into plant defense responses. These responses are constantly affected by other environmental stimuli in nature, for instance, light fluctuation. In recent years, studies on decoding plant electrical signals powered by various machine learning models are increasing in a sense of early prediction or detection of different environmental stresses that threaten plant growth or crop yields...

BACKGROUND: Leaf water content (LWC) significantly affects rice growth and development. Real-time monitoring of rice leaf water status is essential to obtain high yield and water use efficiency of rice plants with precise irrigation regimes in rice fields. Hyperspectral remote sensing technology is widely used in monitoring crop water status because of its rapid, nondestructive, and real-time characteristics. Recently, multi-source data have been attempted to integrate into a monitored model of crop water status based on spectral indices...

The surfaces of lotus leaves with micro- and nano-waxy cuticle structures are superhydrophobic and possess a self-healing ability to regain hydrophobicity after damage. Inspired by this phenomenon, the problem of water-repellent coatings used in natural environments failing to perform after damage can be solved if these coatings are endowed with rapid self-repair and self-growth functions. However, there has been almost no exploration into the hydrophobicity self-repair process in lotus leaves. The changes in surface morphology during the hydrophobicity recovery process are not understood...

BACKGROUND: Cotton accounts for 80% of the global natural fibre production. Its leaf hairiness affects insect resistance, fibre yield, and economic value. However, this phenotype is still qualitatively assessed by visually attributing a Genotype Hairiness Score (GHS) to a leaf/plant, or by using the HairNet deep-learning model which also outputs a GHS. Here, we introduce HairNet2, a quantitative deep-learning model which detects leaf hairs (trichomes) from images and outputs a segmentation mask and a Leaf Trichome Score (LTS)...

BACKGROUND: For ten years, CRISPR/cas9 system has become a very useful tool for obtaining site-specific mutations on targeted genes in many plant organisms. This technology opens up a wide range of possibilities for improved plant breeding in the future. In plants, the CRISPR/Cas9 system is mostly used through stable transformation with constructs that allow for the expression of the Cas9 gene and sgRNA. Numerous studies have shown that site-specific mutation efficiency can vary greatly between different plant species due to factors such as plant transformation efficiency, Cas9 expression, Cas9 nucleotide sequence, the addition of intronic sequences, and many other parameters...

BACKGROUND: Gaseous phytohormone ethylene levels are directly influenced by the production of its immediate non-volatile precursor 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylic acid (ACC). Owing to the strongly acidic character of the ACC molecule, its quantification has been difficult to perform. Here, we present a simple and straightforward validated method for accurate quantification of not only ACC levels, but also major members of other important phytohormonal classes - auxins, cytokinins, jasmonic acid, abscisic acid and salicylic acid from the same biological sample...

BACKGROUND: Dendrobium officinale is a medicinal plant with high commercial value. The Dendrobium officinale market in Yunnan is affected by the standardization of medicinal material quality control and the increase in market demand, mainly due to the inappropriate harvest time, which puts it under increasing resource pressure. In this study, considering the high polysaccharide content of Dendrobium leaves and its contribution to today's medical industry, (Fourier Transform Infrared Spectrometer) FTIR combined with chemometrics was used to combine the yields of both stem and leaf parts of Dendrobium officinale to identify the different harvesting periods and to predict the dry matter content for the selection of the optimal harvesting period...

BACKGROUND: Plant scientists have largely relied on pathogen growth assays and/or transcript analysis of stress-responsive genes for quantification of disease severity and susceptibility. These methods are destructive to plants, labor-intensive, and time-consuming, thereby limiting their application in real-time, large-scale studies. Image-based plant phenotyping is an alternative approach that enables automated measurement of various symptoms. However, most of the currently available plant image analysis tools require specific hardware platform and vendor specific software packages, and thus, are not suited for researchers who are not primarily focused on plant phenotyping...

Genomic selection (GS) has become an increasingly popular tool in plant breeding programs, propelled by declining genotyping costs, an increase in computational power, and rediscovery of the best linear unbiased prediction methodology over the past two decades. This development has led to an accumulation of extensive historical datasets with genotypic and phenotypic information, triggering the question of how to best utilize these datasets. Here, we investigate whether all available data or a subset should be used to calibrate GS models for across-year predictions in a 7-year dataset of a commercial hybrid sunflower breeding program...

BACKGROUND: Quantifying gene expression is a critical aspect of applied genomics research across all organisms, and real-time PCR has emerged as a powerful tool for this purpose. However, selecting appropriate internal control genes for data normalization presents specific challenges. This study aimed to identify suitable reference genes for gene expression analysis under various conditions, encompassing salinity, low and high-temperature stresses, and different elicitor treatments. These treatments included titanium dioxide, cold plasma, 24-epibrassinolide, and melatonin, resulting in a total of 13 unique treatments and 148 treatment combinations applied to fenugreek plants...

Climate instability directly affects agro-environments. Water scarcity, high air temperature, and changes in soil biota are some factors caused by environmental changes. Verified and precise phenotypic traits are required for assessing the impact of various stress factors on crop performance while keeping phenotyping costs at a reasonable level. Experiments which use a lysimeter method to measure transpiration efficiency are often expensive and require complex infrastructures. This study presents the development and testing process of an automated, reliable, small, and low-cost prototype system using IoT with high-frequency potential in near-real time...

BACKGROUND: The extraction of thylakoids is an essential step in studying the structure of photosynthetic complexes and several other aspects of the photosynthetic process in plants. Conventional protocols have been developed for selected land plants grown in controlled conditions. Plants accumulate defensive chemical compounds such as polyphenols to cope with environmental stresses. When the polyphenol levels are high, their oxidation and cross-linking properties prevent thylakoid extraction...

BACKGROUND: Interspecific hybridisation is a powerful tool for increasing genetic diversity in plant breeding programmes. Hexaploid wheat (Triticum aestivum, 2n = 42) × barley (Hordeum vulgare, 2n = 14) intergeneric hybrids can contribute to the transfer of agronomically useful traits by creating chromosome addition or translocation lines as well as full hybrids. Information on the karyotype of hybrid progenies possessing various combinations of wheat and barley chromosomes is thus essential for the subsequent breeding steps...

Crop genetic engineering for better root systems can offer practical solutions for food security and carbon sequestration; however, soil layers prevent the direct visualization of plant roots, thus posing a challenge to effective phenotyping. Here, we demonstrate an original device with a distributed fiber-optic sensor for fully automated, real-time monitoring of underground root development. We show that spatially encoding an optical fiber with a flexible and durable polymer film in a spiral pattern can significantly enhance sensor detection...