Current Science

Aditya Parmar ¹, Prabhat K. Nema ², Tripti Agarwal ¹

Affiliations
1 Department of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, National Institute of Food Technology Entrepreneurship and Management, Plot No. 97, Sector-56, HSIIDC Kundli, Sonipat 131 028, IN
2 Department of Food Engineering, National Institute of Food Technology Entrepreneurship and Management, Plot No. 97, Sector-56, HSIIDC Kundli, Sonipat 131 028, IN

Abstract

Advance biochar production technique, hydrothermal carbonization (HTC, wet pyrolysis) offers an option to tap the benefits of biomass residues of food industry characterized by high moisture and low calorific value. HTC is more energy efficient due to its low temperature operations and higher biochar recovery rates (up to 90%). Biochar offers multitude of benefits in terms of agronomical and environmental management. It can contribute to climate change mitigation, increase plant productivity and crop yield and remediation of contaminated sites. Limitations and knowledge gaps in the current understanding of biochar along with its properties have been identified. Major hurdles recognized in commercialization of biochar application are permanency, diversity and economic viability.

Keywords

Agro-Food Industry, Biochar Production, Biomass Residues, Hydrothermal Carbonization.

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Tripti Agarwal ¹, Shun Komazaki ², Harshita Sharma ², Manish Biyani ¹

Affiliations
1 Department of Biotechnology, Biyani Girls College, University of Rajasthan, Sector 3, Vidhyadhar Nagar, Jaipur 302 039, IN
2 Department of Functional Materials Science, Saitama University, 255 Shimo-okubo, Sakura-ku, Saitama 338-8570, JP

Abstract

A rapid and accurate identification of potential plant pathogens below the species level is highly desirable to understand the genetic basis of host-pathogen interactions and thus to effectively manage plant diseases. In this study, a genome profiling (GP) technique was applied to identify 14 common seed-borne fungal pathogens from five different legume plant hosts in Rajasthan, India. Six species belonging to different taxonomic orders were successfully identified and classified topologically to the same position with their phenotypic traits. Next, we demonstrated that GP could be used to discriminate fungal pathogenic strains below the species level by classifying 10 different strains of Aspergillus niger and Aspergillus flavus based on plant host specificity. These results suggest that accurate identification of plant pathogenic subspecies is likely to become an easier task, and the resulting GP-based database can be an ideal platform for timely and unambiguous identification of fungal species, with pathogenic or beneficial relation to plant host.

Keywords

Fungal Plant Pathogens, Genome Profiling, Host–Pathogen Interaction, Plant Diseases, Species Identification.

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