Drought is an important abiotic stress factor limiting crop productivity worldwide and its impact is increasing with climate change. Regardless of the plant growth period, drought has a deadly and yield-reducing effect on the plant at every stage of development. As with many environmental stressors, drought-exposed plants trigger a series of molecular, biochemical, and physiological responses to overcome the effect of drought stress. Currently, researchers are trying to determine the complex functioning of drought stress response in plants with different approaches. Plants are more sensitive to drought stress during certain critical stages like germination, seedling formation, flowering, fertilization, and grain formation periods. Plants have high success in reducing the effects of drought stress in vegetative development periods with the activity of tolerance mechanisms. On the other hand, drought stress during the generative period can cause irreversible losses in yield. This review focuses on the progression of molecular, biochemical, and physiological mechanisms involved in the drought stress tolerance in plants and the responses of field crops to drought stress at different development stages.

Kohler's disease is a rare cause of limping in children which is hypothetically related with impaired blood supply of navicular bone by the compression of other tarsal bones. The clinical manifestations are pain and swelling in the midfoot and limping with typical steps on the lateral aspect of affected foot. As it is an elusive entity for physicians, the lack of clinical suspicion leads to utilization of advanced diagnostic tools and delayed diagnosis. Here we present a case of Kohler's disease as a 5 years-old girl with acute foot pain and limping.

Copycat packaging involves a type of imitation strategy in which the appearance of a market leader’s packaging design is simulated by a low-cost alternative. Previous literature has focused on reactive strategies against copycat packaging, primarily involving litigation and packaging design changes; however, very little attention has been assigned to the role of packaging design as a proactive strategy for mitigating against copycat packaging. To address this issue, this study examined the role of design in mitigating copycat packaging from a consumers’ perspective. We conducted an exploratory study of 37 semi-structured interviews to understand how consumers respond to the design components on visually similar packaging across a range of FMCG products. We found that packaging design cues have the greatest impact on purchasing decisions in cases where consumers have no familiarity with a brand, but less influence when consumers are already familiar with a brand. Consumers rank the importance of packaging design features differently depending on the product category. For high-cost items, consumers rank structural design as the most important feature, whereas colour is considered the most important for low-cost products. We end the paper by discussing the implications for brand managers and outline strategies for minimising the occurrence of copycat packaging. Keywords: copycat, packaging design, similarity, packaging strategy, consumer evaluation

Drought is one of the major constraints to global crop production. A number of sustainable systems have focused on the development of environmentally friendly innovative biotechnological interventions to prevent yield losses. The use of essential oils as a seed priming agent can make an important contribution as a natural stimulant in increasing drought stress tolerance. This study focuses on the effects of seeds coated with different doses (D0 (0%), D1 (0.01%), D2 (0.05%), D3 (0.10%) and D4 (0.25%)) of sage, rosemary and lavender essential oils on wheat germination, seedling establishment and yield parameters. Turkey’s local wheat genotype Köse was used as plant material. The impact of the seed priming on germination rate, coleoptile length, shoot length, root length, shoot fresh and dry weight, root fresh and dry weight, relative water content (RWC), proline, and chlorophyll contents was assessed in laboratory experiments. In addition, the effect of essential oil types on yield parameters and agronomic components (plant height, spike height, number of grains per spike, grain yield per spike, grain yield per unit area, thousand-grain weight) was evaluated in a field experiment during the 2019–2020 crop seasons in a semi-arid climate. According to laboratory results, the highest germination rate among all treatment doses was determined in the D2 treatment (rosemary 93.30%, sage 94.00% and lavender 92.50%), while the lowest germination rates for all essential oil types were determined in the D4 treatment (rosemary 41.70%, sage 40.90% and lavender 40.90%). Increasing treatment doses showed a similar suppressive effect on the other parameters. In the field experiment, the highest grain yield (256.52 kg/da) and thousand-grain weight (43.30 g) were determined in the rosemary treatment. However, the priming treatment has an insignificant on the number of grains per spike and the spike length. The light of these results, the effects of essential oil types and doses on yield parameters were discussed. The findings highlight the importance of using essential oils in seed priming methods for sustainable agricultural practices.

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