No abstract

No abstract

Para rubber (Hevea brasiliensis), a native of the Amazon forests of South America, is the chief source of natural rubber in the world. With the objective of broadening the original gene pool collected by Sir Henry Wickham in 1876, the International Rubber Research and Development Board (IRRDB) made a large collection of wild germplasm from Acre, Rondonia and Mato Grosso states of Brazil in 1981, which was distributed to various member countries including India for conservation and evaluation. In the present study, variability was assessed in a set of 195 Hevea accessions belonging to the wild gene pool in India, using 22 characterization descriptors and eight quantitative growth characters in the juvenile stage. The Shannon-Weaver diversity indices worked out for each of the 22 qualitative traits indicated a high level of diversity in the collection. The range of variation for quantitative traits viz., plant height (0.43 to 3.16 m), basal diameter (0.81 to 2.52 cm), number of whorls (1.23 to 5.48), inter-node length (4.11 to 45.26 cm), number of leaves (11.44 to 91.26), single leaf area (80.22 to 223.57 cm2), total leaf area (2356.00 to 14660.50 cm2) and leaf area index (0.24 to 1.47), also represented wide variability in the collection. The accessions were ranked for overall performance and top 10% were selected for early growth vigour. The high level of variability observed in this germplasm indicates its potential use in crop improvement programmes and for broadening the genetic base of Hevea.

The numerical analysis is conducted to evaluate the heat generating as well as Soret-Dufour influences on magnetohydrodynamic unsteady chemically reacting fluid. It is owing to an exponentially stimulating perpendicular porous plate entrenched in the absorbent medium by considering ramped surface temperatures and concentrations in the endurance of thermal radiating. The fundamental governing set of equations of the fluid dynamics in the flow is converted into dimensionless form by inserting suitable dimensionless parameters and variables, and the resulting equations are numerically solved by the efficient Crank-Nicolson implicit finite difference method. The influence of several important substantial parameters into the model on the velocity, temperature, and concentration of the fluid, in addition to the skin-frictions coefficient, Nusselt's number along with Sherwood's number for both thermal conditions has been studied and explored intensely by making use of graphs and tables. It is discovered that, with mounting values of Dufour, heat generating as well as thermal radiating parameters, the fluid temperatures, and velocity enhanced. Likewise, it is noticed that increasing the Soret parameter causes

No abstract