The studies of metal oxides in environmental remediation of chemical and biological pollutants are gaining colossal importance. Herein, we report the facile synthesis of multifunctional copper oxide nanosheets (CuO NS) using an aqueous extract of Rhazya stricta. The phytochemical investigation of R. stricta indicated the presence of saponins, tannins, and reducing sugars, responsible for the reduction and stabilization of CuO NS. A UV–Visible spectrophotometer initially confirmed the fabrication of CuO NS with specific Surface Plasmon Resonance at 294 nm. Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy (FE-SEM), Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy FTIR, and XRD were further used to characterize the CuO NS. The obtained CuO NS were poly-dispersed with an average size of 20 nm. Interestingly these particles were aligned together in 3D cubical sheets layered above each other via self-assembly. The as-synthesized CuO NS showed enhanced antibacterial potential (17.63 mm, overall mean inhibition zone) in comparison to the known antibiotics (11.51 mm, overall mean inhibition zone) against both Solanaceous crop's wilt-causing bacteria (Ralstonia solanacearum and Clavibacter michiganensis). Furthermore, the appreciable photocatalytic potential of CuO NS has also been observed, causing 83% degradation of methylene blue (MB) upon solar irradiation. The synthesis methodology is devoid of any toxic waste or by-products. It could be used to produce eco-friendly CuO nanomaterial for industrial uses.

Background In the list of abiotic stresses, salt stress is a main growth retarding factor which affects 7% of rain-fed while 30% worldwide irrigated agriculture. However, various strategies are assumed to manage this problem, but the use of endophytes is cheap and eco-friendly. The goal of this study was to evaluate the behavior of endophytic Aspergillus awamori (EWF) in creating salt tolerance in mung bean in terms of its seedling growth, biochemical indices, antioxidant enzymes, endogenous IAA, and ionic status of the plant. Results The results revealed that the 150 mM of NaCl reduced seedling growth (seedlings’ weight and length; leaves number), chlorophyll contents, and IAA. On the other hand, proline, polyphenols, flavonoids, tannin, lipid peroxidation, catalase, and ascorbate peroxidase were increased. Inoculation of EWF had promoted the mung bean growth under all tested conditions. EWF enhanced the biomass and IAA contents of the mung bean plants under salt stress. Moreover, EWF-associated mung bean seedlings exhibited low accumulation of stress markers, and Cl, Na, Na/K, and Ca/K ratio, whereas higher concentrations of Ca, Mg, K, N, and P in mung bean seedlings. Conclusion The results provided a sustainable approach in using endophytic EWF under salt stress, thus concluded that this fungus can be very handy in mung bean as well as other important crop production in saline areas.

Rice production has faced numerous challenges in recent years, and traditional methods are still being used to detect rice diseases. This research project developed an automated rice blast disease diagnosis technique based on deep learning, image processing, and transfer learning with pre-trained models such as Inception V3, VGG16, VGG19, and ResNet50. The public dataset consists of 2000 images; about 1200 images belong to the leaf blast class, and 800 to the healthy leaf class. The modified connection-skipping ResNet 50 had the highest accuracy of 99.75% with a loss rate of 0.33, while the other models achieved 98.16%, 98.47%, and 98.56%, respectively. Furthermore, ResNet 50 achieved a validation accuracy of 99.69%, precision of 99.50%, F1-score of 99.70, and AUC of 99.83%. In conclusion, the study demonstrated a superior performance and disease prediction using the Gradio web application.

No abstract

A field study was conducted on the reuse of wastewater from Mardan city to evaluate its risk of contaminating soil and wheat grains at different NPK levels. Three irrigation sources i.e. waste water (WW), canal water (CW) and alternate waste + canal water (WW+CW) were applied to wheat (cv Atta Habib 2010) grown at 0, 50, 75 and 100% NPK levels of 120:90:60 kg N:P2O5:K2O ha-1 at Palatoo Research Farm, Amir Muhammad Khan Campus, Mardan during 2015.The results showed higher grain and biomass yields in WW irrigated plots as compared to CW at NPK levels up to 50% of recommending dose revealing supplementing nutrient requirements in deficient conditions. However, irrigation of WW at higher NPK levels especially at or beyond 75% of recommended dose tended to reduce the crop yield that could be associated with heavy metals toxicity and nutritional imbalances. The use of WW substantially increased AB-DTPA extractable Zn, Mn, Pb, Ni and Cd indicating a potential threat to soil contamination. Similarly, WW irrigated wheat had higher concentrations of these heavy metals as compared to CW which limits its use for production purposes without any remediation measures. The alternate use of CW and WW as revealed by its comparative lower contamination in soil and wheat than sole WW could be one of the possible solutions and may increase the time required for threshold soil contamination.