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The present investigations aim to decipher the beneficial role of hydrogen peroxide-supplemented irrigation in imparting drought tolerance and promotion plant growth and yield of potato plants grown under two different irrigation regimes. Hydrogen peroxide injection (oxygenation) was applied at 0, 300, and 600 ppm through subsurface irrigation regimes on potato performance grown in heavy clay soil. The results indicated that oxygenation of irrigation water boosted the plant′s vegetative growth and productivity, especially at 600 ppm hydrogen peroxide coupled with deficit irrigation. Root respiration, leaf biomass, chlorophyll content, and leaf osmotic status was observed to be improved in the presence of oxygenated irrigation. A similar trend was recorded on macro-elements (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and calcium content), proline, and soluble carbohydrates content of leaf along with catalase enzyme activity. Individual tuber weight, tuber number and tuber yield per plant and hectare recorded higher values as responding to oxygenated irrigation (300 and 600 ppm) of water within the optimum irrigation level. While the highest value of water use efficiency (WUE) was obtained by pairing deficit irrigation with 600 ppm oxygenated water. Thus, the present work provides new insights into the importance of oxygenated irrigation in obtaining optimum yield and field performance in potato plants subjected to deficit irrigation in clayey-loamy soils.

Pavetta corymbosa is a medicinal plant used as remedy for infectious diseases in Nigerian traditional medicine. In this study, analysis of chemical composition of lipophilic extract and the antimicrobial activity of the extract were carried out with a view to discovering effective phytomedicine. The gas chromatography-mass spectrometric (GC-MS) analysis carried out showed that 9-methyl octadecanoic acid-ethyl ester (22.6%), cyclotetracosane (15.3%), 2,4,6-trimethyl hexacosanoic acid-methyl ester (12.7%) and 9,12,15-octadecatrienoic acid-methyl ester (12.1%) were present as the major chemical components at the indicated percent composition. The antimicrobial activity on clinical susceptible, standard and resistant species was carried out using disc diffusion and broth-micro-dilution techniques as recommended by CLSI. The lipophilic extract showed significant antimicrobial activity against Bacillus subtilis and Streptococcus faecalis with minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of 0.624 mg/ml, whilst fungal species such as Candida albicans and Candida krusei had MIC of 1.25 mg/ml. The antimicrobial potency of the lipophilic extract is attributed to fatty acids/esters chemo types present therein. It was concluded that P. corymbosa lipophilic extract could be exploited as complimentary source of antimicrobial agents.

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A spectrophotometric method is developed for the determination of some drugs containing amino groups (sulfacetamide sodium, lidocaine and terbutaline sulfate) based on their reaction with p-chloranilic acid reagent in an organic medium forming colored charge transfer complexes. The complexes have maximum absorptions at 530 and 527 nm for sulfacetamide sodium and lidocaine respectively, but terbutaline sulfate gave two maximum absorptions at 529 and 319 nm. Beers law is obeyed over the concentration range of 10-60 µg.ml-1 for sulfacetamide sodium and lidocaine and 5-70 µg.ml-1 for terbutaline sulfate. The molar absorptivity values are 0.940×103, 0.913×103 L.mol-1.cm-1 for sulfacetamide sodium and lidocaine respectively while terbutaline sulfate gave 0.987×103 L.mol-1.cm-1 at 529 nm and 7.407×103 L.mol-1.cm-1 at 319 nm with accuracy range between 100.20% and 101.42% and RSD better than 3.15% for all drugs. The method is applied successfully for determination of these drugs in pharmaceutical formulations and compared favorably with British Pharmacopeia standard methods. F and t tests are less than the tabulated values at 95% confidence level.