More than 70% of earth's surface is covered by cold ecosystems and these ecosystems have been colonized by a class of extremophilic microorganisms called as psychrophiles. Thus psychrophiles are true extremophiles that has the ability to live in extremely low temperature conditions. Psychrophilic yeasts are important due to their physiological adaptation at low temperature and they have potential application in biotechnology. Psychrophilic yeast produces cold-active enzymes having numerous applications in textile, medical and pharmaceuticals, fine chemical synthesis, food industry, domestic and environmental applications. Psychrophilic enzymes from yeast have attracted attention of researchers to explore the new application of these enzymes because of their high activity at low and moderate temperatures. The present review describes various immune biotechnological applications of different cold-active enzymes produced by psychrophilic yeast in different industries.

Abstract:Oat is an economically important crop and ranks sixth in world cereal production after maize, wheat, rice, barley and sorghum. It has been primarily utilized as livestock feed. However, the utilization of oats for human consumption has increased progressively, owing to its dietary and health benefits which relies mainly on the total dietary fibre and β-glucan content, which significantly reduces postprandial blood glucose, insulin and blood lipids, especially serum total and low density lipoprotein cholesterol. Henceforth, enhancing Oat b-glucan content for human consumption is desirable. As it is a polygenic trait controlled mainly by genes with additive effects, phenotypic selection for greater b-glucan content would be effective for developing cultivars with elevated b-glucan contents. Oat b-glucan concentration has been found to be positively correlated with protein content and negatively correlated with oil content. β-glucan yield (i.e., Product of grain yield and β-glucan content) has been found to correlate positively with both grain yield (r = 0.92) and β-glucan content (r = 0.66). Hence, this nutritional oat grain quality has been improved through selection for improved grain yield as they both increase simultaneously. Among wild accessions, A. atlantica genotypes have high β-glucan content (2·2-11·3%) and have been used in breeding programmes for increasing the β-glucan content of adapted elite local germplasm. Besides conventional breeding approaches, molecular breeding approaches have made possible to identify several molecular markers linked to β-glucan rich regions across oat genome hence enabling mapping and dissection of β-glucan rich genomic regions and accelerating the improvement in nutritional grain quality.

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Content Knowledge about genetic variability parameters is imperative for improving crop plants for traits of economic importance. This paper reports the characterisation of a large germplasm set of an underutilised pseudocereal Buckwheat endemic to northwestern Himalayas in order to elucidate the nature of variability as well as identify trait specific genotypes for use in buckwheat breeding programmes. Aim The major aim was to estimate the genetic variability of yield and related traits in diverse germplasm lines of buckwheat collected from different regions of the north-western Himalayas. Methods The material was evaluated in a randomised complete block design with five replications at two different locations in SKUAST-K, Shuhama and MAR & ES Izmarg, Gurez, during the years 2020 and 2021. For assessing diversity patterns, the clustering of the germplasm from both locations was done by Tocher’s method. Key results The results indicated significant variability in the buckwheat germplasm for all morphological traits across locations. The phenotypic cofficient of variation and genotypic coefficients of variation (PCV, GCV), broad sense heritability and genetic advance values varied between locations. Pooled across locations, the highest PCV values were recorded for number of primary branches. Heritability ranged from low for number of secondary branches to medium for days to 50% flowering. Conclusion The present study provided valuable insights about the variability and trait diversity in buckwheat germplasm under Northwestern Himalayan conditions. Implications The information on variability parameters can be harnessed to develop an effective breeding strategy for improving buckwheat for traits of economic interest.