No abstract

Screening for drought tolerance requires precise techniques like phonemics, which is an emerging science aimed at non-destructive methods allowing large-scale screening of genotypes. Large-scale screening complements genomic efforts to identify genes relevant for crop improvement. Thirty maize inbred lines from various sources (exotic and indigenous) maintained at Dryland Agriculture Research Station were used in the current study. In the automated plant transport and imaging systems (LemnaTec Scanalyzer system for large plants), top and side view images were taken of the VIS (visible) and NIR (near infrared) range of the light spectrum to capture phenes. All images were obtained with a thermal imager. All sensors were used to collect images one day after shifting the pots from the greenhouse for 11 days. Image processing was done using pre-processing, segmentation and flowered by features’ extraction. Different surrogate traits such as pixel area, plant aspect ratio, convex hull ratio and calliper length were estimated. A strong association was found between canopy temperature and above ground biomass under stress conditions. Promising lines in different surrogates will be utilized in breeding programmes to develop mapping populations for traits of interest related to drought resilience, in terms of improved tissue water status and mapping of genes/QTLs for drought traits.

This study explores the potential of a highly biocompatible golden brown algal cell, diatom, as a drug carrier to the bacterial cell. The strong interaction between diatom and bacteria that occur in the microenvironment, lead us to pave the way for exciting new directions where diatom can be used to address several bacterial infections. The surface of diatom frustules was modified with self‐assembled antibacterial aromatic amino acid conjugates, Tyr‐ZnII. Microscopy and spectroscopy observations confirmed the deposition of Tyr‐ZnII over diatom frustules. Diatoms can work as living microcontainers to store the toxic metal (drug) ions and therefore can be utilized as potential drug delivery agents to kill the clinically relevant bacteria. Due to antibacterial property of zinc ions, Tyr‐ZnII conjugates inhibits bacterial growth and diatom frustules were utilized as Tyr‐ZnII carrier for controlled release of zinc to the bacterial cell.