No abstract

Radish, one of the important root vegetables, is widely grown in the world due to its easy cultivation, short duration, growing habit, and adaptability to various growing conditions. However, it is still extremely difficult to produce good quality radish roots due to its vulnerability to different preharvest physiological disorders. Important physiological disorders that significantly reduce the yield and quality of radish are forking, pithiness/sponginess, cracking/splitting, hollowness, and internal browning. Different abiotic factors like moisture stress, temperature fluctuation, growing medium, nutrient imbalance, plant density and harvesting time cause a disturbance in the metabolic activities of root tissues that produce non-marketable roots. Therefore, this review provides a detail insight on the causes, physiology of these disorders, and the management practices to prevent them to produce commercial quality roots. This comprehensive knowledge will not only help the growers, but it will provide relative information for researchers as well to control these disorders through breeding innovations and biotechnological tools.

Salinity is expected to be the major destructive abiotic stress that causes ionic and oxidative damage leading to growth reduction and ultimately plant death. Glutamic acid (GA) is an α-amino acid that is used by almost all living beings in the biosynthsis of proteins. Therefore, in the present study, we tried to investigate the effect of foliar application of glutamic acid (GA) on cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.) under altered salinity levels. Cucumber seedlings were grown in plastic pots under greenhouse conditions by applying four levels of salinity (0, 3 dS/m, 6 dS/m and 12 dS/m) and two levels of foliar applied GA (0, 10 mM). Salinity was induced by mixing the salt and soil before seed sowing; however, exogenous GA was applied when the vine length was reached up to maximum height. Morphological characters showed disruptive response under saline conditions especially in indigenous cultivar (local cucumber represented as V1). Enhanced activities of superoxide dismutase (0.29 u g-1 FW), guaiacol peroxidase (3.51 u g-1 FW) and ascorbate peroxidase (0.39 µmol AsA.mg-1 Chl min-1) were observed in salt-stressed cucumber leaves. Both varieties showed unusual behavior for malondialdehyde in decreasing manner with increasing salinity levels (2.0333 µmol g-1 FW at 12dS/m in local cultivar; while, 1.98 µmol g-1 FW at 12dS/m in hybrid cultivar SSC-228). However, exogenously applied GA played a beneficial role in promoting all morphological parameters under stress with increasing scavenging abilities against reactive oxygen species. Foliar application of GA improved plant defense mechanism with minimum destruction. Remarked calculations showed that under salt stress, GA improved plant stress tolerance against salinity by maximizing the growth rate.

Recently chickpea is being grown in more than 50 countries of the world (Tsehaye et al., 2020). Pakistan ranks 3 rd in chickpea producing countries but far below than world's average chickpea productivity per Abstract | Genetic variation occurring naturally in germplasm is highly valuable resource of alleles that can be deployed for genetic improvement of a species. Screening of available genetic stock for detection of most diverse and high yielding genotypes is a pre requisite for a successful crop breeding program. For this purpose, a research experiment comprising of sixty-eight elite chickpea germplasm genotypes along with two commercial varieties were sown under tri-replicate randomized complete block design during the winter season of 2020-21. D 2 statistics, principle component analysis and cluster analysis were employed to detect the most genetically variable and high yielding chickpea genotypes. D 2 statistics extracted higher values for standard deviation and coefficient of variation indicating that the studied genotypes possess considerable amount of genetic variation in performance of studied different traits. Principle component analysis distinguished the traits into eight components. Results revealed that PC1 and 2 extracted >1 Eigen values explaining that these components have major contribution in genetic variability. Cluster analysis distributed the genotypes into four distinguished clusters. Agglomerative dendrogram of genotypes was constructed by Ward's method. On the basis of Euclidean distance it was observed that members of cluster 3 (G.

It is necessary to determine how newly developed genotypes respond under field conditions. Variability in 45 genotypes of muskmelon [Cucumis melo L (Reticulatus group)] developed through random mating was assessed using principal component analysis, cluster analysis, and correlation based on 11 morpho-physiological traits under field conditions. Five principal components (PCs) out of 11 contributed 82.79% of the total variability. Genotypes were grouped into four clusters, with 14 genotypes in cluster 1, 26 in cluster 2, 3 in cluster 3, and 2 in cluster 4 based upon similarities and dissimilarities. Correlation indicated that yield/plant was positively correlated with number of lateral branches/plant, number of green leaves/plant, fruit weight, fruit/plant, and total number of leaves/plant. Membrane injury in leaves was significantly and positively correlated with number of lateral branches and number of fruit/plant. Number of green leaves/plant was positively correlated with total soluble solids (TSS) and yield/plant and may be able to be used as a morphological marker for selection of higher TSS and yield. Random mating is a useful technique to incorporate genes for high stress tolerance by developing new variability and new genotypes. The variability could be assessed using principal component analysis, cluster analysis, and correlation.