No abstract

Tribolium castaneum considered as an economically worldwide insect pest for agricultural and medicinal aspects. Synthetic chemicals have been used in the management of T. castaneum but their residual problems have been renovated the interest in ecofriendly safe materials such as plant essential oils. In the present study, toxicity and antifeedant effects of an essential oil from Melissa officinalis as well-known medicinal plant investigated against T. castaneum. Chemical analysis indicated g-terpinene, carvacrol and a-terpinene were the main components of essential oil. The essential oil showed strong toxicity on T. castaneum adults at several concentrations and treatment times. The LC 50 values were assessed as 19.418, 18.418 and 16.159 ml/l air after 24, 48 and 72 h exposure time, respectively. Sub-lethal concentrations of essential oil caused significant dose-dependent antifeedant activity. Results indicate M. officinalis essential oil can be suggested as a potential alternative to harmful synthetic chemicals.

No abstract

No abstract

Pseudomonas syringae pathovars are important pathogens among phytopathogenic bacteria causing a variety of diseases in plants. These pathogens can rapidly disseminate in a large area leading to infection and destruction of plants. To prevent the incidence of the bacteria, appropriate detection methods should be employed. Routinely serological tests, being time-consuming and costly, are exploited to detect these pathogens in plants, soil, water and other resources. Over the recent years, DNA-based detection approaches which are stable, rapid, specific and reliable have been developed and sequence analysis of various genes are widely utilized to identify different strains of P. syringe. However, the greatest limitation of these genes is inability to detect numerous pathovars of P. syringae. Herein, by using bioinformatic analysis, we found the hrcV gene located at pathogenicity islands of bacterial genome with the potential of being used as a new marker for phylogenetic detection of numerous pathovars of P. syringae. Following design of specific primers to hrcV, we amplified a 440 bp fragment. Of 13 assayed pathovars, 11 were detected. Also, through experimental procedures and bioinformatic analysis it was revealed that the designed primers have the capacity to detect 19 pathovars. Our findings suggest that hrcV could be used as a gene with the merit of detecting more pathovars of P. syringae in comparison with other genes used frequently for detection purposes.