Mahananda River is an important river in India and Bangladesh, as the people of both the countries use the water extensively, without sufficient and reliable information about water qualities and pollution status. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the water quality of the river and to analyse the suitability for drinking, agricultural and industrial uses. This is why this study on the Mahananda River is extremely important for the region. For this study, samples from fourteen sampling stations were collected in pre-monsoon and post-monsoon seasons in 2016 and water quality index (WQI), agriculture and industry-related indices were computed. WQI values designated two sampling stations out of fourteen sampling stations as ‘very bad’ category and another two sampling stations as ‘bad’ category. The pH values of some sampling stations slightly exceeded the upper permissible limit. USSL diagram analysis classified two samples of pre-monsoon season in C2S1 category which indicates a medium salinity and low sodium water. Magnesium hazard values of four sampling stations are above 50% suggesting not suitable for irrigation. However, some indices like sodium per cent, residual sodium carbonate and residual sodium bicarbonate, Kelly’s index, permeability index and potential salinity allow the water for use in irrigation purposes. Langelier Saturation Index and aggressive index values designate the water as moderately aggressive or non-aggressive. Ryznar Stability Index values designate the water as ‘aggressive’ or ‘very aggressive’ indicating unsuitability for industrial uses. Sampling stations S-1, S-2, S-8 and S-14 need special attention.

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Moringa oleifera is a perennial plant popularly known as ‘Miracle plant’ with great ethnomedicinal, nutritional and economical importance due to high content of nutrients, essential phytochemicals and antioxidants etc. The different parts of these plants such as leaves, flowers, fruits (pods), stem bark, roots, seeds and gum etc are used traditionally as alternative medicines for socially neglected people in addition to uses as good source of food nutrients. This plant contains a high profile of essential minerals, vitamins, proteins, carbohydrates, fats, fibre, carotenoids, amino acids and antioxidants like flavonoids, polyphenols, ascorbic acid, glycosides and glucosinolates etc. Various parts of this plant possess medicinal properties and act as cardiac stimulant, anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer, anti-tumor, antipyretic, anti-ulcer, anti-diabetic, anti-microbial and anti-fungal agent, anti-asthmatic due to its potential antioxidants and some other phytochemicals. In this background, this review compiles information on the multidimensional uses of Moringa oleifera in respect to its ethnomedicinal and nutraceutical potentialities in order to explore and evaluate for future research opportunities.

Fifteen genetically diverse parental genotypes of sunnhemp belonging to different geographical origin were assessed to evaluate general and specific combining ability of parents and cross combinations, respectively, for selecting the superior parent combination. For this, fifteen parents and their 105 F 1 s were grown in a Randomized Block Design (RBD) with three replications and data were collected in respect of plant height, base diameter, green weight, fibre weight, stick weight and fibre percentage. Analyses of variances of diallel revealed that there was predominance of specific combining ability (sca) in almost all the characters except fibre percentage and general combining ability (gca) was significant only in case of plant height. From the gca effect of parents it can be seen that K-12 (B) and SUIN-056 showed good promise as general combiners and able to produce better cross combinations. However only one cross combination viz. SUIN-056 × SUIN-074 was recorded positive sca effects for all the characters. This cross combination along with SUIN-001 × SUIN-056 exhibited positive heterosis over the better parents in all the characters studied and can be used in breeding programme for producing improved sunnhemp population. Further, to exploit fully both additive and nonadditive variances present in this population, random as well as chain crossing among the promising crosses was found effective to exploit both additive and fixable epistatic effects.

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