Globally, there are more than 500,000 plant species (green scum, duckweed, lichens, liverworts, fungi, ferns, conifers, mosses and flowering plants etc.) that maintain earth’s environmental equilibrium, ecosystem stability and also possess vast endemic, aesthetic and cultural importance, provide medicine, food, fuel, shelter and clothing. Plants are used as therapeutic agents to improve health by a large part of population. Several clinical facts suggest that plant derived foods hold various potential health benefits and well known as neutraceuticals. These are the products that are used as food or as a part of food (foodstuffs), able to cure and prevent diseases in addition to their basic nutritional value. More than 200,000 chemical compounds are synthesized by plants and no doubt, also possess medicinal importance. Worldwide, about 70% plant based preparations are used as traditional medicines and also facilitate the base for 50 percent of prescription and/or over the counter drugs used in the Western-type practice of medicine. For underdeveloped and developing countries, it is a need to provide safe, efficient and cheap medications. In various part of India medicinal plants are widely distributed and always have increasing demand due to their medicinal properties. The present review is focused on the genus Vigna which is widely cultivated and used as neutraceuticals. They grow in varied climatic zones, in high temperatures, low rainfall and poor soils with low input in form of fertiliser and irrigation that make them valuable crop plants. As Vigna is an important genus that fulfils the food demand, useful in cosmetics and medicines, there is scope to enhance its productivity via resource conservation, optimum use of rainwater, bridging the yield gaps and innovations in technology transfer and up scaling. One of the important steps to find out a way to increase the production is the detection and analysis of naturally occurring DNA sequence variation by using DNA markers or molecular markers as these markers are indispensable tool that construct maps of genetic linkage and mark the agronomically important traits.

Pollution is the introduction of contaminants, which cause adverse change, into the natural environment and mainly from external inputs like sewage, waste from industries, oil spills and agricultural use of pesticides. Anthropogenic activity-reflected in the use of toxic metals and organic pollutants-has increased levels of soil contamination and damage to aquatic systems. Ecosystems maintain water quality and withstand pressure from pollution better if they are naturally equipped with biodiversity. Algae regularly develop in fresh water and seawater and some species grow in high-salt environments. Algae quickly reponds to changes in their environment as a consequence of changes in water chemistry, affecting their diversity, community composition and abundance. Recently, algae have been used in bioremediation and to cleanup wastewater due to their high efficiency in absorbing both organic and inorganic pollutants, incuding dissolved nutrients, heavy metals, pesticides, toxic compounds and even radiactive materials. Almost all freshwater ecosystems depend on phytoplankton because they are producers and participate in the aquatic food chain; they are also useful for water quality assessment. The present work is an effort to determine the range of variation among different groups of algae. Our results showed that four species dominated the microbial community in eutrophic waters, namely Euglena (Euglenophyta), Nitzschia (Bacillariophyta), Oscillatoria and Phormidium (Cyanophyta).

AbstractIndia is a large and densely populated country; its economy is largely agricultural. Making the best use of the country’s manpower has always posed a challenge. Industrialization could become a dominant component of the economy and displace agriculture. Traditional livelihoods of occupational groups are threatened by the practice of disposing untreated industrial waste into rivers and bodies of water. These uncontrolled disposals impact local natural resources with negative long-term effects. Industrialization is the development of intellectual and financial trade that changes a predominantly rustic culture into a modern one. Many industrial units discharge wastewater locally without treatment. Many industries directly discharged their waste into lakes, rivers and ocean. Water contamination impacts the environment. Pesticides, chemical, waste oil and heavy metals are regularly transported into their waters. Humans and other living organisms can accumulate heavy metals from industrial discharges in their tissues. Industrial waste may be reactive, corrosive, flammable, or toxic. When untreated sewage is emptied into rivers, it causes diseases like typhoid, dysentery and cholera. Natural elements and plant supplements like nitrate and phosphates stimulate growth of algae on the water surface. The algae reduce the oxygen in the water and cause eutrophication. It is harmful to the water ecosystem. In Rajasthan proper, there are a number of sites bordering rivers and lakes where the pace of industrialization has proceeded far beyond the ability of regulators to establish and enforce meaningful limits on the amount of point source pollution permitted to the various industrial complexes, which include cement, chemical, fertilizer, textile, mining, quarrying, dyeing and printing facilities. The scale of the problem is obvious to the casual observer, but actual documentation of the total impact remains to be done.

Salicylic acid, a naturally occurring phenolic compound, is a multifaceted plant growth modulator and activates the systemic acquired defence in plants as a response to pathogen effect. In recent years in addition to the activation of SAR, SA is reported to play a major role in the modulation of plant responses to biotic and abiotic stresses like drought, salinity, heat, heavy metal stress, osmotic stress, defence against pathogenic elicitors and effectors and symbiotic relationships. Additionally, SA has well laid out physiological roles in growth and development of plants. Several of the targets of SA have been recognized, and the molecular mode of action elucidating the complex signal transduction and involving crosstalk of multiple metabolic pathways is being unravelled. This chapter deals with recent findings on the improvement of drought tolerance vis-a-vis salicylic acid-induced modulation of metabolic pathways and signalling mechanisms.

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