Increasing heavy metal (HM) concentrations in the soil have become a significant problem in the modern industrialized world due to several anthropogenic activities. Heavy metals (HMs) are non-biodegradable and have long biological half lives; thus, once entered in food chain, their concentrations keep on increasing through biomagnification. The increased concentrations of heavy metals ultimately pose threat on human life also. The one captivating solution for this problem is to use green plants for HM removal from soil and render it harmless and reusable. Although this green technology called phytoremediation has many advantages over conventional methods of HM removal from soils, there are also many challenges that need to be addressed before making this technique practically feasible and useful on a large scale. In this review, we discuss the mechanisms of HM uptake, transport, and plant tolerance mechanisms to cope with increased HM concentrations. This review article also comprehensively discusses the advantages, major challenges, and future perspectives of phytoremediation of heavy metals from the soil.

The dominant rice blast resistance gene, Pi54 confers resistance to Magnaporthe oryzae in different parts of India. In our effort to identify more effective forms of this gene, we isolated an orthologue of Pi54 named as Pi54rh from the blast-resistant wild species of rice, Oryza rhizomatis, using allele mining approach and validated by complementation. The Pi54rh belongs to CC-NBS-LRR family of disease resistance genes with a unique Zinc finger (C(3)H type) domain. The 1,447 bp Pi54rh transcript comprises of 101 bp 5'-UTR, 1,083 bp coding region and 263 bp 3'-UTR, driven by pathogen inducible promoter. We showed the extracellular localization of Pi54rh protein and the presence of glycosylation, myristoylation and phosphorylation sites which implicates its role in signal transduction process. This is in contrast to other blast resistance genes that are predicted to be intracellular NBS-LRR-type resistance proteins. The Pi54rh was found to express constitutively at basal level in the leaves, but upregulates 3.8-fold at 96 h post-inoculation with the pathogen. Functional validation of cloned Pi54rh gene using complementation test showed high degree of resistance to seven isolates of M. oryzae collected from different geographical locations of India. In this study, for the first time, we demonstrated that a rice blast resistance gene Pi54rh cloned from wild species of rice provides broad spectrum resistance to M. oryzae hence can be used in rice improvement breeding programme.

Pulses (grain legumes) are increasingly of interest to the food industry as product formulators and consumers seek to exploit their fiber‐rich and protein‐rich reputation in the development of nutritionally attractive new products, particularly in the bakery, gluten‐free, snack, pasta, and noodle categories. The processing of pulses into consistent high‐quality ingredients starts with a well‐defined and controlled milling process. However, in contrast to the extensive body of knowledge on wheat flour milling, the peer‐reviewed literature on pulse flour milling is not as well defined, except for the dehulling process. This review synthesizes information on milling of leguminous commodities such as chickpea (kabuli and desi), lentil (green and red), pea, and bean (adzuki, black, cowpea, kidney, navy, pinto, and mung) from the perspective of a wheat miller to explore the extent to which pulse milling studies have addressed the objectives of wheat flour milling. These objectives are to reduce particle size (so as to facilitate ingredient miscibility), to separate components (so as to improve value and/or functionality), and to effect mechanochemical transformations (for example, to cause starch damage). Current international standards on pulse quality are examined from the perspective of their relationship to the millability of pulses (that is, grain legume properties at mill receival). The effect of pulse flour on the quality of the products they are incorporated in is examined solely from the perspective of flour quality not quantity. Finally, we identify research gaps where critical questions should be answered if pulse milling science and technology are to be established on par with their wheat flour milling counterparts.

The present study was aimed to evaluate the differences among anti-nutritional factors in relation to mineral absorption and protein digestibility of Easy-tocook (ETC) and Hard-to-cook (HTC) grains from different kidney bean (KB) accessions.HTC grains showed lower a* (redness to yellowness) and b* (greenness to blueness) values and L* value than ETC grains. HTC grains had significantly higher Ca and Zn and lower Cu, Mn and Fe than ETC grains. ETC and HTC grains showed significant variation in mineral, total phenolic content (TPC), tannin and phytic acid content. TPC and tannin content were significantly higher for HTC grains, on the contrary phytic acid content was lower than counterpart ETC grains. Protein and in vitro protein digestibility (IVPD) also varied significantly between HTC and ETC grains and was found to be lower for HTC grains. Majority of phenolic compounds (PCs) were present in bound state in both ETC and HTC grains. Moreover, HTC grains showed higher amount of chlorogenic acid and catechin content than ETC grains in bound form. ETC and HTC grains from dark color accessions showed higher catechin content.

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