The black-oil tree (Celastrus paniculatus Willd) is a highly valued medicinal plant species belong to the Celastraceae family, known as Jyothishmathi in Ayurveda and Duhundu in Sri Lanka and grows as a perennial vine. It is an endangered medicinal plant species recorded in the red list of endangered fauna and flora of Sri Lanka in 1999. The seed oil of Celastrus paniculatus contains sesquiterpene alkaloids namely; celapagine, celapanigine, celapanine and celastrol, used in traditional system of medicine for various disorders and because of its high pharmaceutical value, plants are over exploited in natural habitats. Owing to poor seed germination and lack of successful vegetative propagation methods, domestication and commercial planting of this important medicinal plant species to meet the demand seems impossible. Therefore, it is of high importance to develop a reliable and efficient in vitro propagation to produce black oil plants for commercial use. In this study, it was attempted to produce synthetic seeds of Celestrus paniculatus via in vitro multiple shoot proliferation. Nodal segment explants were collected from freshly emerged age of sprouts, surface sterilized and cultured in Murashige and Skoog medium supplemented with different 6-benzylaminopurine (BAP) and Thidiazuron (TDZ) concentrations for shoot induction. The highest soot proliferation rate; 25 shoot tips/explant were observed with 0.1 mg/L TDZ. Induced shoot tips were used for synthetic seed production after encapsulating with BAP and a-naphthalene acetic (NAA) enriched sodium alginate. Shoot tip encapsulated beads produced with 4% sodium alginate were firm, clear, round and uniform in size and easy to handle. The influence of growth regulators (BAP and NAA) and storage period on the germination of encapsulated shoot tips was studied to evaluate the success of encapsulated shoot tips as a propagule. The beads germinated with 2 mg/L BAP and 0.2 mg/L NAA provided 80% in vitro germination percentage. Shoot tips of synthetic seeds remained green and healthy after storage at 5°C for a period of 8 weeks. Current findings suggest that encapsulated micro shoots (synthetic seeds) could be produced successfully, as the first step in domestication and conservation of Celastrus paniculatus. Further studies required on rooting of micro shoots, acclimatization and transferring of plantlets produced from synthetic seeds to in vivo conditions for domestication and conservation purposes.

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The changes in the global rainfall have raised concerns over the present and possible future use of coastal areas in many Asian countries including Sri Lanka. However, no in-depth analysis of rainfall of these coastal lines of Sri Lanka has been performed yet to understand any changes in the pattern in general. This study was carried out to fulfil the above need, especially focusing on rainfall of North-Western and Eastern coastal lines of Sri Lanka. The rainfall data for a period of 30 years were used in the study and analysis was performed using the tests, Mann Kendall, Sen's slope estimator, and sequential Mann Kendall. Mann-Kendall's test indicated positive trend in annual rainfall of most parts of North-Western coastal line but negative monotonic decrease at 4 stations, namely, Chilaw, Horakele, Lunuwila and Palaviya. In the Eastern coastal line, significant positive trend in annual rainfall was observed at 4 stations, namely, Kantale, Batticaloa, Pottuvil and Mylambaveli. The monthly rainfall analysis of North-Western coastal line revealed significant positive trends at Kottukachchiya and Anamaduwa stations in March and December respectively and in the Eastern costal line, positive trends were observed at Kantalae, Mylambaveli and Navatkiri Aru for February. The stations except Anamaduwa in North-Western coastal line recorded a significant negative trend in rainfall in the month of May. No station showed a significant positive trend during Southwest Monsoon season. During the Northeast Monsoon season, all the nineteen stations showed an increase in rainfall amounts while two locations in North-Western region and six locations in Eastern showed a significant upward trend. With these dynamic rainfall trends, it can be reiterated that it is vital to advocate climate mitigating actions to reduce impacts of changes in rainfall trends.

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Floriculture is a flourishing industry in Sri Lanka with a great potential in both domestic and export market. Street and mobile flower vending is a micro enterprise which is not a negligible portion of floriculture sector in the country. Present study was conducted to investigate the constraints faced by street and mobile flower vendors and to understand their willingness to adopt those challenges. Randomly selected 40 flower vendors from Galle, Matara and Hambantota districts were interviewed using a semi structured questionnaire by visiting them at their marketing sites such as streets, week fairs and “Kaprukawaruna” exhibitions conducted by Coconut Cultivation Board, Matara. According to the findings, majority of the respondents engage in the business as a full time employment and 43.3% of the vendors sell plants grown in their own nurseries. Apart from the flowering and ornamental plants, they sell fertilizers, coir dust and coconut husk pieces and product diversification has a significant impact (p=0.016) on their monthly income. Average nursery size was found to be 500ft2 where average income was noted as 200 USD. Among the vendors 70% use their own money to refinance the business. Majority of the respondents (60%) were members of different flower grower societies. Vendors (87.5%) sell their products targeting week fairs and (62.5%) sell their products beside the streets in temporary fixed huts. Not having an authorized place to market their goods was identified as the major problem by 85% of the respondents. Majority of the vendors (62.5%) were willing to expand the business while 42.5% identified this as a profitable venture to invest. According to the binary logistic regression results, age (p=0.000), education level (p=0.001), economic status (p=0.057), nursery size (p=0.004) and credit accessibility (p=0.024) were positively related with their willingness to adopt for the challenges they face. It is concluded that following key actions must be taken to strengthen the street and mobile flower vendors for their further empowerment: Provision of proper authorized sites of operation, improve the market credit and other infrastructure facilities and more training opportunities.