Bushra Sadia

• Chair at University of Agriculture Faisalabad

Improvement in genetic gains of crops could be achieved by phenomics' characterization of agronomic, physiological and stress-related traits. Molecular and strategic breeding programmes require broad range of foreground and background phenotypic information for crop improvement. The current experiment was performed on 123 advanced soybean ( Glycine...

Background Seeds of super basmati were mutagenized with different ethyl methane sulphonate (EMS) doses for creating genetic variability. Methods and results A total of 48 randomly selected putative EMS mutants of super basmati were analyzed to dissect the genetic diversity by using 25 SSR primers located on twelve chromosomes of rice. SSRs analysi...

Begomoviruses are contagious and severely affect commercially important fiber and food crops. Cotton leaf curl Multan virus (CLCuMuV) is one of the most dominant specie of Begomovirus and a major constraint on cotton yield in Pakistan. Currently, the field of plant genome editing is being revolutionized by the CRISPR/Cas system applications such as...

Spring wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is one of the most imperative staple food crops, with an annual production of 765 million tons globally to feed ∼40% world population. Genetic diversity in available germplasm is crucial for sustainable wheat improvement to ensure global food security. A diversity panel of 184 Pakistani wheat accessions was genot...

Wheat is a major staple food and has been extensively grown around the globe. Sessile nature of plants has exposed them to a lot of biotic and abiotic stresses including fungal pathogen attack. Puccinia graminis f.sp. tritici causes stem rust in the wheat crop and leads to 70% decrease in its production. Pathogenesis-related (PR) proteins provide p...

Forty cultivars (varieties/lines/clones) of potato were screened under field conditions to identify resistance against Potato leaf roll virus. Enzyme linked immuno sorbent assay (ELISA) was the criterion to confirm virus infection. Area under disease progress curve (AUDPC) was calculated to quantify the disease resistance. Seven varieties/lines Ast...

For centuries, crop improvement has served as the basis of food security of ever increasing human population. Though vast germplasm collections are available; their exploitation for crop improvement still depends upon efficient assessment of genetic diversity. Genetic variability is the key element in adaptation of plants to varying climates. While...

The success of plant breeding is based on the accessibility of genetic variation, information about desired traits with well-organized approach that make it likely to develop existing genetic resources. Food security demands to break the yield barrier through increasing new cultivars which can adapt to wide range of environment. It is especially im...

Citrus is one of the most important fruit crop in the world and is usually grown through grafting technique. Rootstock is one of the significant part in grafted plants and has crutial effect on production, including yield, fruit quality, tree size, tolerance to salts and diseases, and scion compatibility. Citrus is susceptible to several fungal pat...

Genetic gains of crops could be improved by pyramiding physiological, agronomic and stress tolerant traits in single genotypes. Comprehensive foreground and background phenotypic information is a prerequisite for any molecular and strategic breeding program. A population of 465 local spring wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) genotypes was characterized u...

Stripe rust caused by the pathogen Puccinia striiformis f. sp. tritici (Pst) is a major threat for wheat, resulting in low yield and grain quality loss in many countries. Genetic resistance is a prevalent method to combat the disease. Mapping the resistant loci and their association with traits is highly exploited in this era. A panel of 465 Pakist...

Mutation is a resource of generating genetic diversity in crop plant for breeding as well as genetic analysis. Ethyl Methane Sulphonate (EMS) is frequently applied chemical agents in plants. The present study was completed to investigate the mutagenic effects of different concentration of EMS on yield contributing traits of super basmati. The seeds...

In this study, the Sr22 gene was isolated and prepared for transformation in disease-susceptible commercial high-yielding wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) cultivar Lasani-2008. The Sr22 fragment was initially inserted in plasmid pUC57 for sequence confirmation before performing further experiments. After confirmation, Sr22 was subcloned in pGreen0029 w...

Metabolomics is an emerging branch of “omics” and it involves identification and quantification of metabolites and chemical footprints of cellular regulatory processes in different biological species. The metabolome is the total metabolite pool in an organism, which can be measured to characterize genetic or environmental variations. Metabolomics p...

Begomoviruses infect many plant species including economically important crops worldwide. Conventional approaches for resistance management have not been successful to tackle the emerging and rapidly evolving plant viruses. The last decade has witnessed an unprecedented progress in plant genome editing technologies. CRISPR-Cas9 based gene editing h...

The present study was conducted to estimate the selection indices directly and indirectly involved in yield of B. campestris. Parent lines, 36 F1 hybrids and commercial hybrids/varieties were sown in the field in a randomized complete block design with three replications. Analysis of variance revealed remarkable differences among genotypes. Number...

Streptokinase (SK) is a thrombolytic agent having broad applications in treatment of various diseases like ischemia, Budd-Chiari syndrome, myocardial infarction, brain stroke and myocardial infarction. Strain improvement is an important approach for its hyper production. In this connection, wild bacterial strain Streptococcus equisimilis was mutage...

During the last decade, unprecedented progress in the field of genome modification has been witnessed with various applications in basic and applied biology. Genome editing with specific DNA binding proteins has shown higher specificity and fidelity. Artificially engineered proteins such as zinc fingers (ZFs), transcription activator-like effectors...

Soil salinity is a noxious factor that declines the growth and yield of crop plants. Recently increased production of ethylene has been regarded as one of the reasons for enhanced ion toxicity. The inhibition of ethylene synthesis can be used to reduce the ethylene biosynthesis and improve salinity tolerance. Silver (Ag) and cobalt (Co) ions are in...

Wilting and ionic disturbance are consequences of cadmium (Cd) toxicity in plants. The Cd interferes with uptake, transport and utilization of many micro and macronutrients, resultantly caused ionic imbalance. The Cd chloride (CdCl 2 .H 2 O) salt was used to induce Cd stress (0, 500 μM, 1000 μM) at three leaves seedlings stage and at the same time,...

Drought is the major abiotic stress that limits the crop production at drastic level. Screening of tolerant accessions from available germplasm is the basic step in plant breeding. Sunflower is becoming popular and major oilseed crop in world but unfortunately it is drought sensitive. Screening in field has uncertainties due to the uncontrolled con...

Breeding of date palm is complicated because of its long life cycle and heterozygous nature. Sexual propagation of date palm does not produce true-to-type plants. Sex of date palms cannot be identified until the first flowering stage. Molecular markers such as random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD), sequence-characterized amplified regions (SCAR),...

Genome editing with engineered nucleases has become a powerful tool of targeted genome modifications providing unprecedented control over animal and plant genetic material for precise, robust and highly specific genome engineering. Precise genome editing has been a long standing goal in the field of biology which has been achieved with the help of...

Sorghum is an important fodder crop with high biomass production potential all around the world including Pakistan. Genetic divergence was estimated among 208 sorghum genotypes of Pakistan by evaluating fourteen different quantitative traits for one year. High variability was reported in fresh biomass (35.60-629.12 g), dry biomass (23.41-367.72 g),...

This study was carried out to estimate the extent of heterosis and inheritance of different morphological traits in 32 sunflower hybrids developed at the Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, University of Agriculture Faisalabad from 2010 to 2011. The crosses were developed using North Carolina Mating Design (NCD-1). The experiment was arrange...

Salinity is the most damaging factor towards crop production. The aim of this study was to investigate the possible role of thiourea in salinity tolerance. These experiments were carried out on two maize hybrids (DK6789 and 33M15) using the optimized thiourea level (400 µM) in autumn and spring seasons, and the growth and physiological attributes w...

Over the years, the cultivation of sunflower has emerged as a popular cash crop and the area under it has increased during the last decade in Pakistan because of its profitability than other competing crops. Besides, this crop needs little water, while its harvesting time is short and it can easily be cultivated between two major crops. The present...

The quantification of the comparative effect of environmental factors on species distribution can improve our knowledge of the processes that drive diversity patterns. Fifteen different habitats in Neelum valley (Kashmir), using quadrat method along altitudinal gradient were studied for the plant ecological attributes including; soil plant interact...

Plants cope with thermo-stress by increased expression of heat shock genes. These genes encode various heat shock proteins (HSPs) which rapidly accumulate and protect plants following hasty heat stress. Heat shock transcription factors (HSFs) primarily regulate expression of HSP genes by deciphering conserved binding motifs in promoter region. We r...

Cotton productivity on a per-hectare basis is low in Pakistan. As boll is the basis for seed cotton yield, within-boll yield components can potentially serve as the most basic determinants of cotton productivity on a per unit land area basis. Before attempting the improvement of any trait, it is necessary to know the genetic mechanism lying behind...

Cell suspension cultures were initiated from six month old ovule-derived embryogenic calli of two Citrus species named Citrus aurantifolia (Christm.) Swingle cultivar Sweet lime and Citrus reticulata Blanco cultivar Kinnow. The growth rate of cells was observed on two different media MT basal medium + 0.5 g L⁻¹ malt extract (EME) and MT containing...

An experiment was carried out in sand-filled pots under normal temperature (28 +/- 2 degrees C) to assess the role of exogenously applied ascorbic acid in alleviating the effect of cadmium (Cd) stress on four barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) genotypes (Jau-83, Jau-87, Paidar 91 and Haider 93). After germination, seedlings were exposed to different Cd co...

Plants cope with thermo-stress by increased expression of heat shock genes. These genes encode various heat shock proteins (HSPs) which rapidly accumulate and protect plants following hasty heat stress. Heat shock transcription factors (HSFs) primarily regulate expression of HSP genes by deciphering conserved binding motifs in promoter region. We...

Organophosphate hydrolase enzyme has been reported to efficiently degrade organophosphate compounds. Thus its increased demand, has led us to improve its production by process optimization. Statistical improvement for OPH production by Response Surface Methodology (RSM) was performed by using the bacterial strain Brevibacillus parabrevis SR2729. Gl...

The study reports the establishment of an improved and repeatable protoplast-to-plant protocol using axenic cultures of wild diploid species S. chacoense Bitt. and potato cv. Desiree and cell suspensions alone of cv. Desiree, as a pre-requisite to somatic hybridization. The protoplast isolation was influenced by type and age of explants, compositio...

Kinnow (Citrus reticulata Blanco) mandarin is a superior fruit crop in Pakistan; however, it is characterized by high number of seeds which is disliked by consumers and the processing industry. The objective of this work was to document the morphological and genetic differences in selected seeded and seedless Kinnow strains from two different locat...

Microsatellites or simple sequence repeats (SSRs) were used for the estimation of genetic diversity among a group of 40 sunflower lines developed at the research area of Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad. Total numbers of alleles amplified by 22 polymorphic primers were 135 with an average of 6.13 alle...

Plants are important source of medicines and major resources of healthcare since ancient times. Of these evening primrose (Oenothera biensis L.) is used in the treatment of a number of diseases due to its distinct antioxidative and medicinal properties. The studies pertaining to seasonal patterns of some secondary metabolites accumulation in leaves...

Knowledge about the genetic variation and association among the various plant traits has enabled the plant breeders to effectively utilize the available cotton germplasm for the development of elite genotypes. The current study was carried out for two consecutive years to find out genetic diversity and association among multiple morphological trait...

Guava (Psidium guajava L.) is a luscious and important tropical fruit crop. The objective of the study was to develop vegetative propagation system to avoid clonal degradation in guava fruit plants. Softwood cuttings from five year old gola accession were prepared from the shoot tops of current season growth, measuring 12 cm in length and carrying...

Present study reports the establishment of a robust in vitro regeneration protocol for Pakistani sorghum lines, Pak China-1 and Sandal Bar. Mature seeds and immature inflorescences were assessed for morphogenesis. MS medium with 2,4-D and kinetin induced callus from both the explants. Whereas, MS fortified with NAA (0.5 mg/L) + kinetin (1 mg/ L) +...

To cite this paper: Nawaz, M.A., B. Sadia, F.S. Awan, M.A. Zia and I.A. Khan, 2013. Genetic diversity in hyper glucose oxidase producing Aspergillus niger UAF mutants by using molecular markers. Int. J. Agric. Biol., 15: 362‒366 Abstract Glucose oxidase (β-D glucose: oxygen-oxidoreductase, GOD) is of prime importance in food and health industries f...

In vitro raised cormels of 3.0 to 4.0 mm diameter of 3 commercial grown varieties of gladiolus viz. Traderhorn, White Friendship and Peter Pears were used to assess percentage of clonal fidelity with each other and with mother cormels using Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD) and Inter Simple Sequence Repeat (ISSR) markers. In order to regenera...

DNA fingerprints of four rose species, Rosa centifolia, R. Gruss-an-Teplitz, R. bourboniana, and R. damascena, were developed using RAPD-PCR. We identified a unique polymorphic band in R. centifolia. This 762-bp fragment was produced by the random primer GLI-2. The fragment was eluted and directly cloned in a TA cloning vector, pTZ57R/T. Digestion...

Forty cultivars (varieties/lines/clones) of potato were screened under field conditions to identify resistance against Potato leaf roll virus (PLRV). Enzyme linked immuno sorbent assay (ELISA) was the criterion to confirm virus infection. Area under disease progress curve (AUDPC) was calculated to quantify the disease resistance. Seven varieties/li...

Sorghum ranks fifth in worldwide economic importance among cereal crops and is one of the most important summer annual grasses of Pakistan. As it is a very diverse crop, sorghum genetic fingerprinting requires an efficient marker system. We estimated genetic divergence among 29 sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) genotypes, including approved varieties and l...

Estimation of genetic diversity and the relationship between varieties are valuable sources of cotton breeding. Present study employed 11 colored cottons (10 genotypes belonging to Gossypium hirsutum and one to Gossypium arboreum) and five white-linted genotypes (4 of these belonging to Gossypium hirsutum and one to Gossypium arboreum) collected fr...

A robust protocol for culturing meristems of Sorghum is required to assist with rapid genetic improvement of the genus. Through meristem culture, an efficient method for rapid micropropagation was developed for Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench. hybrids, namely NC+262, NC+6C21 and NC+6B50. Complete plants were regenerated directly from shoot meristems wi...

Genetic diversity analysis of chickpea germplasm can provide practical information for the selection of parental material and thus assist in planning breeding strategies. Chickpea seed is a good source of carbohydrates and proteins, constituting 80% of the total dry seed weight. Released cultivars and advanced lines of 30 chickpea genotypes were su...

A study was conducted at Vegetables Research Institute, AARI, Faisalabad and University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan during 2004-05. Plant material comprised 12 parental lines and their 66 F1 hybrids (direct crosses). Observations were recorded for days taken to flowering, number of flowers per cluster, number of fruits per cluster, number...

Potato (Solanum tuberosum) is the world’s fourth most economically important food crop, following wheat, rice and maize. Potato breeding is slow compared to that of other major crops, making it an important candidate for in vitro genetic manipulation involving direct gene transfer into isolated protoplasts (‘naked cells’, from which the walls have...

An efficient and reproducible protocol has been developed for the cryopreservation of cell suspension cultures of the potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) cv. Desiree. An evaluation was made of the effectiveness of different pre-culture and post-thaw treatments on cell growth, as measured by changes in biomass. Cell suspensions were cultured in UM medium...

An efficient and reproducible protocol has been developed for the cryopreservation of cell suspension cultures of the potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) cv. Desiree. An evaluation was made of the effectiveness of different pre- culture and post-thaw treatments on cell growth, as measured by changes in biomass. Cell suspensions were cultured in UM medium...

The reliability of the production and presence of disease resistance especially rust has sparked a renewed interest in improving landraces and exploiting these in wheat variety development programs. In vitro culture is a pre-requisite for most of the tools of biotechnology. In this context, three Pakistani wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) land races vi...