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Publications (87)
The influence of global climate change on agricultural output is substantial and increasing in tropical and temperate regions. Recent events in global climate change, such as increases in temperature, have negatively impacted not only plant growth but also plant immunity to pathogens. The emergence of novel pathotypes or modifications in host speci...
Waterlogging is a constant threat to crop productivity and ecological biodiversity. Plants face multiple challenges during waterlogging stress like metabolic reprogramming, hypoxia, nutritional depletion, reduction in gaseous exchange, pH modifications, microbiome alterations and disease promotion all of which threaten plants survival. Due to globa...
Plants are an important source of essential bioactive compounds that not only have a beneficial role in human health and nutrition but also act as drivers for shaping gut microbiome. However, the mechanism of their functional attributes is not fully understood despite their significance. One such important plant is Crocus sativus, also known as saf...
Climate change biotic and abiotic stressors lead to unpredictable crop yield losses, threatening global food and nutritional security. In the past, traditional breeding has been instrumental in fulfilling food demand; however, owing to its low efficiency, dependence on environmental conditions, labor intensity, and time consumption, it fails to mai...
Plants are challenged by different microbial pathogens that affect their growth and productivity. However, to defend pathogen attack, plants use diverse immune responses, such as pattern-triggered immunity (PTI), effector-triggered immunity (ETI), RNA silencing and autophagy, which are intricate and regulated by diverse signaling cascades. Pattern-...
Plant health monitoring is essential for understanding the impact of environmental stressors (biotic and abiotic) on crop production, and for tailoring plant developmental and adaptive responses accordingly. Plants are constantly exposed to different stressors like pathogens and soil pollutants (heavy metals and pesticides) which pose a serious thr...
Heavy metals (HMs) pose a serious threat to agricultural productivity. Therefore, there is a need to find sustainable approaches to combat HM stressors in agriculture. In this study, we isolated Trichoderma sp. TF-13 from metal-polluted rhizospheric soil, which has the ability to resist 1600 and 1200 μg mL–1 cadmium (Cd) and lead (Pb), respectively...
Background
How plants emit, perceive, and respond to sound vibrations (SVs) is a long-standing question in the field of plant sensory biology. In recent years, there have been numerous studies on how SVs affect plant morphological, physiological, and biochemical traits related to growth and adaptive responses. For instance, under drought SVs naviga...
Mechanosensitive channels are integral membrane proteins that rapidly translate extrinsic or intrinsic mechanical tensions into biological responses. They can serve as potential candidates for developing smart-resilient crops with efficient root systems.
Mechanosensitive (MS) calcium channels are molecular switches for mechanoperception and signal...
Iron deficiency is a significant cause of iron deficiency anemia (IDA). Treatment of IDA is challenging due to several challenges, including low target bioavailability, low palatability, poor pharmacokinetics, and extended therapeutic regimes. Nanotechnology holds the promise of revolutionizing the management and treatment of IDA. Smart biogenic en...
The pharmacological and preventive attributes of extracts from vegetable seeds have garnered widespread recognition within the scientific community. This study systematically assessed the in vitro antibacterial, antioxidant, and anti-breast cancer properties of phytochemicals present in various solvent-based vegetable seed extracts. We also conduct...
Beneficial microbes or their products have been key drivers for improving adaptive and growth features in plants under biotic and abiotic stress conditions. However, the majority of these studies so far have been utilized against individual stressors. In comparison to individual stressors, the combination of many environmental stresses that plants...
Humans are constantly facing multiple health challenges from both communicable and non-communicable diseases that significantly affect their health. Additionally, drug resistance or failure has made the situation even worse and poses serious challenges for researchers to develop new drugs. Hence, to address these problems, there is an urgent need t...
Necrotrophic fungal pathogens of the genus Alternaria are globally recognized as one of the most destructive plant pathogens in most of the industrially and agriculturally important crops inflicting myriad crop yield and economic losses. In addition, they have recently attracted global attention because of their capacity to produce abundant mycotox...
Medicinal plants are constantly challenged by different biotic inconveniences, which not only cause yield and economic losses but also affect the quality of products derived from them. Among them, Alternaria pathogens are one of the harmful fungal pathogens in medicinal plants across the globe. Therefore, a fast and accurate detection method in the...
The human intestinal microbiota, also known as the gut microbiota, comprises more than 100 trillion organisms, mainly bacteria. This number exceeds the host body cells by a factor of ten. The gastrointestinal tract, which houses 60%–80% of the host’s immune cells, is one of the largest immune organs. It maintains systemic immune homeostasis in the...
The daunting task of feeding an ever-growing population is an immense challenge for the contemporary scientific community, especially in view of the rapidly changing climate throughout the world. Amidst these threatening crises, we witness rapid development in genome editing (GE) technologies, revolutionizing the field of applied genomics and molec...
Soil flooding has emerged as a serious threat to modern agriculture due to the rapid global warming and climate change, resulting in catastrophic crop damage and yield losses. The most detrimental effects of waterlogging in plants are hypoxia, decreased nutrient uptake, photo-synthesis inhibition, energy crisis, and microbiome alterations, all of w...
Erysiphe cruciferarum, a causative agent of powdery mildew disease, has emerged as a serious threat in Brassica juncea and its closely related species. To date, no resistant cultivars have been identified in Brassica species against powdery mildew. Here, we used histopathological, biochemical, and molecular approaches to elucidate the powdery milde...
Plants are very often confronted by different heavy metal (HM) stressors that adversely impair their growth and productivity. Among HMs, chromium (Cr) is one of the most prevalent toxic trace metals found in agricultural soils because of anthropogenic activities, lack of efficient treatment, and unregulated disposal. It has a huge detrimental impac...
Hepatitis E virus (HEV) is the notable causative agent of acute and chronic hepatic, renal, pancreatic, neurological, and hematopoietic blood cell infections with high risk in immunocompromised patients. Hepatic failure is mostly documented among adults, pregnant women, and patients with preexisting liver disease. HEV is a positive sense RNA virus...
The present investigation was performed to evaluate the variability of the essential oil composition present in the seed extract of Kala zeera (Bunium persicum Bioss.) obtained from different geographical zones of Northwestern-Himalayan using Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrum (GC-MS). The results of the GC-MS analysis revealed significant difference...
Despite the fact that numerous studies have amassed vast amounts of data on plant-sound vibration (SV) interactions, there has been no report on the role of neurotransmitters (NTs) or biomediators in SV signaling in plants. Plant NTs have emerged as potential signaling molecules in a variety of plant systems where they play an important role in pla...
Plant diseases pose a serious threat to crop production and the agricultural economy across the globe. Currently, chemical pesticides are frequently employed to combat these infections, which cause environmental toxicity and the emergence of resistant pathogens. Moreover, the genetic manipulation of plant defense pathways and the breeding of resist...
Owing to the increasing global population and food demand, cereals are the important source of food supply in the world. Due to global warming and other stresses, the overall nutritional quality and quantity have been severely affected in cereal crops. Various research studies have been conducted for cereal crop improvement but nutrient deficiency...
Despite the fact that numerous studies have amassed vast amounts of data on plant-sound vibration (SV) interactions, there has been no report on the role of neurotransmitters (NTs) or biomediators in SV signaling in plants. Plant NTs have emerged as potential signaling molecules in a variety of plant systems where they play an important role in pla...
In recent years, the development and application of biocompatible nanomaterials in the detection of fingerprints have become a major focus for the forensic sector and crime investigators. This study aims to synthesize biocompatible silica nanoparticles (Si NPs) through cost-effective green methods and will be used to detect a latent fingerprint on...
Pigeon pea (Cajanus cajan L.) is one of the important legume crop that contributes significantly to the nutritional stability and economy of billions of people in most developing nations (Sharma et al., 2020). Like other legumes, pigeon pea often offers more balanced and nutrient-dense calories and proteins (20%–22%) than cereals, making them essen...
Humans rely heavily on cereal grains as a key source of nutrients, hence regular improvement of cereal crops is essential for ensuring food security. The current food crisis at the global level is due to the rising population and harsh climatic conditions which prompts scientists to develop smart resilient cereal crops to attain food security. Cere...
Phytohormone-like plant growth regulators are becoming hallmarks in plant stress biology since they can offer incredible benefits to plants, such as increased crop output, improved growth features and stress tolerance. Among them polyamines (PAs) such as putrescine (Put), spermidine (Spd), and spermine (Spm), are recognized as important bio-stimula...
Lovastatin is a competitive inhibitor of the enzyme 3-hydroxy-3-methyl-glutaryl-CoA
reductase (HMG-CoA Reductase). The HMG-CoA reductase is responsible for the production of
mevalonate by the reduction of HMG-CoA. It is a rate-limiting step in the production of cholesterol.
The current study demonstrates the production of lovastatin from an ethidiu...
Avian influenza A viruses (AIVs) pose a persistent threat to humans owing to their reassortment and antigenic drift properties. Among them is H9N2, a low-pathogenic avian influenza virus first discovered in the non-human host and later found infective to humans with huge pandemic potential. In recent years, antiviral resistance has become an increa...
Cadmium toxicity is one of the deleterious abiotic factors that reduce wheat production. Two different cultivars (Akbar and Dilkash) were compared for their cadmium (0, 40 and 80 mg/kg) tolerance and responses towards Bacillus subtilis NA2, Aspergillus niger PMI-118 and L-proline. Both microbes were tested for heavy metal tolerance and production o...
Among abiotic stresses, salinity is a significant limiting factor affecting agricultural productivity, survival, and production, resulting in significant economic losses. Considering the salinity problem, the goal of this study was to identify a halotolerant beneficial soil bacterium to circumvent salinity-induced phytotoxicity. Here, strain KR-17...
Seaweeds are non-vascular, photosynthetic that inhabit the coastal regions commonly within rocky intertidal or submerged reef-like habitats and have been one of the richest and most promising sources of bioactive primary and secondary metabolites with antimicrobial properties. They selectively absorb elements like Na, K, Ca, Mg, I, and Br from the...
With the twin pressures of high population growth and extreme weather events, developing countries are the worst hit in meeting the food demands of their people, with millions unable to access adequate and nutritionally balanced food. Crop production must be increased by 70% to keep up with the food demands of a rapidly growing population, which is...
Mutagenic effectiveness and efficiency are the most important factors determining the success of mutation breeding, a coherent tool for quickly enhancing genetic diversity in crops. However, conclusive evidence of using an effective and efficient dose of gamma (γ) rays and sodium azide (SA) for genetic improvement is scant. The present study assess...
Mycotoxins are produced primarily as secondary fungal metabolites. Mycotoxins are toxic in nature and naturally produced by various species of fungi, which usually contaminate food and feed ingredients. The growth of these harmful fungi depends on several environmental factors, such as pH, humidity, and temperature; therefore, the mycotoxin distrib...
Discharge of nanoparticles (NPs) into aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems during manufacturing processes and from various commercial goods has become a significant ecotoxicological concern. After reaching soil systems, NPs cause deleterious effects on soil fertility, microbial activity, and crop productivity. Taking into consideration the medicinal...
Pesticide overuse can have a negative effect on the development processes of non-target plants.
Candida auris, an evolving multidrug-resistant pathogenic yeast, is known for causing severe invasive infections associated with high mortality rates in hospitalized individuals. Distinct from other Candida species, C. auris can persist for longer periods on different surfaces and is resistant to all of the major classes of antifungal drugs. Theref...
Heavy metal toxicity has become an impediment to agricultural productivity, which presents major human health concerns in terms of food safety. Among them, arsenic (As) a non-essential heavy metal has gained worldwide attention because of its noxious effects on agriculture and public health. The increasing rate of global warming and anthropogenic a...
Arsenic (As) contamination and bioaccumulation are a serious threat to agricultural plants. To address this issue, we checked the efficacy of As tolerant plant growth promoting bacteria (PGPB), zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnO NPs) and oxalic acid (OA) in Luffa acutangula grown on As rich soil. The selected most As tolerant PGPB i.e Providencia vermic...
Plant pathology has been revolutionized by the emergence and intervention of next-generation sequencing technologies (NGS) which provide a fast, cost-effective, and reliable diagnostic for any class of pathogens. NGS has made tremendous advancements in the area of research and diagnostics of plant infecting viromes and has bridged plant virology wi...
In legumes, waterlogging is a major detrimental factor leading to huge yield losses. Generally, legumes lack tolerance to submergence, and conventional breeding to develop tolerant varieties are limited due to the lack of tolerant germplasm and potential target genes. Moreover, our understanding of the various signalling cascades, their interaction...
Indian mustard (Brassica juncea), an elite oilseed crop in the Brassicae family is challenged by various biotic stresses. Alternaria leaf blight is the most devastating disease in B. juncea caused by Alternaria brassicae. Hence engineering B. juncea plants for improved Alternaria disease resistance becomes imperative. Plant chitinases are key playe...
Plants, being sessile, face an array of biotic and abiotic stresses in their lifespan that endanger their survival. Hence, optimized uptake of mineral nutrients creates potential new routes for enhancing plant health and stress resilience. Recently, minerals (both essential and non-essential) have been identified as key players in plant stress biol...
Genome-editing (GE) is having a tremendous influence around the globe in the life science community. Among its versatile uses, the desired modifications of genes, and more importantly the transgene (DNA)-free approach to develop genetically modified organism (GMO), are of special interest. The recent and rapid developments in genome-editing technol...
Early blight is the most devastating disease in tomato which causes huge yield losses across the globe. Hence, development of specific, efficient and ecofriendly tools are required to increase the disease resistance in tomato plants. Here, we systematically investigate the defensive role and priming effect of silicon (Si) in tomato plants under con...
Gene editing technologies have revolutionized the development of new and innovative bio-products in plants as well as animals in recent years. Of the different techniques available, CRISPR/Cas has been and will remain the basis of genome engineering for researchers across the world because of its easiness to use and specificity. There have been exc...
Throughout the world, more people suffer from malnutrition than hunger, particularly in developing countries. Some nutrients like iodine, vitamin A, iron, and zinc malnutrition are significant concerns. Biofortification is the most resilient method to improve the nutrient content of the crop plants and is a durable and cost-effective method of intr...
Heavy metal and ionic contamination in wastewater and surface water has been reported in many parts of the world and studied as a major global issue. Their exposure in a trace amount is hazardous for human health, thus; it is critical and challenging to remove undesirable metals from the water system. Today various methods have been placed for effe...
Alternaria blight is one of the most devastating diseases of rapeseed-mustard caused by a necrotrophic fungus Alternaria brassicae. Lack of satisfactory resistance resource in Brassica is still a main obstruction for developing resistance against Alternaria. In this study, we have selected Brassica juncea, Sinapis alba and Camelina sativa to unders...
Chitinases belong to the group of Pathogenesis-related (PR) proteins that provides protection against fungal pathogens. This study presents the, genome-wide identification and characterization of chitinase gene family in two important oilseed crops B. juncea and C. sativa belonging to family Brassicaceae. We have identified 47 and 79 chitinase gene...
Mung bean is an important pulse crop. It is highly nutritive but is vulnerable to salinity stress. Therefore, the present study was aimed to investigate the protective effect of silicon (Si) against salt stress-induced damage to mung bean plants. Mung bean plants treated with NaCl (0, 50 and 100 mM) showed considerable declines in length and dry we...
Pulse crops being an excellent source of lysine-rich proteins, vitamins, several essential minerals, and secondary metabolites are of immense importance in human nutrition. Due to lack of adequate amount of protein and micronutrient in the diet, over a billion people are suffering from malnutrition around the world. In this regard, pulses play a cr...
Heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) is considered to be the main protein in diseases arising as a result of oxidative and inflammatory insults. Tremendous research has been carried out on HO-1 since years, pertaining its cytoprotective effect against oxidative injury and other cellular stresses. HO-1, by regulating intracellular levels of pro-oxidant heme, or...
Diabetes is a global epidemic problem growing exponentially in Asian countries posing a serious threat. Among diabetes, maturity-onset diabetes of the young (MODY) is a heterogeneous group of monogenic disorders that occurs due to β cell dysfunction. Genetic defects in the pancreatic β-cells result in the decrease of insulin production required for...
In this study, we systematically examined the expression patterns of pathogenesis-related genes in model plant Arabidopsis thaliana after Alternaria brassicae inoculation using reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction(RT-PCR). Based on the results, none of the PR-1 and PR-2 like genes were induced significantly in the unwounded local or dist...
Pathogenesis-related (PR) proteins and antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are a group of diverse molecules that are
induced by phytopathogens as well as defense related signaling molecules. They are the key components of plant
innate immune system especially systemic acquired resistance (SAR), and are widely used as diagnostic molecular
markers of defen...
It is not the most grounded of the species that survive, nor the most shrewd, however one most receptive to change. Crop plants being sessile are subjected to various abiotic stresses resulting significant yield losses about an average of more than 50 percent, thus greatly threatening the global crop production. In this regard, plant breeding innov...
Genetic engineering in today’s world is gaining much importance. It provides plant varieties with good agronomic characteristics, superior quality values and expressing traits of agricultural interest such as insect resistance and herbicide tolerance. The production and use of genetically modified organisms (GMO’s) is increasing steadily. There are...
Environmental pollution due to global industrialization and urbanization has become a serious matter of concern for human inhabitants throughout the world. As safety point of human health and environmental issues, it required an efficient removal for the sake of minimized inlet of these hazard materials into the food chain generated by organic and...
Systemic acquired resistance (SAR) is an inducible defense response in plants that provides enhanced resistance against a variety of pathogens. In this regard, SAR marker gene PR1(pathogenesis-related gene 1) was isolated from Brassica juncea and was named as BjPR1. The amino acid sequence of BjPR1 protein showed 99, 92, and 78% similarity with kno...
Systemic acquired resistance (SAR) is an inducible defense response in plants that provides enhanced resistance against a variety of pathogens. In this regard, SAR marker gene PR1 (pathogenesis-related gene 1) was isolated from Brassica juncea and was named as BjPR1. The amino acid sequence of BjPR1 protein showed 99, 92, and 78% similarity with kn...
Pathogenesis-related proteins (PRs) are the antimicrobial proteins which are commonly used as signatures of defense signaling pathways and systemic acquired resistance. However, in Brassica juncea most of the PR proteins have not been fully characterized and remains largely enigmatic. In this study, full-length cDNA sequences of SA (PR1, PR2, PR5)...
Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are generally considered as an essential component of innate immunity, thereby providing the first line of defense against wide range of pathogens. In addition, they can also kill the pathogens which are generally resistant to number of antibiotics, thereby providing the avenues for the development of future therapeuti...
Brassica juncea (Indian mustard) is a commercially important oil seed crop, which is highly affected by many biotic stresses. Among them, Alternaria leaf blight and powdery mildew are the most devastating diseases leading to huge yield losses in B. juncea around the world. In this regard, genetic engineering is a promising tool that may possibly al...
Shoot regeneration from the calli of hypocotyls in Brassica juncea. (A)
B. juncea plantlets grown in magenta boxes. (B) Hypocotyls on pre-culture media. (C) Explants on co-cultivation media. (D) Explants on selective media. (E) Explants grown on shoot induction media. (F,G) Explants grown in shoot regeneration media. (H,I) Explants grown in rooting...
Endosulfan contamination is one of the major concerns of soil ecosystem, which causes detrimental effects not only to humans but also to animals and plants. Therefore, the aim of this study was to isolate and identify a novel bacterial strain capable of degrading endosulfan in agriculture contaminated soils. A novel bacterial strain was isolated fr...
The full-length pathogen-inducible plant defensin gene encoding 80 amino acid sequences of pathogen-related gene PR12 (Bjdefensin) was isolated from Brassica juncea. Conserved domain (CD) search reveals its similarity with gamma thionin and knottins families of plant antimicrobial peptides. The protein blast reveals more than 80% of its similarity...
Chitinases are the hydrolytic enzymes which belong to the pathogenesis-related (PR) protein family and play an important role not only in plant defense but also in various abiotic stresses. However, only a limited number of chitinase genes have been characterised in B. juncea. In this study, we have characterised B. juncea class IV chitinase gene (...
Genomic selection (GS) is a promising approach exploiting molecular genetic markers to design novel breeding programs and to develop new markers-based models for genetic evaluation. In plant breeding, it provides opportunities to increase genetic gain of complex traits per unit time and cost. The cost-benefit balance was an important consideration...
Alternaria black spot of rapeseed mustard caused by the necrotrophic fungal pathogen Alternaria brassicae is one of the most important plant diseases in India. A comparative study on defense gene induction was undertaken to explore the signaling mechanisms that govern the defense responses of susceptible Brassica juncea and moderately resistant Sin...
Eighty four halotolerant bacterial strains were isolated from the saline habitats and screened for growth at different NaCl concentrations. All grew well at 5% NaCl, but only 25% isolates showed growth at 20% NaCl concentration. Five strains SL3, SL32, SL35, J8W and PU62 growing well in 20% NaCl concentrations were further characterized for multipl...
