Sreetama Bhadra

German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig | iDiv · Evolution und Adaptation

Vivipary is a rare phenomenon in Zingiberaceae. In this article we report vivipary in the genus Hedychium for the first time.

Advances in nanotechnology have led to the large-scale production of nanoparticles, which, in turn, increases the chances of environmental exposure. While humans (consumers/workers) are primarily at risk of being exposed to the adverse effect of nanoparticles, the effect on plants and other components of the environment cannot be ignored. The prese...

In this paper, karyological investigations of four economically and medicinally important Indian species of Zingiberaceae belonging to the genera Curcuma and Zingiber were performed. The somatic chromosome number of Curcuma amada was 2n = 42 and that of Curcuma longa was 2n = 63, while the chromosome numbers of both Zingiber officinale and Zingiber...

Background and Aims Cytological parameters such as chromosome numbers and genome sizes of plants are used routinely for studying evolutionary aspects of polyploid plants. Members of Zingiberaceae show a wide range of inter- and intrageneric variation in their reproductive habits and ploidy levels. Conventional cytological study in this group of pl...

Angiosperm diversity arises from trait flexibility and repeated evolutionary radiations, but the role of genomic characters in these radiations remains unclear. In this opinion article, we discuss how genome size can influence angiosperm diversification via its intricate link with cell size, tissue packing, and physiological processes which, in tur...

Introduction: Most global biodiversity is in developing economies. Decades of capacity building should have built sufficient in-country capacity to develop biodiversity baselines; yet has effort provided the expertise to build these baselines? Methods: Grants and access to research opportunities are often linked to success in publishing, with the H...

Sentinel plasticine prey has been increasingly used to estimate predation pressure. The use of plasticine prey may, however, bias the results, as this method was originally designed to account for predation by organisms that can visually recognize the shapes and colors of their prey. To evaluate the limitations of using sentinel plasticine prey, we...

Chenopodium quinoa Willd. is rapidly gaining importance worldwide as a superfood. However, structural diversity and asymmetry analyses of chromosomes of different cultivars of the species are largely understudied primarily owing to their small chromosomes. In this paper, karyomorphological investigations were performed on 21 cultivars of C. quinoa...

The genus Kaempferia L., consisting of aromatic and ornamental species found in east and south-east Asia, have profound ethno-medicinal usages as antimicrobial and anticancer agents, attributable to presence of novel cyclohexane derivatives, flavonoids and di-terpenes. Represented by only 7 species in India, a comprehensive genetic study of Kaempfe...

Background and aims Unravelling the factors shaping microbial community structure across plant holobiont is required to promote plant health and crop productivity. Methods We compared microbial communities in soils and plant compartments of two contrasting quinoa cultivars, grown in low-input cropping systems along an elevation gradient in northwe...

The study of genetic variation in different plant groups have been facilitated since the development of polymerase chain reaction. Sequencing techniques being expensive and time-consuming, widely used, rapid and cost-effective DNA-based arbitrarily amplified dominant markers like RAPD (random amplified polymorphic DNA), ISSR (inter-simple sequence...

The genus Kaempferia (Family Zingiberaceae) encompasses a number of aromatic species distributed over the entire East and South-east Asia, many of which have profound ethno-medicinal usages. Phytochemical analyses have revealed the presence of a variety of medicinally important chemicals in different species of Kaempferia that include cyclohexane d...

Variation of plant traits across ontogeny can play an important role in shaping the vital functions of growth, reproduction and defense, depending on the priorities of resource investment. Plant functional traits in seven ontogenetic stages, following complete trajectories, of a tropical light-demanding evergreen medicinal treelet (Rauvolfia vomito...

India is the largest producer and exporter of turmeric (Curcuma longa), and different cultivars of this crop are traditionally characterized using agronomic traits, such as rhizome weight, yield potential, color and aroma of rhizome, curcumin content, and stability of curcumin content, which are influenced by environmental factors. The purpose of t...

Tulbaghia violacea, called 'wild garlic', is a native of Africa, although it is widely cultivated all over the world for its medicinal and horticultural importance. Absence of the genus from Indian floras and taxonomical surveys, as well as lack of proper molecular and cytogenetic characterizations, have instigated questions regarding its origin an...

In this correspondence, the distribution of a population of Amomum kingii Baker, a Critically Endangered species of Zingiberaceae, is reported from Darjeeling District, West Bengal, India. Previously, this plant was described only from Sikkim, India and no other population of this endemic plant has ever been found outside this distributional range....

The family Zingiberaceae, with its centre of diversity in South and South–East Asia, has a large number of species in Eastern India, which are poorly studied. The present study attempted to utilize cytological and DNA marker analyses to complement and supplement morphological characterization of 70 genotypes belonging to 36 species under 12 genera...

In the present investigation an attempt was made to carry out morphological and molecular characterization of Colletotrichum isolate (CI) associated with leaf spot disease of soybean. Pathogenicity test was carried out with the isolate and symptoms of leaf spot were found to appear after 7 days of inoculation. The pathogen was compared with 2 isola...

West Bengal and Meghalaya encompasses a bulk of Eastern Himalaya and the present study reports the diversity of Zingiberaceae in these two states. A total of 36 species belonging to 12 genera were recorded and morphologically described in the present investigation including their chromosome counts.

The inset cover image shows an artificially coloured Bio-SEM micrograph of Alpinia zerumbet nuclei isolated using a modified Zingiberaceous nuclei isolation buffer, MB01. The photograph was taken using a ZEISS EVO-MA 18 special edition Scanning Electron Microscope (Zeiss, Oberkochen, Germany). Bar = 2 μM. See Sadhu et al. (pp. 1057–1070). doi:10.10...