Thissa Karunarathna

University of Ruhuna · Department of Biosystems Technology

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via the original article.

The soap has been playing a key role in personal hygiene practices in industries, service sector and households. The demand for hand washing soap is continuously increasing due to the recommendation of frequent hand washing as a safety precaution for Covid-19 pandemic. Numerous studies have been conducted to develop soaps with various herbal incorp...

The large production volume combined with the high lignocellulose content makes elephant dung an attractive and underutilized biomass resource, but also presents waste management problems for elephant orphanages. This study explored the conversion of elephant dung into biochars by slow pyrolysis at 500°C for the recovery of phosphate. The unmodifie...

Key message Identification of an EST-SSR molecular marker associated with Blister blight, a common fungal disease of tea, facilitating marker-assisted selection, marking a milestone in tea molecular breeding. Abstract lister blight (BB) leaf disease of tea, caused by the fungus Exobasidium vexans, results in 25–30% crop loss annually. BB is presen...

Background: Tea (Camellia sinensis (L). O. Kuntze) is known as the oldest, mild stimulating caffeine containing non-alcoholic beverage. One of the major threats in south Asian tea industry is the blister blight leaf disease (BB), caused by the fungus Exobasidium vexans Masse. SSR DNA marker EST SSR 073 is used as a molecular marker to tag blister...

For any crop species, genetic variability is one of the key factors, which decide the success of its breeding program. Therefore, as a perennial crop, it is important for the tea breeder to estimate the genetic diversity and relationship in cultivated gene pool in order to plan future cultivar improvement programs. In the current study, for the fir...

Sri Lanka is the second largest global tea exporter. Genetically diverse planting material are vital in adjusting for biotic and abiotic stresses. Accordingly, sixty four tea cultivars, which represent the entirety of the recommended cultivars consisting of 50 improved cultivars and 14 Estate selections were analyzed at 33 Genomic and EST-SSR loci...

Blister blight caused by biotrophic fungus Exobasidium vexans Massee is the most problematic leaf disease in tea (Camellia sinensis (L.) O. Kuntze) However, there is little information available on the genetic variation of E. vexans in Sri Lanka. Understanding the molecular make-up of the pathogen and pathogen population will be helpful for identif...

Blister blight caused by Exobasidium vexans is a devastating leaf disease in tea (Camellia sinensis) in almost all tea growing regions in Asia. This disease causes serious crop losses under inclement weather conditions besides affecting quality of made tea. Although tea cultivars show varying degrees of resistance/susceptibility to blister blight,...

The genetic base of cultivated tea (Camellia sinensis L.) is narrow due to recurrent use of a limited number of accessions as parents in the tea breeding programmes. Exploitation and conservation of genetic resources is of paramount importance for sustainability of any crop species. Non-tea species which belong to the genus Camellia is a source whi...