Zaharah S. S.

Universiti Putra Malaysia | UPM · Department of Crop Science

The amendment of soils with silicate (Si) compounds is essential to promote growth performance and control Fusarium wilt disease in bananas. Two successive greenhouse trials were conducted at the experimental farm of the University of Putra Malaysia. The treatments were arranged in split plots using a randomized complete block design (RCBD) with fo...

Biostimulants such as silicate (SiO32−) compounds and antagonistic bacteria can alter soil microbial communities and enhance plant resistance to the pathogens and Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. cubense (FOC), the causal agent of Fusarium wilt disease in bananas. A study was conducted to investigate the biostimulating effects of SiO32− compounds and anta...

A field investigation was conducted in a Fusarium-infected area to evaluate the effectiveness of silicate compounds with antagonist bacteria on morpho-physiological growth performance in bananas. The roots of banana plants were treated by drenching the soil with four different treatments: control (without any treatment), CBZ (Carbendazim fungicide...

A significant part of marker-assisted backcross breeding (MABB) is recurrent parent genome recovery (RPGR). The purpose of this study was to introduce MABB-mediated resistance genes against numerous bacterial leaf blight (BLB) pathogens. Here, we examine the introgression of four Xoo resistance genes to the high-yielding Malaysian MR297 lineage Xa2...

Passion fruit is a short-term crop with a life span of up to 2 years. Nowadays, passion fruit captures increasing demand in the global market. However, passion fruit is considered an underrated fruit in Malaysia as the production has not reached commercial cultivation. Highlighting the passion fruit as the next important commodity could rejuvenate...

Bougainvillea, popularly known as ‘Bunga kertas’ in Malaysia, is thoroughly explored for nutritional and medicinal purposes. Bougainvillea has been shown to possess alkaloids and flavonoids which are widely used in folk medicine to treat different illnesses such as inflammatory, diarrheal, ulcer, and diabetic. Despite its major conventional therape...

The demand for watermelon for consumption in a fresh form as a source of minerals and vitamins is on the increase. Consequently, any agronomic approach to promoting the productivity and quality of watermelon is a technique that needs to be studied. Thus, an experiment was conducted at Universiti Malaysia Terengganu’s research farm to compare the im...

With the growing importance of fruits as valuable food resources, attention has been paid in recent years to enhance productivity and quality. Increasing productivity per unit area through agronomic management is one of the important strategies to increase the production of fruit crops. Keeping this view, this review was undertaken to improve under...

Traditional fertilization and the loss of Nitrogen (N) is a common phenomenon in agriculture. Application of urea with urease inhibitor is an alteration measure of urea hydrolysis and N metabolism. Hence, the objective of this study was to determine the short-term foliar application effect of N-(n‑butyl) thiophosphoric triamide (NBPT) on N metaboli...

Drought stress is one of the challenges that can affect the growth and the quality of strawberry. The study aims to determine the growth, biochemical changes and leaf gas exchange of three strawberry cultivars under drought stress. This study was conducted in a glasshouse at Indonesian Citrus and Subtropical Fruits Research Institute, Indonesia, fr...

This study was conducted to determine the effect of pollination methods (PMs) and integrated fertilizer (IF) application on the pollination rate, yield, and fruit quality of rockmelon (Cucumis melo L. var. Reticulatus cv. Glamour). This factorial experiment was arranged in a split plot design with four replications. Two rates of IF between chemical...

Slow growth rate of tissue-cultured banana seedling’s performance and high post-transplanting mortality rate are commonly due to low rate mineral content in the soil, climate change and soil-borne disease. This study aimed to evaluate the effects of potassium silicate (K 2 SiO 3 ) on growth, physio-biochemical changes on Berangan banana seedlings g...

Neem leaf extracts (NLEs) have frequently been used to inhibit plant diseases and for the development of bio-fertilizer, leading to the commercial exploitation of this tree. However, previous studies have indicated contradictory outcomes when NLE was used as an antifungal disease treatment and bio-fertilizer applied through the soil on several crop...

Rock melon is a high value greenhouse crop. Reduction of economical crop yield in high temperature stress due to global warming is an emerging issue with Rock melon. Therefore, this study was conducted for evaluate the growth, physiology and yield of different Rock melon cultivars grown under high temperature stress. Four cultivars of rock melon (L...

One of the most critical aspects of marker-assisted backcross breeding is recurrent parent genome recovery (RPGR). RPGR ensures that only the genes of interest are retained without further segregation in the recombined progenies while the unwanted genomic segments are completely deleted. This experiment aimed to introgress multiple bacterial leaf b...

In agricultural production, nitrogen loss leads to economic loss and is a high environmental risk affecting plant growth, yield, and quality. Use of the N fertilizer with a urease inhibitor is thus necessary to minimize N losses and increase the efficiency of N. This study aimed to evaluate the effects of N-(n-butyl) Thiophosphoric Triamide (NBPT)...

The application of pyroligneous acid (PA) and UPMB10 (Bacillus subtilis) can improve the growth and yield of dwarf long bean (DLB) without affecting the environment. PA commonly derived from charcoal production as a by-product. Meanwhile, UPMB10 is a plant growth-promoting rhizobacterium (PGPR) isolated from oil palm root. Previous studies investig...

Eggplant (Solanum melongena) falls under the fruit species under the family of Solanaceae. It is grown widely throughout tropical and subtropical Zones in the world. It is a good source of phenolics, flavonoids, vitamins, calcium and protein. Due to its high nutritional properties, the demand for eggplant is increasing annually. However, due to lim...

Organic fertilisers are of biological origin and the amount of nutrients they produce varies greatly. Besides providing the essential macro and micro nutrients, they also provide an array of plant growth-promoting substances. Organic agronomy is a relatively recent technique of farming in developed countries. While several studies were conducted on...

Soursop (Annona muricata L.) is increasingly planted in Malaysia for its agronomical importance as a multipurpose plant with medicinal and health benefits. However, there is limited information on soursop cultivation in Malaysia. Soursop can be inoculated with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) as a sustainable approach for successful seedlings gro...

Strawberry (Fragaria x ananassa Duch) has a large number of nutrients, which are useful for human health. In Indonesia, water stress is one of the climate changes that affect the growth and quality of strawberry. Therefore, fast recovery can be crucial to adjusting crops to water stress. Additional fertilizers can alleviate the negative impact of w...

Sweet potato is the most important food crop after wheat, rice, maize and cassava. Soil compaction degrades soil by altering its structure and aggregate, thereby causing poor plant-water relationship. This study aimed to determine the effect of soil compaction on some soil physical properties and eco-physiological characteristics of sweet potato. P...

Nitrogen (N) fertilizer is commonly used to supply sufficient N for plant uptake, for which urea is one of the highly preferred synthetic N fertilizers due to its high N content. Unfortunately, N provided by urea is rapidly lost upon urea application to soils through ammonia volatilization, leaching, and denitrification. Thus, treatment of urea wit...

Gray mold disease caused by Botrytis cinerea is a damaging postharvest disease in tomato plants, and it is known to be a limiting factor in tomato production. This study aimed to evaluate antifungal activities of Vernonia amygdalina leaf extracts against B. cinerea and to screen the phytochemical compound in the crude extract that had the highest a...

The awareness of the general public on healthy foods has been a major concern and people are looking for the right variety of rice for diabetic patients. High amylose content rice with low glycaemic index (GI), which is an indicator of sugar release in the blood, is beneficial for human health. The present work was aimed to determine the physicoche...

Background and Objective: The maximum growth after receiving brassinolide, may vary between species. The functional leaf, shoot and root segment are the main growth factor which may directly reflect to yield. Thus, the aim of this study was to investigate the effect of different concentrations of exogenous application of BL on growth of leaves, sho...

Relationship between chlorophyll and relative chlorophyll values obtained using soil plant analytical development (SPAD)-502 meter after brassinolide treatment were determined in two varieties of fig (Fiscus carica L.) at an open field conditions using fresh weight basis. The experiment was arranged as split plot randomized complete block design (S...

Brassinolide (BL) is a plant hormone showing wide occurrence in the plant kingdom with unique biological effects on growth and physiological traits. The fig varieties, Improved Brown Turkey (IBT) and Masui Dauphine (MD), are commonly found in Indonesia and Malaysia. There is limited information on exogenous brassinolide application on these varieti...

There is limited information and insures for next studies on exogenous brassinolide application fig cultivar of Masui Dauphine (MD) and Improved Brown Turkey (IBT). Therefore, the research objective was to determine the impact of concentrations of exogenous brassinolide application on Leaf Area Index (LAI), Leaf Mass Ratio (LMR), Net Assimilation R...

Water stress or synonymy referring to the drought season is the major abiotic stress which affect growth, physiology and biochemical activity in plant and cause major losses to agriculture production sector. This study was aimed to determine the effects of exogenous application of brassinolide (BR) and combination of minerals on growth performance,...

Grey mold disease caused by Botrytis cinerea is the most severe disease in tomato and known to be a limiting factor in tomato production worldwide. Synthetic fungicide is widely used to control this pathogen. However, it posed detrimental effects to the environment and human health as well as increasing resistance in B. cinerea. Vernonia amygdalina...

Tomato has been grown successfully in highlands of Malaysia. However, the production does not meet the demand in the large market due to problem related to climate change and lack of smart control mechanism for the tomato crop to grow healthily in the micro climate. Tomato requires optimum temperature to ensure a good quality fruit production espec...

This paper presents an optimization approach of calibrating a tomato greenhouse energy model using hybrid Evolutionary Programming (EP)-EnergyPlus. The proposed methodology applies automated simulation-based approach by coupling Matlab and EnergyPlus to perform building energy simulation and obtain the best variables configuration with minimal erro...

Background Corn silage is an important feed for intense ruminant production, but the growth of corn relies heavily on the use of chemical fertilizers. Sustainable crop production requires careful management of all nutrient sources available on a farm, particularly in corn-based cropping systems. Methods Experiments were conducted to determine the...

Corn productivity in tropical low external input systems is usually limited by low soil fertility because crop uptake leads to a gradual depletion of soil nutrient stocks. Biological nitrogen fixation (BNF) plays an important role in the nitrogen budget of cereal/legume mixed culture. Experiment was carried out to investigate chemical, organic and...

Tomato plants are sensitive toward climate changes thus affecting growth development and pollination of the plant. This study was conducted to assess energy performance and environment in greenhouse agriculture to support tomatoes cultivation using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and OpenStudio EnergyPlus software. To achieve efficient energy pe...

Enrichment of soil fertility with organic amendment offers a new strategy for enhancing soil physical properties and improving soil fertility. Application of BioRichar can be a new alternative for adoption of organic banana cultivation in Malaysia. This study was conducted to determine optimum BioRichar rate for growth enhancement of banana cv. Ber...

Brassinolide (BR) represents one of the plant growth regulators essential in multiple developmental processes in plants including cell division, cell elongation and reproductive development. This study was aimed to investigate the best concentration of BR for optimum growth of young banana (Musa acuminata cv. Berangan) tissue culture. The plantlets...

The present research was conducted to evaluate the ability of Bacillus subtilis to supress Fusarium wilt disease of banana in BioricharTM amended soil under different soil moisture regimes. Banana plants were inoculated with different volumes of Bacillus subtilis (0, 20, 40 and 60 mL) given at concentration 108 CFU mL􀀀1 and subjected to three water...

A field investigation under tropical climate was undertaken in the research plot of the Universiti Putra Malaysia, Selangor, Malaysia to study the effects of exogenous application of plant growth regulators on growth performance, physiology changes and biochemical analysis of banana plants (Musa acuminata cv. Berangan) under irrigated and rainfed c...

Corn silage is an important feed for intensive ruminant production but the growing of corn has relied heavily on the use of chemical fertilizer. Sustainable crop production requires a careful management of all nutrient sources available in a farm, particularly in corn-based cropping systems. Experiments were conducted to determine the appropriate t...

Corn silage is an important feed for intensive ruminant production but the growing of corn has relied heavily on the use of chemical fertilizer. Sustainable crop production requires a careful management of all nutrient sources available in a farm, particularly in corn-based cropping systems. Experiments were conducted to determine the appropriate t...

Aromatic rice cultivars constitute a small but special group of rice and are considered the best in terms of quality and aroma. Aroma is one of the most significant quality traits of rice, and variety with aroma has a higher price in the market. This research was carried out to study the genetic diversity among the 50 aromatic rice accessions from...

All the 147 SSR markers that were used in this study are presented in a supplementary table.

Enrichment of soil fertility with organic amendment offers a new strategy for enhancing soil physical properties and improving soil fertility. Application of BioRichar can be a new alternative for adoption of organic banana cultivation in Malaysia. This study was conducted to determine optimum BioRichar rate for growth enhancement of banana cv. Ber...

The interaction between plant and microbes can contribute towards plant health and productivity. Plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) are the bacteria that can enhance plant growth performance and production. PGPR were isolated from the rhizosphere of strawberry plants and the beneficial properties were identified. Effects of bacterial isola...

Soilless media (SM) is a common worldwide growing method for industrial horticultural production. It is a good growing medium that relies on the properties that beneft plant growth i.e. physical property, chemical properties and microbial activity. There are several SM with good characteristics such as empty fruit bunch compost (EFBC), coconut coir...

Corn silage has become more popular as high quality silage for ruminant animals around the world. Seed proportion of intercropping components is a factor affecting silage quality. An experiment was carried out to evaluate effect of different planting proportions of corn and soybean in terms of silage volatile fatty acids (VFA) profiles. In this exp...

This study evaluated the effects of Averrhoa bilimbi juice extract and storage temperature on lipid oxidation and microbial spoilage of spent chicken meat. Ten, 80 weeks old spent chickens were slaughtered, eviscerated and aged for 24 h at 4°C. Thereafter, the Pectoralis major muscles and right thighs were excised and marinated in either A. bilimbi...

The highly perishable nature of mango fruit and its susceptibility to chilling injury (CI) when stored below 13° C limits its international trade. Cold storage of mango at 12-13° C is successful only for 2-3 weeks coupled with substantial losses in fruit quality. Cold storage limits the use of sea freight which is usually more economical and eco-fr...

Highly perishable nature of mango fruit and its susceptibility to chilling injury when stored below 13°C limits its international trade. Cold storage of mango at 12- 13°C is successful only for 2-3 weeks coupled with substantial losses in fruit quality. Controlled atmosphere (CA) in combination with an optimum storage temperature has been reported...

The role of abscisic acid (ABA) in triggering ethylene biosynthesis and ripening of mango fruit was investigated by applying ABA [S-(+)-cis,trans-abscisic acid] and an inhibitor of its biosynthesis [nordihydroguaiaretic acid (NDGA)]. Application of 1 mM ABA accelerated ethylene biosynthesis through promoting the activities of ethylene biosynthesis...

Hard mature green 'Kensington Pride' mango fruit were fumigated with 0, 5, 10, 20 and 40 μL.L-1 NO gas for 2 h and allowed to ripen at ambient temperature (21±1°C) to evaluate its effects on fruit ripening. NO-fumigation treatments significantly (P ≤ 0.05) suppressed ethylene production and respiration rates during fruit ripening. NO treatments (20...

Rapid ripening of mango fruit limits its distribution to distant markets. To better understand and perhaps manipulate this process, we investigated the role of plant hormones in modulating climacteric ripening of ‘Kensington Pride’ mango fruits. Changes in endogenous levels of brassinosteroids (BRs), abscisic acid (ABA), indole-3-acetic acid (IAA),...

Hard mature green mango fruit ('Kensington Pride') were dipped for five minutes in an aqueous solution containing 1.0 mM (+)-cis, trans-abscisic acid (ABA) and its inhibitor 0.2 mM nordihydroguaiaretic acid (NDGA) and 'Tween 20' (0.05%) as a surfactant and allowed to ripen at ambient temperature (21±1°C) to investigate the role of ABA in mango frui...

Brassinosteroids (BRs) are steroidal plant hormones and their implications in climacteric fruit ripening are poorly understood. An aqueous solution containing different concentrations (0, 15, 30, 45 and 60 ng g-1 FW) of epibrassinolide (Epi-BL) was applied to hard mature green 'Kensington Pride' mango fruit to evaluate their role in climacteric fru...

The mode of action of nitric oxide (NO) in inhibiting ethylene biosynthesis and fruit softening during ripening and cool storage of mango fruit was investigated. Hard mature green mango (Mangifera indica L. cv. ‘Kensington Pride’) fruit were fumigated with 20μLL−1 NO for 2h at 21°C and allowed to ripen at 21±1°C for 10 d, or stored at 13±1°C for 21...

Mango fruit ripen extremely quickly, which limits their distribution to distant markets. Mature mango (Mangifera indica 'Kensington Pride') fruit harvested at the pre-climacteric (PC) and climacteric rise (CR) stages of ripening were fumigated with different concentrations (0, 5, 10, 20, or 40 μl l -1) of nitric oxide (NO) to investigate the effect...

We investigated the effects of postharvest nitric oxide (NO) fumigation (0, 5, 10, 20 and 40 mu L L-1) on chilling injury (CI). ripening and quality of mango (Mangifera indica L cv. Kensington Pride) during fruit ripening at 21 +/- 1 degrees C. The fruit had been cold-stored at 5 +/- 1 degrees C for either 2 or 4 weeks. NO treatments (10, 20 and 40...

Mango production is often subject to space and tree size management pressures among growers. This study found that root restriction contributed to reduced leaf expansion, thus inhibiting the growth of mango trees. There was even less leaf expansion under water stress conditions. Under well-watered conditions, restricted roots considerably reduced s...