scholarly journals Speed breeding in growth chambers and glasshouses for crop breeding and model plant research

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sreya Ghosh ◽  
Amy Watson ◽  
Oscar E. Gonzalez-Navarro ◽  
Ricardo H. Ramirez-Gonzalez ◽  
Luis Yanes ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Plant Density ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Brachypodium Distachyon ◽  
Scale Up ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Breeding Cycle ◽  
Crop Breeding ◽  
Crop Species ◽  
Rapid Generation ◽  
Model Grass

1.AbstractTo meet the challenge of feeding a growing population, breeders and scientists are continuously looking for ways to increase genetic gain in crop breeding. One way this can be achieved is through “speed breeding” (SB), which shortens the breeding cycle and accelerates research studies through rapid generation advancement. The SB method can be carried out in a number of ways, one of which involves extending the duration of a plant’s daily exposure to light (photoperiod) combined with early seed harvest in order to cycle quickly from seed to seed, thereby reducing the generation times for some long-day (LD) or day-neutral crops. Here we present glasshouse and growth chamber-based SB protocols with supporting data from experimentation with several crop species. These protocols describe the growing conditions, including soil media composition, lighting, temperature and spacing, which promote rapid growth of spring and winter bread wheat, durum wheat, barley, oat, various members of the Brassica family, chickpea, pea, grasspea, quinoa and the model grass Brachypodium distachyon. Points of flexibility within the protocols are highlighted, including how plant density can be increased to efficiently scale-up plant numbers for single seed descent (SSD) purposes. Conversely, instructions on how to perform SB on a small-scale by creating a benchtop SB growth cabinet that enables optimization of parameters at a low cost are provided. We also outline the procedure for harvesting and germinating premature wheat, barley and pea seed to reduce generation time. Finally, we provide troubleshooting suggestions to avoid potential pitfalls.

scholarly journals Understanding Omics Driven Plant Improvement and de novo Crop Domestication: Some Examples

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rakesh Kumar ◽  
Vinay Sharma ◽  
Srinivas Suresh ◽  
Devade Pandurang Ramrao ◽  
Akash Veershetty ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Developmental Stages ◽  
De Novo ◽  
Agronomic Traits ◽  
Nutrient Content ◽  
High Yield ◽  
Breeding Cycle ◽  
Crop Species ◽  
Rapid Generation ◽  
Agriculture And Food ◽  
Crop Variety

In the current era, one of biggest challenges is to shorten the breeding cycle for rapid generation of a new crop variety having high yield capacity, disease resistance, high nutrient content, etc. Advances in the “-omics” technology have revolutionized the discovery of genes and bio-molecules with remarkable precision, resulting in significant development of plant-focused metabolic databases and resources. Metabolomics has been widely used in several model plants and crop species to examine metabolic drift and changes in metabolic composition during various developmental stages and in response to stimuli. Over the last few decades, these efforts have resulted in a significantly improved understanding of the metabolic pathways of plants through identification of several unknown intermediates. This has assisted in developing several new metabolically engineered important crops with desirable agronomic traits, and has facilitated the de novo domestication of new crops for sustainable agriculture and food security. In this review, we discuss how “omics” technologies, particularly metabolomics, has enhanced our understanding of important traits and allowed speedy domestication of novel crop plants.

scholarly journals Enhancing Abiotic Stress Tolerance to Develop Climate-Smart Rice Using Holistic Breeding Approach

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Akhlasur Rahman ◽  
Hasina Khatun ◽  
M. Ruhul Amin Sarker ◽  
Hosneara Hossain ◽  
M. Ruhul Quddus ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Abiotic Stress ◽  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Abiotic Stress Tolerance ◽  
Crop Improvement ◽  
Research Management ◽  
Breeding Cycle ◽  
Varietal Improvement ◽  
Rapid Generation ◽  
Future Direction

Agricultural land and resources reduced annually because of climate change thus it is necessary to further increase the productivity of the major staple food rice to sustain food security worldwide. However, rice productivity enhancement is one of the key challenges in abiotic stress-prone environments. The integration of cutting-edge breeding approaches and research management methods in the current varietal improvement pipelines can make a step-change towards varietal improvement for the abiotic stress-prone environments. Proper implementation of breeder’s equations in the crop improvement pipeline can deliver a higher rate of genetic gain. Single Seed Descent based Rapid Generation Advance (RGA) technique in field and greenhouse is the most promising innovations and low-cost, high-throughput marker-assisted selection approaches are applied for rapid and efficient selection for abiotic stress-tolerances. Also improving efficiency, intensity, and accuracy of selection and reducing breeding cycle time through holistic rice breeding that can play an important role in developing climate-smart abiotic stress-tolerant rice for target environments. This information can use as the future direction for rice breeders and other researchers.

scholarly journals Utilization of By-Product of Groundnut Oil Processing for Production of Prodigiosin by Microbial Fermentation and Its Novel Potent Anti-Nematodes Effect

Agronomy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 41
Author(s):  
Thi Hanh Nguyen ◽  
San-Lang Wang ◽  
Manh Dung Doan ◽  
Thi Huyen Nguyen ◽  
Thi Ha Trang Tran ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Potential Application ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Scale Up ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Black Pepper ◽  
High Yield ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Groundnut Oil ◽  
Egg Hatching ◽  
Oil Processing

This study aimed to reuse groundnut oil processing by-product, groundnut cake (GNC) for the low-cost production of prodigiosin (PG) via microbial technology and to assess its novel potential application for the management of black pepper nematodes. Serratia marcescens TUN02 was found as the most active PG-producing strain. Various small-scale experiments conducted in flasks indicated that GNC at 1% may be used as the sole carbon/nitrogen source for cost-effective PG production by fermentation. Notably, no further commercial ingredients and salts are required to supplement into the culture medium of this fermentation. PG was further investigated for scale-up production in a 14-L bioreactor system and PG was produced at high yield (6886 mg/L) with large-scale volume (4 L) in a short cultivation time (10 h). PG was then purified and its nematicidal activity was evaluated and showed effective inhibition of juveniles and egg hatching of Meloidogyne incognita species, harmful on black pepper, with low IC50 values of 0.2 and 0.32 mg/mL, respectively. The simple medium containing 1% GNC is the first report of cost-effective biosynthesis of PG, as well as potential in vitro anti-egg hatching activity of PG. These results indicated the potential application of GNC for low-cost bioproduction of PG for promising and novel use in the management of black pepper nematodes.

Accelerating Laboratory Thin Film Photovoltaic Innovation into Commercial Production

2009 ◽  
Vol 1165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fred H. Seymour
Keyword(s):  
Thin Film ◽  
Alternative Energy ◽  
Process Development ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Scale Up ◽  
High Volume ◽  
Commercial Production ◽  
Laboratory Research ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Managing Risk

AbstractAlternative energy sources such as thin film photovoltaics can be accelerated by improving the rapid and successful transition from laboratory research innovation to commercial production. Most laboratory research and development is on a small scale and its production is in small volumes. It focuses on exploration, discovery, and understanding. When the successful innovation is commercialized, both the scale and the volume increase dramatically and the focus shifts to performance, reliability, yield and cost. This transformation can be accelerated by closely managing risk and by integrating the equipment design and the process development. Also, the cadmium telluride photovoltaic technology has properties that make it more amenable to rapid scale up to low cost and high volume manufacturing.

scholarly journals Development and scale-up of fully printable perovskite solar modules

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Simone M.P. Meroni
Keyword(s):  
Solar Cells ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Single Cells ◽  
Scale Up ◽  
Perovskite Solar Cells ◽  
Working Environment ◽  
Active Area ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Up Scaling

Perovskite solar cells represent a new class of photovoltaic devices that, in only a decade, has already been achieved comparable performance to that of the most established photovoltaic technologies. To satisfy the demanding market require-ments, however, perovskite solar cells need to have the high performances with the use of low-cost materials and cost-effective fabrication processes, during a long term in the working environment and this needs to be possible for both small scale and large-scale devices.The fully printable carbon perovskite solar cells are based on an inorganic triple mesoscopic stack that is infiltrated by a perovskite precursors solution. This architecture seems to be the most promising to satisfy the requirements of the market, because the manufacture can simply occur with low-cost materials and well-established industrial deposition techniques, such as screen printing. Further-more, the stability of these cells was reported to be one of the longest among perovskite solar cells, making this technology the closest to make market penetra-tion.This work focuses on fully printable perovskite solar cells with a special outlook at their up-scaling in series-connected modules. The fabrication of large area modules with both high performance and substrate coverage will be discussed, in a journey that starts from single cell devices, overcomes issues found in the up-scaling process, and finally reaches design optimisation. Devices of single cells with 1 cm2 active area will be presented, as well as modules on 5 × 5 cm2 or 10 × 10 cm2 substrates. Finally, series-connected modules with around 200 cm2 active area and high coverage on the substrate will be shown.

Constructive Optimisation of the Propeller Type Mixing Devices Using the Virtual and Rapid Prototyping

2017 ◽  
Vol 68 (3) ◽  
pp. 453-458 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Besnea ◽  
Alina Spanu ◽  
Iuliana Marlena Prodea ◽  
Gheorghita Tomescu ◽  
Iolanda Constanta Panait
Keyword(s):  
Rapid Prototyping ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Scale Up ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Rapid Identification ◽  
Multidisciplinary Optimization ◽  
External Diameter ◽  
Process Industries ◽  
Parametric Cad ◽  
Shaft Torque

The paper points out the advantages of rapid prototyping for improving the performances/constructive optimization of mixing devices used in process industries, here exemplified to propeller types ones. The multidisciplinary optimization of the propeller profile affords its design using parametric CAD methods. Starting from the mathematical curve equations proposed for the blade profile, it was determined its three-dimensional virtual model. The challenge has been focused on the variation of propeller pitch and external diameter. Three dimensional ranges were manufactured using the additive manufacturing process with Marker Boot 3D printer. The mixing performances were tested on the mixing equipment measuring the minimum rotational speed and the correspondent shaft torque for complete suspension achieved for each of the three models. The virtual and rapid prototyping method is newly proposed by the authors to obtain the basic data for scale up of the mixing systems, in the case of flexible production (of low quantities), in which both the nature and concentration of the constituents in the final product varies often. It is an efficient and low cost method for the rapid identification of the optimal mixing device configuration, which contributes to the costs reduction and to the growing of the output.

Tools of Transformation: Appropriate Technology in U.S. Countercultural Literature

2012 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 75-93
Author(s):  
Peter Mortensen
Keyword(s):  
Low Cost ◽  
Appropriate Technology ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Environmental Transformation ◽  
Buckminster Fuller ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Environmentally Sound ◽  
User Friendly ◽  
Second Wave

This essay takes its cue from second-wave ecocriticism and from recent scholarly interest in the “appropriate technology” movement that evolved during the 1960s and 1970s in California and elsewhere. “Appropriate technology” (or AT) refers to a loosely-knit group of writers, engineers and designers active in the years around 1970, and more generally to the counterculture’s promotion, development and application of technologies that were small-scale, low-cost, user-friendly, human-empowering and environmentally sound. Focusing on two roughly contemporary but now largely forgotten American texts Sidney Goldfarb’s lyric poem “Solar-Heated-Rhombic-Dodecahedron” (1969) and Gurney Norman’s novel Divine Right’s Trip (1971)—I consider how “hip” literary writers contributed to eco-technological discourse and argue for the 1960s counterculture’s relevance to present-day ecological concerns. Goldfarb’s and Norman’s texts interest me because they conceptualize iconic 1960s technologies—especially the Buckminster Fuller-inspired geodesic dome and the Volkswagen van—not as inherently alienating machines but as tools of profound individual, social and environmental transformation. Synthesizing antimodernist back-to-nature desires with modernist enthusiasm for (certain kinds of) machinery, these texts adumbrate a humanity- and modernity-centered post-wilderness model of environmentalism that resonates with the dilemmas that we face in our increasingly resource-impoverished, rapidly warming and densely populated world.

scholarly journals Development of a simplified gas ultracleaning process: experiments in biomass residue-based fixed-bed gasification syngas

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Frilund ◽  
Esa Kurkela ◽  
Ilkka Hiltunen
Keyword(s):  
Activated Carbons ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Fixed Bed ◽  
Carbonyl Sulfide ◽  
Gas Analysis ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Cleaning Process ◽  
Medium Temperature ◽  
Gas Cleaning ◽  
Adsorption Affinity

AbstractFor the realization of small-scale biomass-to-liquid (BTL) processes, low-cost syngas cleaning remains a major obstacle, and for this reason a simplified gas ultracleaning process is being developed. In this study, a low- to medium-temperature final gas cleaning process based on adsorption and organic solvent-free scrubbing methods was coupled to a pilot-scale staged fixed-bed gasification facility including hot filtration and catalytic reforming steps for extended duration gas cleaning tests for the generation of ultraclean syngas. The final gas cleaning process purified syngas from woody and agricultural biomass origin to a degree suitable for catalytic synthesis. The gas contained up to 3000 ppm of ammonia, 1300 ppm of benzene, 200 ppm of hydrogen sulfide, 10 ppm of carbonyl sulfide, and 5 ppm of hydrogen cyanide. Post-run characterization displayed that the accumulation of impurities on the Cu-based deoxygenation catalyst (TOS 105 h) did not occur, demonstrating that effective main impurity removal was achieved in the first two steps: acidic water scrubbing (AWC) and adsorption by activated carbons (AR). In the final test campaign, a comprehensive multipoint gas analysis confirmed that ammonia was fully removed by the scrubbing step, and benzene and H2S were fully removed by the subsequent activated carbon beds. The activated carbons achieved > 90% removal of up to 100 ppm of COS and 5 ppm of HCN in the syngas. These results provide insights into the adsorption affinity of activated carbons in a complex impurity matrix, which would be arduous to replicate in laboratory conditions.

scholarly journals Understanding Spatial Variability of NO2 in Urban Areas Using Spatial Modelling and Data Fusion Approaches

Atmosphere ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 179
Author(s):  
Said Munir ◽  
Martin Mayfield ◽  
Daniel Coca
Keyword(s):  
Data Fusion ◽  
Spatial Variability ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Road Traffic ◽  
Dispersion Model ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Spatial Modelling ◽  
City Centre ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
The City

Small-scale spatial variability in NO2 concentrations is analysed with the help of pollution maps. Maps of NO2 estimated by the Airviro dispersion model and land use regression (LUR) model are fused with measured NO2 concentrations from low-cost sensors (LCS), reference sensors and diffusion tubes. In this study, geostatistical universal kriging was employed for fusing (integrating) model estimations with measured NO2 concentrations. The results showed that the data fusion approach was capable of estimating realistic NO2 concentration maps that inherited spatial patterns of the pollutant from the model estimations and adjusted the modelled values using the measured concentrations. Maps produced by the fusion of NO2-LCS with NO2-LUR produced better results, with r-value 0.96 and RMSE 9.09. Data fusion adds value to both measured and estimated concentrations: the measured data are improved by predicting spatiotemporal gaps, whereas the modelled data are improved by constraining them with observed data. Hotspots of NO2 were shown in the city centre, eastern parts of the city towards the motorway (M1) and on some major roads. Air quality standards were exceeded at several locations in Sheffield, where annual mean NO2 levels were higher than 40 µg/m3. Road traffic was considered to be the dominant emission source of NO2 in Sheffield.

scholarly journals Solid Form and Phase Transformation Properties of Fexofenadine Hydrochloride during Wet Granulation Process

Pharmaceutics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 802
Author(s):  
Suye Li ◽  
Hengqian Wu ◽  
Yanna Zhao ◽  
Ruiyan Zhang ◽  
Zhengping Wang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Phase Transition ◽  
Phase Transformation ◽  
Water Content ◽  
Scale Up ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Dissolution Behavior ◽  
Wet Granulation ◽  
Water Addition ◽  
Granulation Process ◽  
And Performance

The quality control of drug products during manufacturing processes is important, particularly the presence of different polymorphic forms in active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) during production, which could affect the performance of the formulated products. The objective of this study was to investigate the phase transformation of fexofenadine hydrochloride (FXD) and its influence on the quality and performance of the drug. Water addition was key controlling factor for the polymorphic conversion from Form I to Form II (hydrate) during the wet granulation process of FXD. Water-induced phase transformation of FXD was studied and quantified with XRD and thermal analysis. When FXD was mixed with water, it rapidly converted to Form II, while the conversion is retarded when FXD is formulated with excipients. In addition, the conversion was totally inhibited when the water content was <15% w/w. The relationship between phase transformation and water content was studied at the small scale, and it was also applicable for the scale-up during wet granulation. The effect of phase transition on the FXD tablet performance was investigated by evaluating granule characterization and dissolution behavior. It was shown that, during the transition, the dissolved FXD acted as a binder to improve the properties of granules, such as density and flowability. However, if the water was over added, it can lead to the incomplete release of the FXD during dissolution. In order to balance the quality attributes and the dissolution of granules, the phase transition of FXD and the water amount added should be controlled during wet granulation.

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