Inoculation Procedure Research Articles

Fungi Associated with Deterioration of Onion Variety (Colour)

The incidence of fungi associated with deterioration of three varieties of onion bulbs was investigated in Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto. The bulbs were purposively collected in sterile polyethene bags through random sampling from kasuwan daji in Sokoto and brought to Mycology Laboratory, Department of Biological Sciences for analysis. Samples were prepared using standard procedures for Isolation and Inoculation of fungal organisms. Isolates were identified based on Morphological and cultural identification using mycological atlas. Pathogenicity test was out carried out using standard procedures. The result obtained revealed the presence of Aspergillus niger, Aspergillus fumigatus, Aspergillus flavus and Rhyzopus oryzae. R. oryzae had the highest percentage of occurrence (47.4%) in Red onion, A.niger and A. fumigatus had the highest occurrence (39.1%) in white onion, and in the purple onion A. niger and A. flavus had the highest percentage of occurrence with (42.8%). The pathogenicity test indicated that all the isolates were found to facilitate spoilage of the bulbs. R. oryzae was found to be more pronounced on white onion, A. niger was prominent in purple onion, A. flavus on red onion. Therefore, fungal spoilage of onion could be determined base on the type of fungal organisms and the type of onion variety. The study could help formers to detect the type of organisms that are responsible for spoilage on the different onion varieties thus, determine the appropriate type of pesticides to apply either in the field or on storage.

Comparison of Hyphal Fragments and Spores to Evaluate the Pathogenicity of the Eucalyptus Leaf and Shoot Pathogen Calonectria pseudoreteaudii.

The genus Calonectria includes many aggressive plant-pathogenic species with a worldwide distribution. Calonectria leaf blight is one of the most prominent diseases of Eucalyptus trees in Southeast Asian and South American plantations. Inoculation trials to evaluate pathogenicity of Calonectria spp. typically use conidial suspensions but this is not possible for species that do not sporulate sufficiently in culture. Calonectria pseudoreteaudii is one of the species that is most aggressive to Eucalyptus in China but most isolates fail to produce conidia in culture, requiring an alternative procedure for artificial inoculation. This study compared inoculations utilizing conidial and hyphal fragment suspensions. Two Eucalyptus genotypes were used, and these were inoculated with different concentrations of hyphal fragments or conidia of three C. pseudoreteaudii isolates. Three days after inoculation, the treated Eucalyptus plants displayed similar disease symptoms, regardless of whether they had been inoculated with conidia or hyphal fragments. This was consistent for all C. pseudoreteaudii isolates and also the different Eucalyptus genotypes. The results demonstrate that hyphal fragment suspensions can be used to provide a reliable indication of C. pseudoreteaudii isolate pathogenicity when conidia are not available for inoculation studies.

Breeding Peaches for Brown Rot Resistance in Embrapa

Brown rot, caused by Monilinia spp., is the main stone fruit disease. Major efforts to detect sources of resistance are being applied by several breeding programs worldwide. The main objective of this study was to seek sources of brown rot resistance, as well as to study the segregation, estimate the heritability, verify the possible existence of the maternal effect, and estimate the genetic advances. For this purpose, 20 parents and 303 seedlings, representing 16 breeding families, and ‘Bolinha’ (control) have been phenotyped for fruit reaction to brown rot using wounded and non-wounded inoculation procedures in 2015–2016, 2016–2017, and 2017–2018 growing seasons. Wounded fruits were very susceptible to brown rot incidence, however, the incidence and severity of non-wounded fruits showed high variability among the evaluated genotypes. Conserva 947 and Conserva 1600 and their progeny, had lower disease incidence and severity than most of the evaluated genotypes. Genetic gain estimation was −5.2 to −30.2% (wounded fruits) and between −15.0 to −25.0% (non-wounded fruits) for brown rot resistance. Selected genotypes were equal to or better than ‘Bolinha’ in relation to brown rot resistance, with several of them far superior in fruit quality than ‘Bolinha’, demonstrating the progress of the Embrapa Peach Breeding Program.

Effect of Inoculation Treatment on Number of Primary Austenite Grains in Hypoeutectic Chromium Cast Iron: EBSD Imaging and Mathematical Structure Prediction

This study proved the influence of an inoculation substance on the primary structure of chromium-cast iron. The inoculation procedure has developed very well in the field of grey cast iron production and mainly concerns the crystallisation of graphite eutectic grains in this material. However, in chromium cast iron, the inoculation problem is not well-recognised due to the formation of chromium carbides in white cast iron. One can easily increase the number of carbides in the cast iron’s structure, but this procedure will not always bring the expected benefits in terms of increasing the overall mechanical properties. In the research included in this publication, an experiment was carried out with the use of ferrotitanium as an inoculant for chromium-cast iron. As a result of using the EBSD (electron backscatter diffraction analysis) imaging method, it was proven that the Fe–Ti interaction significantly influenced the primary structure of chromium cast iron that was formed by austenite grains. The paper presents the growth laws of primary austenite grains in modified hypoeutectic chromium cast iron depending on the degree of supercooling, ΔT, and the amount of the Fe–Ti inoculant M. The results of the research made it possible to predict the structure of hypoeutectic chromium cast iron after Fe–Ti inoculation treatment. The article proves that the use of the inoculant can change the primary structure of chromium cast iron, increasing its impact strength by more than three times.

Optimisation of Solidification Structure and Properties of Hypoeutectic Chromium Cast Iron.

This paper presents a comprehensive approach to optimising the structure and properties of chromium cast iron that is intended for use in the production of castings that operate under abrasive-wear conditions. In the study, chromium cast iron was inoculated to reduce the grain size in the solidification structure. The finer-grained structure of the casting has a positive effect on its mechanical properties. A number of inoculants have been used that allow the elimination of many types of casting defects: hot cracks and porosities that often occur during the production of chromium cast iron castings. Another advantage of the developed inoculation procedure is the resulting increase in the toughness of chromium cast iron. It should be emphasised that this cast iron does not have a high impact strength in its as-cast condition due to the formation of chromium carbides in the structure. This work also proposes a specially designed heat treatment for inoculated cast iron. The parameters of the applied heat treatment were determined on the basis of dilatometric tests. The visible deviation on a dilatogram at a temperature of about 600 °C is the result of a partial martensitic transformation in the area of grain boundaries. Therefore, the increase in abrasion resistance chromium cast iron is mainly due to the appearance of martensite. The microstructure of the investigated cast iron is particularly desirable in the case of alloys that work with lubrication. The microcavities that are formed by the abrasion of the softer phase constitute natural grease, which reduces abrasive wear. Under the influence of heat treatment, only a part of austenite located near the carbides is destabilized and transformed into martensite. Therefore, this phase of composition formation provided much greater resistance to abrasive wear and hardness.

Abstract 3079: Development of an automated platform for screening patient-derived organoid models

Abstract One of the major challenges in preclinical cancer therapeutic development is establishing physiologically relevant in vitro assays that correlate with the in vivo responses of patient tumors to anticancer agents. By incorporating tumor cell heterogeneity and three-dimensional morphological features, patient-derived organoids provide an improved in vivo relevancy compared to established tumor cell lines grown as monolayers. However, organoids grow while embedded in an extracellular matrix material with complex media formulations, which poses challenges for culture scale-up and automated drug screening methods. Organoid models derived from a variety of human solid tumor types are distributed by the National Cancer Institute’s Patient-Derived Models Repository program (https://pdmr.cancer.gov). A panel of human patient-derived colon adenocarcinoma organoid models was assembled to evaluate an automated high-throughput screening (HTS) platform. The organoid panel members were characterized for their reproducible growth and expansion capacity in culture, recovery from cryopreservation, and amenability to operations associated with HTS. Short tandem repeat profiling was performed regularly throughout the process to authenticate each sample. Among the organoid models, variations were observed in morphology (assessed by brightfield imaging) and growth rate (measured by population doublings). Most models expanded well in culture for greater than sixty days and all models demonstrated a sufficient recovery from cryopreservation. The aims in adapting organoid cultures to a HTS platform included minimizing the operational complexity, maximizing the process throughput, and maintaining high organoid viability. Assay conditions for all panel members were selected in conjunction with automated methods, instrumentation, and endpoint measurements. Details such as the optimal sample preparation steps, media formulation, and inoculation density varied among the organoid models. However, other aspects such as liquid handling procedures for organoid inoculation and drug delivery, microwell plate type, assay duration, and endpoint measurements were selected for their suitability to all organoid models tested. Using a custom-designed automated screening system, the refined methods were validated by screening the panel of patient-derived colon adenocarcinoma organoids against a library of oncology drugs approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (https://dtp.cancer.gov/organization/dscb/obtaining/default.htm). Assay performance metrics and pharmacological data demonstrate the robust performance of this organoid screening platform. Future efforts will establish additional patient-derived organoid panels for expanded HTS using this platform. This project was funded in part with federal funds from the NCI, NIH, under contract no. HHSN261201500003I. Citation Format: Siddhartha Paul, Curtis Hose, Eric Jones, Erik Harris, John Connelly, Petreena Campbell, Mariaestela Ortiz, Thomas S. Dexheimer, Thomas Silvers, Penny Sellers Brady, Julie Grams, Tiffany Nikirk Rohrer, Karen Martin, Patricia Ramsey, Lori Bowles, Annamaria Rapisarda, Ralph E. Parchment, Beverly A. Teicher, James H. Doroshow, Nathan P. Coussens. Development of an automated platform for screening patient-derived organoid models [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2022; 2022 Apr 8-13. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2022;82(12_Suppl):Abstract nr 3079.

Video Endoscopy-Guided Intrabronchial Spray Inoculation of Mycobacterium bovis in Goats and Comparative Assessment of Lung Lesions With Various Imaging Methods.

Bovine tuberculosis (bTB) not only poses a zoonotic threat to humans but also has a significant economic impact on livestock production in many areas of the world. Effective vaccines for humans, livestock, and wildlife are highly desirable to control tuberculosis. Suitable large animal models are indispensable for meaningful assessment of vaccine candidates. Here, we describe the refinement of an animal model for bTB in goats. Intrabronchial inoculation procedure via video-guided endoscopy in anesthetized animals, collection of lungs after intratracheal fixation in situ, and imaging of lungs by computed tomography (CT) were established in three goats using barium sulfate as surrogate inoculum. For subsequent infection experiments, four goats were infected with 4.7 × 102 colony-forming units of M. bovis by intrabronchial inoculation using video-guided endoscopy with spray catheters. Defined amounts of inoculum were deposited at five sites per lung. Four age-matched goats were mock-inoculated. None of the goats developed clinical signs until they were euthanized 5 months post infection, but simultaneous skin testing confirmed bTB infection in all goats inoculated with M. bovis. In tissues collected at necropsy, M. bovis was consistently re-isolated from granulomas in lymph nodes, draining the lungs of all the goats infected with M. bovis. Further dissemination was observed in one goat only. Pulmonary lesions were quantified by CT and digital 2D radiography (DR). CT revealed mineralized lesions in all the infected goats ranging from <5 mm to >10 mm in diameter. Small lesions <5 mm predominated. The DR failed to detect small lesions and to determine the exact location of lesions because of overlapping of pulmonary lobes. Relative volume of pulmonary lesions was low in three but high in one goat that also had extensive cavitation. CT lesions could be correlated to gross pathologic findings and histologic granuloma types in representative pulmonary lobes. In conclusion, video-guided intrabronchial inoculation with spray catheters, mimicking the natural way of infection, resulted in pulmonary infection of goats with M. bovis. CT, but not DR, presented as a highly sensitive method to quantify the extent of pulmonary lesions. This goat model of TB may serve as a model for testing TB vaccine efficacy.

Vaccination against misinformation: The inoculation technique reduces the continued influence effect.

The continued influence effect of misinformation (CIE) is a phenomenon in which certain information, although retracted and corrected, still has an impact on event reporting, reasoning, inference, and decisions. The main goal of this paper is to investigate to what extent this effect can be reduced using the procedure of inoculation and how it can be moderated by the reliability of corrections' sources. The results show that the reliability of corrections' sources did not affect their processing when participants were not inoculated. However, inoculated participants relied on misinformation less when the correction came from a highly credible source. For this source condition, as a result of inoculation, a significant increase in belief in retraction, as well as a decrease in belief in misinformation was also found. Contrary to previous reports, belief in misinformation rather than belief in retraction predicted reliance on misinformation. These findings are of both great practical importance as certain boundary conditions for inoculation efficiency have been discovered to reduce the impact of the continued influence of misinformation, and theoretical, as they provide insight into the mechanisms behind CIE. The results were interpreted in terms of existing CIE theories as well as within the remembering framework, which describes the conversion from memory traces to behavioral manifestations of memory.

Phyllode inoculation provides a rapid protocol for preliminary screening of Acacia species for tolerance to Ceratocystis wilt and canker disease

Ceratocystis wilt and canker disease has devastated Acacia mangium plantations in south-east Asia. Current screening methodologies to identify resistant or tolerant germplasm use potted plants in a greenhouse as a preliminary screening to select material for field trials, but these tests are time-consuming, motivating a search for rapid screening protocols. In this study, inoculation procedures were tested on three species of Acacia, viz. A. mangium, A. crassicarpa and a hybrid of A. auriculiformis and A. mangium, using three isolates of Ceratocystis manginecans. Mycelial plugs were compared with spore suspensions as inoculum to infect artificial wounds on the stems of A. mangium potted plants. The rapid screening protocols involved inoculation of stem segments with mycelial plugs and detached phyllodes with a spore suspension, with susceptibility measured by lesion length on the stems or necrosis length on the phyllodes. Both mycelial plugs and spore suspensions produced a similar level of disease incidence, so either inoculum form can be used for an assay. The stem segments were prone to contamination by other fungi and to desiccation, while results from the potted plant and phyllode protocols showed similar trends of susceptibility among the Acacia clones and species. The ease, rapidity, and reproducibility of the phyllode inoculation protocol makes it a potential replacement for inoculation of potted plants as a preliminary screening protocol to identify disease tolerant A. mangium germplasm prior to field screening.

First Report of Races TKTTP and TKKTP of Puccinia graminis f. sp. tritici with Virulence to Wheat Stem Rust Resistance Gene Sr24 in Turkey and Tunisia

Severe wheat stem rust caused by Puccinia graminis Pers.:Pers. f. sp. tritici Erikss. (Pgt) can result in complete crop failure. In recent years, the increasing frequency and the early onset of stem rust in Central West Asia and North Africa (CWANA) has become a big concern. The Sr24 resistance gene, one of the most effective stem rust resistance genes effective against most P. graminis f. sp. tritici races worldwide, has been widely deployed. Until the recent establishment of virulence to Sr24 within the Ug99 lineage of the pathogen in Africa (Hei et al. 2020; Jin et al. 2008; Patpour et al. 2015), Iraq (Nazari et al., 2021), occasional detections of races virulent to Sr24 were reported in South Africa (Le Roux and Rijkenberg 1987), India (Bhardwaj et al. 1990), Germany (Olivera Firpo et al. 2017), Georgia (Olivera, et al. 2019), and Western Siberia (Skolotneva et al., 2020). During the rust surveys conducted in Sinops, Samsun, and Kastomonu in the Black Sea region in northern Turkey in 2018, 19 isolates were collected. Single pustule (SP) isolates were developed and used in race analysis in the Biosafety Rust Laboratory, Regional Cereal Rust Research Center (RCRRC), Izmir, Turkey. Sample recovery, experimental procedures for pre-inoculation, inoculation, incubation, and race typing were conducted as previously described (Nazari et al. 2021). Among the tested SP isolates, two isolates showed a high infection type (IT) of 33+ on the Sr24 tester line (Little Club/Agent) and a low infection type of 11+ for the source of Sr31 (Benno/6*LMPG-6). Eight SP isolates were further developed from the high IT 33+ pustules collected from the Sr24 tester line. After spore multiplications, they were used in inoculation of the 20 North American stem rust single-gene lines used to differentiate races of P. graminis f. sp. tritici, plus Trident (Sr38+), Siouxland (Sr24+Sr31), and Sisson (Sr31+Sr36). Five SP-derived isolates with IT 33+ on the Sr24 single-gene line collected from Samsun (Alacam - Etyemez; Location: N 41.61889 E 35.55722) and Sinop (Merkez-Sanlıoglu; Location: N 41.85556 E 35.04889) were identified as race TKKTP and the remaining three SP isolates as race TKTTP. In 2020, we detected two isolates of TKKTP among the stem rust samples from Tunisia submitted to RCRRC. These two isolates were collected from bread wheat cultivars Heydna and Tahmet at a trial site near Bou Salem in Western Tunisia (Location: N 36.5351 E 8.95486). Based on the negative results of the Stage 1 test using a suite of four real-time polymerase chain reaction assays diagnostic for the Ug99 race group developed by Szabo (2012), these two races should not belong to the Ug99 race group when compared to the reference Ug99 race TTKTT from Kenya. These races were virulent to Sr5, Sr21, Sr9e, Sr7b, Sr6, Sr8a, Sr9g, Sr9b, Sr30, Sr17, Sr9a, Sr9d, Sr10, SrTmp, Sr24, Sr38, and SrMcN. In addition to these genes, race TKTTP was virulent to Sr36. Both races were avirulent to Sr11 and Sr31. To our knowledge, this is the first report of P. graminis f. sp. tritici races with the Sr24 virulence in Turkey and Tunisia. The results reflect an increasing trend of virulence to Sr24 in the pathogen populations, and raise a great concern given the deployment of the Sr24 resistance gene in widely grown wheat cultivars worldwide.

Rhizoctonia solani Infection Assay of Young Sugar Beet and Arabidopsis plantlets.

Rhizoctonia solani is a soil-borne fungus, which rarely produces any spores in culture. Hence, all inoculation procedures are based on mycelia, often as a coat on cereal kernels, placed in close vicinity to the plant to be infected. In this protocol, an inoculation method is described where the fungus is first allowed to infest a perlite-maize flour substrate for 10 days, followed by thorough soil mixing to generate uniform fungal distribution. Pre-grown seedlings are then replanted in the infested soil. Plant materials can be harvested, five (sugar beet) and ten days (Arabidopsis) post infection, followed by a rapid cleaning step ahead of any nucleic acid preparation. Commercial DNA or RNA extraction kits can be used or, if higher DNA yield is required, a CTAB extraction method. Our purpose was to develop a reliable and reproducible protocol to determine the infection levels in planta upon infection with R. solani. This protocol is less laborious compared to previous ones, improves the consistency of plant infection, reproducibility between experiments, and suits both a root crop and Arabidopsis. Graphic abstract: Plant infectionInoculation of R. solaniPreparation of inoculumPCR analysis Overview of the R. solani infection procedure.

Establishing an anesthetic protocol for refinement of intracerebral inoculation procedure

Establishing an anesthetic protocol for refinement of intracerebral inoculation procedure

Correlation and regression models of tomato yield in response to plant growth by different bacterial inoculants and inoculation methods

AbstractThe focus of this research is to evaluate the performance of Bacillus, Pseudomonas, Azotobacter, and Azospirillum for their plant growth abilities in vitro and in vivo. The best performing bacterial isolates from preliminary screening (in vitro) were able to produce indole acetic acid (IAA) and gibberellic acid (GA3) of 0.25–22.63 and 5.9–31.8 μg ml–1, respectively, eight best isolates were further tested for their efficacy in promoting crop growth and yield of tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.) by different application methods namely seed coating, soil application, and seedling root dip method. The factorial data analysis provided evidence that the interaction of bacterial isolates and different inoculation procedures together generated better yield in the greenhouse pot experiment. The findings suggest that the inoculation of Azospirillum strain ASP25 by seedling root dip method produced greater yields. Correlation and regression models hypothesize that all the variables are positively correlated with yield at P &lt; .01 and growth variables like number of fruits per plant (r2 = .886), shoot length (r2 = .695), and root volume (r2 = .554) at P ≤ .0001 contribute to the yield parameter individually and by multiple regression model all the plant growth variables together increased fruit yield per plant by 89% (r2 = .899). These results demonstrate that a high yield is always linked to a healthy vegetative development. However, as technology in agriculture progresses, the proposed method points to the usage and development of computer applications to estimate crop output.

Automated facial analysis of infant pain expressions: progress and future directions

PainChek Infant, a mobile application (app) based on automated facial evaluation and analysis for assessing procedural pain in infants, is a welcome addition to recently developed automated tools for coding infant facial expressions. In The Lancet Digital Health, Kreshnik Hoti and colleagues document the strong psychometric properties and performance of PainChek Infant compared with the widely used manual Neonatal Facial Coding System Revised (NFCS-R).1,2 Both assessments are based on identifying a small number of facial muscle actions (six in PainChek Infant, five in NFCS-R) present in each of four 10 s video segments of infants undergoing an inoculation procedure (baseline, preparation, during, and recovery).

Soybean Response to Seed Coating with Chitosan + Alginate/PEG and/or Inoculation

Inoculated or coated soybean seeds are often sown in agricultural practice. These treatments play a different role depending on the chemical composition of the preparation. The aim of the field experiment was to demonstrate the effectiveness of the developed coating (chitosan + alginate/PEG) and commercial inoculant (HiStick® Soy) applied alone or in combination to soybean seeds. Uncoated (control) seeds were sown for comparison. The research was carried out in 2018–2020 using the cultivar ‘Mavka’. The experiment was located in Makowisko, Podkarpackie Province, Poland. Coating composition was developed in a laboratory belonging to the Łukasiewicz Research Network—Institute of Biopolymers and Chemical Fibers in Łódź, Poland. The main role of the coating is to protect soybean seeds from low temperatures. HiStick® Soy inoculant contains Bradyrhizobium japonicum bacteria which increase nodulation on the roots. The conducted research demonstrated that sowing only coated seeds was not very effective, because the suitable number of nodules had not developed on soybean roots. The application of the inoculant alone positively affected the assessed traits compared to control, however, plant population was lower than expected. The highest seed yield was obtained after sowing coated seeds in combination with the inoculant (4.32 t·ha−1) and only inoculated seeds (4.23 t·ha−1) compared to control (3.64 t·ha−1). The test of the novel seed-coating agent showed that it had an good effect and efficacy, but only in combination with the inoculation procedure.

Symptom Severity, Infection Progression and Plant Responses in Solanum Plants Caused by Three Pospiviroids Vary with the Inoculation Procedure.

Infectious viroid clones consist of dimeric cDNAs used to generate transcripts which mimic the longer-than-unit replication intermediates. These transcripts can be either generated in vitro or produced in vivo by agro-inoculation. We have designed a new plasmid, which allows both inoculation methods, and we have compared them by infecting Solanum lycopersicum and Solanum melongena with clones of Citrus exocortis virod (CEVd), Tomato chlorotic dwarf viroid (TCDVd), and Potato spindle tuber viroid (PSTVd). Our results showed more uniform and severe symptoms in agro-inoculated plants. Viroid accumulation and the proportion of circular and linear forms were different depending on the host and the inoculation method and did not correlate with the symptoms, which correlated with an increase in PR1 induction, accumulation of the defensive signal molecules salicylic (SA) and gentisic (GA) acids, and ribosomal stress in tomato plants. The alteration in ribosome biogenesis was evidenced by both the upregulation of the tomato ribosomal stress marker SlNAC082 and the impairment in 18S rRNA processing, pointing out ribosomal stress as a novel signature of the pathogenesis of nuclear-replicating viroids. In conclusion, this updated binary vector has turned out to be an efficient and reproducible method that will facilitate the studies of viroid–host interactions.

A High-Throughput Phenotyping Tool to Identify Field-Relevant Anthracnose Resistance in White Lupin

The seed- and air-borne pathogen Colletotrichum lupini, the causal agent of lupin anthracnose, is the most important disease in white lupin (Lupinus albus) worldwide and can cause total yield loss. The aims of this study were to establish a reliable high-throughput phenotyping tool to identify anthracnose resistance in white lupin germplasm and to evaluate a genomic prediction model, accounting for previously reported resistance quantitative trait loci, on a set of independent lupin genotypes. Phenotyping under controlled conditions, performing stem inoculation on seedlings, showed to be applicable for high throughput, and its disease score strongly correlated with field plot disease assessments (r = 0.95, P < 0.0001) and yield (r = -0.64, P = 0.035). Traditional one-row field disease phenotyping showed no significant correlation with field plot disease assessments (r = 0.31, P = 0.34) and yield (r = -0.45, P = 0.17). Genomically predicted resistance values showed no correlation with values observed under controlled or field conditions, and the parental lines of the recombinant inbred line population used for constructing the prediction model exhibited a resistance pattern opposite to that displayed in the original (Australian) environment used for model construction. Differing environmental conditions, inoculation procedures, or population structure may account for this result. Phenotyping a diverse set of 40 white lupin accessions under controlled conditions revealed eight accessions with improved resistance to anthracnose. The standardized area under the disease progress curves (sAUDPC) ranged from 2.1 to 2.8, compared with the susceptible reference accession with a sAUDPC of 3.85. These accessions can be incorporated into white lupin breeding programs. In conclusion, our data support stem inoculation-based disease phenotyping under controlled conditions as a time-effective approach to identify field-relevant resistance, which can now be applied to further identify sources of resistance and their underlying genetics.

RETRACTED: Development of Bulk Metallic Glasses and their Composites by Additive Manufacturing - Evolution, Challenges and a Proposed Novel Solution

RETRACTED ARTICLE: Bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) and their composites (BMGMCs) have emerged as competitive materials for structural engineering applications exhibiting superior tensile strength, hardness along with very large elastic strain limit. However, they suffer from lack of ductility and subsequent low toughness due to the inherent brittleness of the glassy structure which makes them amenable to failure without appreciable yielding. Various mechanisms and methods have been proposed to counter this effect out of which, recently Additive Manufacturing has gained widespread attention. It is proposed that additive manufacturing can overcome these difficulties in single step due to inherent existence of very high cooling rate in the process which is essential for glass formation. This, when coupled with careful selection of alloy chemistry is proposed to be the best solution to fabricate near net shape parts in a single step with excellent properties. In this report, an effort has been made to describe one possible route to achieve this. Solidification processing employing carefully selected inoculants based on edge to edge matching technique along with the carefuly controlled inoculation procedure is proposed to reflect upon enhanced mechanical properties. It is hypothesized that number density, size and distribution of ductile crystalline phase would best be able to improve microstructure and hence properties. This is meant to be controlled by manipulating type, size and the amount of inoculants. The proposed methodology is claimed to bear maximum potential.

Peat-based gnotobiotic plant growth systems for Arabidopsis microbiome research.

The complex structure and function of a plant microbiome are driven by many variables, including the environment, microbe-microbe interactions and host factors. Likewise, resident microbiota can influence many host phenotypes. Gnotobiotic growth systems and controlled environments empower researchers to isolate these variables, and standardized methods equip a global research community to harmonize protocols, replicate experiments and collaborate broadly. We developed two easily constructed peat-based gnotobiotic growth platforms: the FlowPot system and the GnotoPot system. Sterile peat is amenable to colonization by microbiota and supports growth of the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana in the presence or absence of microorganisms. The FlowPot system uniquely allows one to flush the substrate with water, nutrients and/or suspensions of microbiota via an irrigation port, and a mesh retainer allows for the inversion of plants for dip or vacuum infiltration protocols. The irrigation port also facilitates passive drainage, preventing root anoxia. In contrast, the GnotoPot system utilizes a compressed peat pellet, widely used in the horticultural industry. GnotoPot construction has fewer steps and requires less user handling, thereby reducing the risk of contamination. Both protocols take up to 4 d to complete with 4-5 h of hands-on time, including substrate and seed sterilization. In this protocol, we provide detailed assembly and inoculation procedures for the two systems. Both systems are modular, do not require a sterile growth chamber, and cost less than US$2 per vessel.

Implant-associated osteomyelitis: Development, characterisation, and application of a porcine model.

Implant-associated osteomyelitis: Development, characterisation, and application of a porcine model.