Zahoor Dar

Transcription Factors and Plants Response to Drought Stress: Current Understanding and Future Directions

Increasing vulnerability of plants to a variety of stresses such as drought, salt and extreme temperatures poses a global threat to sustained growth and productivity of major crops. Of these stresses, drought represents a considerable threat to plant growth and development. In view of this, developing staple food cultivars with improved drought tolerance emerges as the most sustainable solution toward improving crop productivity in a scenario of climate change. In parallel, unraveling the genetic architecture and the targeted identification of molecular networks using modern “OMICS” analyses, that can underpin drought tolerance mechanisms, is urgently required. Importantly, integrated studies intending to elucidate complex mechanisms can bridge the gap existing in our current knowledge about drought stress tolerance in plants. It is now well established that drought tolerance is regulated by several genes, including transcription factors (TFs) that enable plants to withstand unfavorable conditions, and these remain potential genomic candidates for their wide application in crop breeding. These TFs represent the key molecular switches orchestrating the regulation of plant developmental processes in response to a variety of stresses. The current review aims to offer a deeper understanding of TFs engaged in regulating plant’s response under drought stress and to devise potential strategies to improve plant tolerance against drought.

Isolation, molecular characterization and prevalence of Clostridium perfringens in sheep and goats of Kashmir Himalayas, India

Aim: The study was conducted to report the occurrence of the Clostridium perfringens in sheep and goats of the Kashmir valley for the 1st time and to characterize them molecularly with respect to toxin genes to determine the prevalence of the various toxinotypes. Materials and Methods: A total of 177 samples (152 from sheep and 25 from goats) collected from healthy, diarrheic animals, and morbid material of animals suspected to have died of enterotoxaemia were screened for C. perfringens toxinotypes. The presumptive positive isolates were confirmed using 16S rRNA gene-based polymerase chain reaction (PCR). All the confirmed isolates were screened for six toxin genes, namely; cpa, cpb, etx, cpi, cpb2, and cpe using a multiplex PCR. Results: The PCR amplification of 16S rRNA gene revealed that out of 177 samples collected, 125 (70.62%) were found positive for C. perfringens, of which 110 (72.36%) were from sheep and 15 (60%) were from goats. The highest prevalence of C. perfringens toxinotype D was observed in lambs (56.16%) and kids (46.16%) followed by 3.84% in adult sheep while it was absent in samples obtained from adult goats. The multiplex PCR revealed that 67 (60.90%) isolates from sheep and 8 (53.33%) isolates from goats belonged to toxinotype A, while 43 (39.09%) isolates from sheep and 7 (46.66%) isolates from goats were detected as toxinotype D. None of the isolates was found to be toxinotype B, C, or E. All the C. perfringens toxinotype A isolates from sheep were negative for both cpb2 and cpe genes, however, 27.90% toxinotype D isolates from sheep carried cpb2 gene, and 6.97% possessed cpe gene. In contrast, 12.50% C. perfringens toxinotype A isolates from goats harbored cpb2 and cpe genes while 14.28% isolates belonging to toxinotype D carried cpb2 and cpe genes, respectively. Conclusion: The high prevalence of C. perfringens was observed, even in day-old lambs. The toxinotypes A and D are prevalent in both sheep and goats. The severity of disease and mortality may be associated with the presence of minor toxins in both the detected toxinotypes.

Genotyping and phylogenetic analysis of infectious bronchitis virus isolated from broiler chickens in Kashmir

Infectious bronchitis virus (IBV) is responsible for significant economic losses to the poultry industry across the world. The enormous genetic diversity of IBV poses difficulty in diagnosing and controlling the virus. To understand the nature of IBV prevalent in thexa0Kashmir Himalayas, we characterized two field strains, isolated from non-immunized broiler chickens, by sequence and phylogenetic analysis of S1 subunit of thexa0spike glycoprotein. The analysis revealed both the isolates are identical to each other,xa0with nucleotide and amino acid sequence identities of 99.4% and 98.4%, respectively. They exhibit variable sequence divergence in thexa0S1 gene to that of the reference serotypes. Both are of “Massachusetts type” belonging to GI-1 lineage of thexa0IBV génotype. The phylogenetic analysis revealed bothxa0of the isolates clustered into the same branch as that of many IBV strains recently reported from China and Iran. Likely, these regionally-related isolates represent revertant vaccine strains which may have been disseminatedxa0across the region by wild migratory birds. This study provides the first report of molecular evidence and phylogenetic characterization of thexa0IBV fromxa0the Kashmir Himalayas and implicate the possible role of wild migratory birds in the spread of IBV in the region.

Effect of Drought On The Germination of Maize Using PEG (Polyethylene Glycol) As A Substitute For Drought Screening

Drought stress is one of the most important environmental factors in reduction of growth, development and production of plants. Germination of each seed is considered as one of the first and most fundamental life stages of a plant so that, the success in growth and yield production is also depending on this stage. To study the effect of PEG stress on germination and early seedling stages on maize, an experiment were laid out at laboratory conditions of Division of Genetics and Plant Breeding SKUAST-K FoA/RRS Wadura. This investigation was performed as factorial experiment under Complete Randomized Design (CRD) with three replications. Polyethylene glycol stress induced in laboratory caused progressive decline in both the parameters across all genotypes with increase in Polyethylene glycol from 0-20% and both the parameters (length of radical and root biomass) had highest value under control.

Detection and phylogenetic analysis of Orf virus in Kashmir Himalayas

AbstractnOrf virus (ORFV) is a zoonotic pathogen that primarily infects sheep and goats, and is responsible for significant economic losses. ORFV is endemic in all the major sheep and goat rearing areas of the world including Indian subcontinent. However, the nature of ORFV circulating among sheep and goat in Kashmir Himalayas has not yet been characterized. In the present study, we describe natural outbreaks of ORFV in sheep and goats of Kashmir Himalayas. We detected the presence of ORFV in the scab lesion by PCR amplification of the major envelope protein (B2L) gene. We sequenced the virus interferon resistance (VIR) gene and determined their phylogenetic relationship with that of the published reference sequences. Phylogenetic analysis based on VIR gene revealed that the ORFV isolates from Kashmir Himalayas separated into main two clusters. The sheep isolates showed genetic homology with the sheep strains reported from Greece and Italy, whereas the goat-specific strain show homology with the goat strains reported from China. This study demonstrates the presence of ORFV infection in sheep and goats, and report first phylogenetic analysis of the ORFV strains prevalent in the Kashmir Himalayas.