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Environmental stress causes a significant decrease in crop quality and losses of productivity every year. One of the important mechanisms by which plants are damaged in adverse environmental conditions is the overproduction of reactive oxygen species such as superoxide, hydrogen peroxide, and hydroxyl radicals. In addition, such oxidative stresses have been shown to occur in plants exposed to high and low temperatures, particularly to high light intensities, drought, the presence of air pollutants such as ozone or sulfur dioxide, ultraviolet light, and herbicides. Hydroxyl radicals instantly react with proteins, lipids, and deoxyribonucleic acid, causing rapid cell damage. Therefore, plants have developed enzymatic and nonenzymatic mechanisms that efficiently scavenge oxygen radicals. However, hydroxyl radicals are too reactive to be eliminated enzymatically, so the formation of radicals is limited by the release of O2 and H2O2. Superoxide dismutases, which are also the subject of this study, are key enzymes that scavenges superoxide radicals (2O2 + 2H+ → H2O2 +O2), contain metals, and act as the first line of antioxidant defense. In this study, eight superoxide dismutase genes were chosen for real-time polymerase chain reaction optimization. Specific primers were designed, and annealing temperature optimization was performed for realtime polymerase chain reaction analysis using deoxyribonucleic acid from wheat sample. In addition, annealing temperature optimization for β-actin specific primers were performed using the same deoxyribonucleic acid sample. β-actin is a housekeeping gene with a constant expression profile that is commonly used as a normalizing factor in expression profile studies. Evaluation of the relative and absolute values of superoxide dismutase gene expressions and the changes of superoxide dismutase gene expressions over time and under different conditions can be easily studied using the established real-time polymerase chain reaction protocols. These studies can provide important information on wheat coping mechanisms under different stress conditions.

Food safety has been a major concern for consumers. Origin of food products matter for consumers such that the quality, reputation, or other special characteristics can be attributed essentially to that origin. While a geographical indication informs consumers for the origin of the product, it develops a competitive advantage for the markets. To detect distinguishing features of dairy products, the microbial composition of its microbiota is one of the emerging areas of interest. Utilizing novel approaches such as Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technology to decipher the genetic code of 16s rRNA genes to characterize the bacterial population is widely applied. The bacterial microbiota of the herby cheese samples which were collected from Şırnak province in the South Eastern region of Turkey was examined by an NGS approach for purpose of finding geographical indication possibilities. In brief, Firmicutes is the dominant phyla where Lactobacillaceae and Streptococcaceae are abundant families across the analyzed herby cheese microbiota. The most prominent species is Companilactobacillus ginsenosidimutans detected as the dominant member of the bacterial consortia in 16 herby cheese samples. Another remarkable finding reported here is the Weissella jogaejeotgali which was detected in 15 cheese samples. Albeit the abundance of Levilactobacillus koreensis is low at the microbiome level it was identified in four herby cheese samples. As expected, lactic acid bacteria such as Lactobacillus delbrueckii, Lactococcus raffinolactis and Tetragenococcus halophilus were also identified. On the other hand, bacterial diversity and microbial composition among cheese samples are not significantly affected by mixing different herbs on the manufacturing of herby cheeses. To the best of our knowledge, C. ginsenosidimutans, W. jogaejeotgali and L. koreensis are identified and reported for the first time in a dairy product and the bacterial richness and evenness of herby cheese are higher than those of most other cheeses. These findings make the cheeses in the geography where the samples were produced more valuable and provide opportunities for them to receive geographical indications. Thus, it will create added value while marketing the products.

Einkorn (Triticum monococcum L. ssp. monococcum) is an ancient diploid wheat species with many useful traits and used as a wheat gene discovery model. In this research, a total of 41 diploid and tetraploid wheat accessions were tested using simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers. A total of 33 genotypes of T. monococcum along with four genotypes each of tetraploid wheat (T. dicoccon and T. durum) were used as plant material. The analysis utilized 10 polymorphic markers, including a total number of 41 alleles with an average frequency of 4.1 alleles per locus during exploration of the level of genetic variations. Various diversity analyses, which are the effective number of alleles (Ne), gene diversity (h), Polymorphic Information Content (PIC), and Shannon’s information index (I), were performed for 10 ‘A’ genome wheat SSR markers. The results showed a narrow variation in einkorn genotypes, supported by Analysis of Molecular Variance (AMOVA), with 66% maximum variation in all genotypes. The structure analysis divided the whole germplasm into two populations. A dendrogram was constructed to determine the genetic similarities using the unpaired group method with arithmetic averages (UPGMA), which separated tetraploid wheat from other genotypes/accessions. Principal Coordinate Analysis (PCoA) co-supported the clustering of UPGMA and structure by differentiating the diploid and tetraploid wheat. These findings will help understand the genetic relationships among these wheat accessions and their use in breeding programs in the future works.

Plants need different macro and micro nutrient elements to grow and reproduce. Their malnutrition results in unhealthy growth. The soils of Naqadeh area, Iran are deficient in micronutrient elements. The aim of the study was to evaluate the effects of micronutrients application on some qualitative and quantitative parameters of economically important monogerm sugar beet cv. Sonja. The plants were foliar sprayed with iron, boron, zinc, and manganese. The studied traits were potassium, sodium, nitrogen, extraction coefficient, sugar percent, recoverable sugar, alkalinity, molasses, root yield, and white sugar recovery yield. The effect of micronutrients was significant on all studied traits. The highest extraction coefficient of 89.31 was related to the foliar application of iron (Fe) and the highest recoverable sugar percent (16.91%) was obtained from Zn application. Also, the highest mean root yield (74.120 t ha-1) and white sugar yield (12.137 t ha-1) were noted after foliar treatments of boron (B) and Fe, respectively.

The growth and development of generative organs of the tomato plant are essential for yield estimation and higher productivity. Since the time-consuming manual counting methods are inaccurate and costly in a challenging environment, including leaf and branch obstruction and duplicate tomato counts, a fast and automated method is required. This research introduces a computer vision and AI-based drone system to detect and count tomato flowers and fruits, which is a crucial step for developing automated harvesting, which improves time efficiency for farmers and decreases the required workforce. The proposed method utilizes the drone footage of greenhouse tomatoes data set containing three classes (red tomato, green tomato, and flower) to train and test the counting model through YOLO V5 and Deep Sort cutting-edge deep learning algorithms. The best model for all classes is obtained at epoch 96 with an accuracy of 0.618 at mAP 0.5. Precision and recall values are determined as 1 and 0.85 at 0.923 and 0 confidence levels, respectively. The F1 scores of red tomato, green tomato, and flower classes are determined as 0.74, 0.56, and 0.61, respectively. The average F1 score for all classes is also obtained as 0.63. Through obtained detection and counting model, the tomato fruits and flowers are counted systematically from the greenhouse environment. The manual and AI-Drone counting results show that red tomato, green tomato, and flowers have 85%, 99%, and 50% accuracy, respectively.

Iris species have great economic importance for their use in ornamental and pharmaceutical industry. Flora of Turkey reports about 43 local taxons of which 16 are endemic. Iris suaveolens Boiss. et Reuter is an endemic species with high seed dormancy and has high tolerance to cold and drought. This study focused on seed dormancy break of I. suaveolens under in vitro conditions. In the first experiment, the seeds were given stratification treatment on MS medium containing different concentrations of BAP with or without NAA. The 2nd experiment reports effects of alternative combinations of cold (at 4°C, 24 h dark) – warm (16 h light photoperiod) conditions on medium containing different concentrations of plant growth regulators on agar solidified MS medium. Both experiments showed about 8.33% seed germination against 64.5% seed viability as confirmed by tetrazolium test. All germinating seeds were abnormal and very weak. In the third experiment, 10 minutes acid scarified seeds cultured at 24°C in 16 h light photo period on MS medium achieved 60.0% germination. Similar treatment under cold + dark condition was inhibitory and failed to show identical results. This underlines the importance of acid scarification, photoperiod and warm treatments of I. suaveolens seeds to break seed dormancy. All germinated seeds showed normal growth and development under field conditions.

In plant tissue culture studies, obtaining new plantlets from different parts of plant is a very important feature with direct or indirect ways of regeneration. The plant show different regeneration capacities from species to species. In this present study, in-vitro direct shoots development from embryonic axis of cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L. cv. Lashata) were comparatively studied. Embryonic axis, embryonic hypocotyl and plumule obtained from five days old in-vitro grown seeds. All explants were cultured on MS media supplemented with 1- 4 mg/l Benzyl amino purine (BAP) + 0.1 mg/l Naphthalene acetic acid (NAA) and 3 mg/l activated charcoal. Cultured explants were kept at growth chamber with photoperiod for 16 hours light and 8 hours dark, at 25oC. Reproducible in-vitro plant regeneration was obtained from embryonic axis when cultured onto MS medium supplemented 1 mg/l BAP + 0.1 mg/l NAA and 3 g/l Activated charcoal. Shoot induction was to be noted 53.3%, 36.7% and 12.3 in embryonic axis, plumule and embryonic hypocotyl respectively. All these shoots were capable of rooting on MS medium supplemented with 0.1 mg/l NAA, and establishing in soil 3-4 weeks.

bZIP proteins are one of the largest transcriptional regulators playing crucial roles in plant development, physiological processes, and biotic/abiotic stress responses. Despite the availability of recently published draft genome sequence of Cucumis sativus, no comprehensive investigation of these family members has been presented for cucumber. We have identified 64 bZIP transcription factor-encoding genes in the cucumber genome. Based on structural features of their encoded proteins, CsbZIP genes could be classified into 6 groups. Cucumber bZIP genes were expanded mainly by segmental duplication rather than tandem duplication. Although segmental duplication rate of the CsbZIP genes was lower than that of Arabidopsis, rice and sorghum, it was observed as a common expansion mechanism. Some orthologous relationships and chromosomal rearrangements were observed according to comparative mapping analysis with other species. Genome-wide expression analysis of bZIP genes indicated that 64 CsbZIP genes were differentially expressed in at least one of the ten sampled tissues. A total of 4 CsbZIP genes displayed higher expression values in leaf, flowers and root tissues. The in silico micro-RNA (miRNA) and target transcript analyses identified that a total of 21 CsbZIP genes were targeted by 38 plant miRNAs. CsbZIP20 and CsbZIP22 are the most targeted by miR165 and miR166 family members, respectively. We also analyzed the expression of ten CsbZIP genes in the root and leaf tissues of drought-stressed cucumber using quantitative RT-PCR. All of the selected CsbZIP genes were measured as increased in root tissue at 24th h upon PEG treatment. Contrarily, the down-regulation was observed in leaf tissues of all analyzed CsbZIP genes. CsbZIP12 and CsbZIP44 genes showed gradual induction of expression in root tissues during time points. This genome-wide identification and expression profiling provides new opportunities for cloning and functional analyses, which may be used in further studies for improving stress tolerance in plants.