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Two populations were developed and advanced to BC3 generation using IR70369A and KCMS31A CMS lines as donors and MAS 99 as recurrent parent. In BC3F1 generation, the populations were evaluated with parents for morpho-floral traits under aerobic field condition. In both crosses, the mean values of number of tillers/plant (22 & 27), plant height at maturity (74 & 73cm), days to 50% flowering (95 & 97 days) were found comparable to the recurrent parent with superior floral traits such as pollen sterility (100%), stigma exertion (30% & 25%) and spikelet sterility (100%). IR70369A × MAS99 cross derived plants, A04, A35, A47, A65, A84 and KCMS31A × MAS99 cross derived plants, B06, B27, B30, B34 and B44 were identified as superior MAS99 converted CMS plants as indicated by morpho-floral traits and advanced to BC4F1. Between two crosses, IR70369A × MAS99 cross derived population was superior for days to 50% flowering and stigma exertion rate.

The shot hole borer (SHB), Xylosandrus compactus (Eichhoff) (Coleoptera: Curculionidae: Scolytinae), is an emerging pest of Robusta coffee in India. Traps with attractants are commonly used to capture the ambrosia beetles for purposes of monitoring, studying population dynamics, predicting outbreaks, and mass trapping to reduce damage. The relative attractiveness of several common attractants and the influence of their concentration were evaluated in the field against X. compactus using Broca traps in this study. The tested attractants exhibited clear differences in attractiveness and the preliminary field studies at coffee plantations revealed that absolute ethanol attracted more shot hole borer adults than coffee twig extracts, distillery ethanol, and ethanol methanol combinations. The number of beetles trapped varied in different places during multi-location field trials, but in general, 50% of absolute ethanol-baited traps captured the highest number of beetles in all the locations. This study demonstrates 50% absolute ethanol can be used as an effective attractant for coffee shot hole borer and enables a cost-effective option for the control of X. compactus in coffee. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Genetic variability, phenotypic and genotypic coefficients of variation, heritability and genetic advance for eight traits related to yield, its attributing traits and oil content in 120 restorer lines of sunflower was studied. The analysis of variance revealed highly significant differences for all the characters among the restorer lines. The magnitude of differences between phenotypic coefficients of variation (PCV) and genotypic coefficients of variation (GCV) was relatively low for all the traits, indicating less environmental influence. The estimates of GCV and PCV were high for seed yield plant-1, head diameter, 100 seed weight and plant height. High heritability in broad sense estimates (>90%) were recorded for all the traits under study indicating, the predominance of additive gene action and selection of genotypes based on these characters would be more effective for target plant selection in early generation. Majority of the restorer lines were multi headed, early flowering with medium plant height, small head diameter and medium volume weight. Among various restorer lines studied the promising restorer lines (K-3, C-18, G-17-1, N-16, M-19-1, B-21-1, D-11 and C-30) were selected in comparison with checks based on the presence of high seed yield plant-1 and oil content. These selected lines can be promoted in future hybridization program to achieve desired segregants or can be used as parental lines to develop sunflower hybrids with high seed yield and oil content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Shot-hole borer (SHB), Xylosandrus compactus Eichhoff (Coleoptera: Scolytidae) is one of the serious pests of coffee with a higher infestation in robusta coffee than arabica. This study includes both laboratory and field experiments to assess the efficacy of five different insecticides for the control of SHB. In the laboratory, insecticides were evaluated at two different doses and the insecticide concentrations that generated the highest mortality percentage were subsequently tested in the field. Such, insecticides were sprayed on the SHB infested twigs in the field and the efficacy was assessed by percentage mortality on insect stages. The highest percent adult mortality at tunnel entry hole (92 %) was recorded for Chlorpyrifos 20 EC @ 3 ml/l and Chlorpyrifos 50 EC + Cypermethrin 5 EC @ 1.2 ml/l followed by Emamectin benzoate 5 SG @ 0.4 g/l (71%), Thiacloprid 21.7 SC @ 1 ml/l (70%) and Imidacloprid 17.8 SL @ 1 ml/l (64%). The study revealed that Chlorpyrifos 20 EC and Chlorpyrifos 50 EC + Cypermethrin 5 EC combination insecticides were effective in killing SHB adults at the entrance hole and these insecticides could be integrated as an IPM component in the management of SHB in the young robusta coffee plantations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Coffee White Stem Borer (CWSB), Xylotrechus quadripes Chevrolat is a major and most devastating pest of arabica coffee in India. Because of the concealed nature of this pest, the management of this pest is challenging. Timing of management measures plays a critical role in managing this pest under the economic threshold level. One of the important management interventions for this pest is tracing and uprooting the CWSB infested plants before the flight period (April to May & October to December). Due to lack of skilled workers to identify the infested plants, presence of crop load or low price for coffee and lack of moisture to uproot the infested plants makes the planters to skip the tracing before flight period. This allows WSB adults to emerge from the infested plants and spread the infestation to healthy plants. In view of this, the present study was targeted on the CWSB infested plants with an objective to kill the emerging adults using Non- woven fabric material. Main stem and thick primaries of CWSB infested plants were wrapped with non-woven fabric material and sprayed with insecticide. Hundred percent mortality of emerging adults from the infested plants wrapped with 1.3 mm thickness Non-woven fabric material and sprayed with Chlorpyrifos 50EC + Cypermethrin 5EC @ 1.2ml per litre along with 1 ml of wetting agent was observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rinamba opacicollis Cameron (Hymenoptera: Braconidae) was collected from Chikkamagaluru, Karnataka, India for the first time from the larvae of white stem borer, Xylotrechus quadripes Chevrolat infesting arabica coffee. Its role in the biological or integrated control of X. quadripes remains to be evaluated. White stem borer could be the first host record of this parasitoid all over the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pesticide usage is one of the important components in integrated pest and disease management (IPDM) programs in coffee. Being a pernneial crop, coffee is subjected to attack by several pest and diseases especially, white stem borer and leaf rust. Both this require the timely management measures to keep them under the economic threshold level. Because of the non availabilty of skilled labourers, timely operations are skipped in majority of the coffee plantations. This favours the build up of pest and diseases. Hence, to reduce the number of estate operations and to bridge the time gap, the compatibility of recommended insecticide chlorpyrifos 20EC, chlorpyrifos 50EC + cypermethrin 5EC along with a fungicide hexaconazole 5EC were evaluated in the laboratory by checking the efficacy against white stem borer and leaf rust which will appear simultaneously in the post monsoon season. Laboratory experiments revealed that the chemical mixures are physically compatible and found no changes in the efficacy against the targetted pest and disease when they sprayed together. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data mining refers to collecting or mining knowledge from large amounts of data. It is used in various medical applications like tumor clustering, protein structure prediction, gene selection, cancer classification based on microarray data, clustering of gene expression data, statistical model of protein-protein interaction etc. The analyzing the clustering algorithms phase consist of four clustering algorithms namely K-means, Fuzzy c-means, Hierarchical algorithm and Partitioning Around Medoids(PAM) on HIV - 1 infection effect on macrophages in vitro time course microarray data set. The clustering algorithms are validated using validation measures and based on internal validation measures such as Dunn index, Dunn index 2, Calinski- Harabasz index and Average Silhouette width, the best clustering algorithm out of 4 is to be identified and finally the proposed research work is also to find common genes present in each cluster produced by the four clustering algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies were conducted to develop an artificial diet for rearing the coffee white stem borer, Xylotrechus quadripes Chev., the most destructive pest of arabica coffee in India and Indo-China region. Development of an artificial diet enables the researcher to carry out several studies on the different developmental stages to understand the life cycle. After several failures a semi-synthetic diet, including the stem powder of Arabica coffee was developed which enabled the coffee white stem borer to complete the life cycle in the laboratory. Preparation of the diet is described in this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sixty four french bean genotypes were analyzed with 15 microsatellite markers to test variation. Among the total 15 SSR primers used, 10 primers were polymorphic and 5 were monomorphic. Of the 15 SSR primers used, 10 primer pairs showed polymorphism. The number of alleles produced by different primers ranged from two to four. The high level of polymorphism (66.66%) was obtained. The cluster construction based on SSR marker data revealed significant genetic variation among the genotypes. SSR marker system showed high dissimilarity among the french bean genotypes. Cluster diagram constructed using polymorphic markers identified two major clusters. All exotic collections, landraces, local types and released varieties were grouped in same cluster with some indigenous collection, whereas cluster A comprised only of indigenous collection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cowpea [Vigna unguiculata (L.) Walp.] is a valuable warm season pulse crop grown for its grain, vegetable and also fodder. Very few efforts have made to understand the association of various yield components and their direct and or indirect influence on yield of cowpea. In the present study twenty genotypes of cowpea selected from various genetic background were used to study the association pattern among morphological traits and direct and indirect effect of these traits on productivity is also discussed. number of clusters plant, pods per plant had positive correlation with seed yield where as, clusters per plant, pod length and test weight had a positive direct effect on seed yield and days to maturity has negative direct effect on seed yield. Few genotypes were identified to be superior over the local check (C-152). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pairwise entanglement properties of a symmetric multi-qubit system are analyzed through a complete set of two-qubit local invariants. Collective features of entanglement, such as spin squeezing, are expressed in terms of invariants and a classification scheme for pairwise entanglement is proposed. The invariant criteria given here are shown to be related to the recently proposed (Phys. Rev. Lett.95, 120502 (2005)) generalized spin squeezing inequalities for pairwise entanglement in symmetric multi-qubit states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fruit eating bat, Cynopterus sphinx, plays important role in pollination and seed dispersal in many plants. Yet, they are considered as pests on fruit and plantation crops due to their voracious feeding habit. The extensive feeding of bats on tender twigs of robusta coffee leads to drying of fruit bearing branches resulting in crop loss. The present study is an attempt to quantify the crop loss caused by the bats on robusta coffee. The data indicated that the crop damage ranged from 5.9 to 9.48 percent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: To determine the prevalence of ocular changes in pregnancy-induced hypertension (PIH) and co-relate the ophthalmic changes and severity of the disease with visual outcome., Methods and Material: This is a retrospective study conducted from a hospital-based cohort of pregnant women, who delivered from June 2018 to December 2020. A total of 153 patients who fulfilled the diagnostic criteria of PIH admitted in the obstetric ward were included in this study. History with regard to age, parity, gravida, gestational age, medical history, and ocular findings were noted from the patient's case records. Anterior segment examination, dilated fundus evaluation, blood pressure (BP) recordings, urine proteinuria were done. All data were analyzed using the satistical package for social science (SPSS) program., Results: Out of 153 patients, 78 (50.98%) were primigravida, 55 (35.95%) were gravida 2, and 20 (13.07%) were multigravida. Gestational age ranged from 23-40 weeks. Ocular changes were seen in 57% of the PIH patients. Hypertensive retinopathy was seen in 23.53% of PIH patients with a mean age of 29.06 ± 4.36 years. Grade 1 hypertensive retinopathy was the most common manifestation in PIH patients (51.16%). The visual loss occurred in 72% of eclampsia and12% of pre-eclampsia which was statistically significant ( P = 0.03). Papilledema was seen in 6% and refractive error in 41% of the patients., Conclusions: Ocular examination of PIH patients reveals important objective information concerning the disorder. The presence of retinal change is a marker of the severity of PIH and is the most common ocular feature. Detection of progression of these changes reflects ischemic changes of the placenta. Fundus examination in PIH patients is important to predict adverse fetal outcomes, and risks to mother's life., Competing Interests: There are no conflicts of interest., (Copyright: © 2022 Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care.)