Annual Research & Review in Biology

Aims: Hopea sangal Korth. is listed as vulnerable species and recently its remnant habitat was rediscovered in the degraded forest near the springs area in East Java. In the forest, the regeneration of the seedling and saplings understory is affected by the heterogeneity in environmental factors especially various light levels due to the canopy gaps. H. sangal is considered a shade-tolerant species, hence the establishment of the seedling in its natural habitat occurs under the closed canopy. This study aimed to understand the Water Use Efficiency (WUE) and Relative Growth Rate (RGR) of Hopea sangal Korth seedling grown in two different levels of tree canopy shades.

Study Design: This research was using a completely randomized design, with 9 replications.

Place and Duration of Study: This study was conducted in the Purwodadi Botanic Garden, East Java, between March – July.

Methodology: We used seedling of H. sangal collected from the field in Pasuruan which were planted in plastic pots and acclimatized to obtain seedling of a similar size. The microclimate was measured weekly using solarimetri and sling psychrometer at 08.00; 10:00; 12:00; 14:00 and 16:00. RGR was measured by harvesting the seedling and whole plant WUE was measured using the gravimetric method.

Results: We observed the light level during the periodic opening of the canopy gap was significantly different at a specific time (8-12 am), with the highest light intensity at 10.00 of 333.57 µmol photon m^-2s^-1. The canopy shades differences did not affect the WUE of seedling (P = 0.333), meanwhile, there was a significant difference in the seedling RGR (P = 0.025). The seedling that were grown under a higher gap and received higher light intensity periodically during a day had higher RGR than those under a closed canopy.  The WUE has a positive relationship with the RGR of seedling (R2 = 0.5; P < 0.05).

Conclusions: This study suggested that the H. sangal is one of the shade-tolerant species capable of responding to gap-opening sunlight. The study also showed RGR of the seedling positively correlated with the WUE of plants, indicating that the seedling could use the water supply efficiently to grow rapidly.

Background: Human activities adversely affect the distribution and diversity of zooplankton. They are diverse group of organisms with little or no locomotive ability and quickly respond to changes in their environment. This research was aimed at providing updated information on the distribution and seasonal variation of zooplankton in Great Kwa River.

Materials and Methods: Two sampling stations (S1- Obufa Esuk and S2- Esuk Atu) were mapped along the river bank, samples were collected using plankton net of 55µm mesh size and preserved in 4% formalin. Species were identified using taxonomic keys. Data were analyzed using ecological indices.

Results: The results revealed 12 taxa; belonging to 38 species. Tintinnida, Protozoa, Cladocera, Copepoda were 23.1%, 18.5%, 15.4% and 13.3% respectively. The lowest taxonomic groups were Diptera, Foraminitera, Atenatadata and Trichoptera having 1.85% for each order. The highest species was recorded in S2 having 31 species. In both Stations Ascampbelliella acuta was dominance over other species. Shannon-Weiner index (H) were 2.997 and 2.40 in S2 and S1 respectively. The evenness index were 0.576 and 0.547 for S1 and S2 respectively. Margalef^,s diversity index were 8.171 and 4.111 for Esuk Atu-S2 and Obufa Esuk-S1 respectively. Zooplankton species were abundant in wet season than dry season.

Conclusion: This present study provide updated information on the zooplankton distribution, diversity and seasonal variations of the Great Kwa River. The high dominance of Tintinnida in this study indicates a natural linkage between nano-planktons and macro-planktons in the food webs of the river.

Background and Objective: Plantain (Musa paradisiaca L) remains one of themost important staple food crop and perhaps, one of the oldest cultivated fruit tree crop in the humid tropics of Africa, Central Asia, South America and the West Indies.Fourteen (14) elite plantain cultivars were evaluated for genetic diversity using agro-morphological yield related attributes and simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers.

Materials and Methods: Six (6) microsatellite markers that showed distinct fragments varying from 50 bp to 3.0 Kbp in size of polymorphic bands were selected and used for molecular characterization and fingerprinting, while agro-morphological (yield–related) attributes assessed included bunch weight, number of hands/bunch, number of fingers/hands, number of fingers/bunch, harvest interval, length of plant cycle, pulp hardness and pulp to skin weight ratio of the elite plantain cultivars.

Results: The total number of amplified bands (TNB), mean percentage polymorphism (%P), mean polymorphic information content (PIC), average marker index (MI) and mean gene diversity for the SSR assay were 59, 70.24%, 0.79, 3.74 and 0.832 respectively. Results of agro-morphological fingerprint study revealed a significant variations in terms of the bunch weight, number of finger per hands/bunch, number of fingers per hand, number of fingers /bunch, harvest  interval, length of crop cycle, pulp hardness and pulp/wt. ratio all showed significant variations among the cultivars. The distribution of the elite cultivars along with the principal components showed cluster pattern of distribution within the study location. Principal component analysis revealed four principal components contributing 99.91% to the observed morphological variations while analysis of molecular variance revealed 96.00% contributed by molecular characteristics to observed variations. The yield displayed revealed significant contributions of bunch weight, fingers/hand and fingers/bunch as the main indices for plantain yield. The dendrograms for both morphological and molecular characteristics delineated the cultivars into four distinct cluster groups and subgroups each varying in genetic distance.

Conclusion: These good cultivars can be exploited for the improvement of low yielding cultivars in other region to increase and improve plantain yield, promote food security and income generation especially under the present economic realities where food security is threatened by the global food crises and declining crop productivity.

Urinary schistosomiasis which is transmitted by schistosome species is the major cause of liver and bladder pathologies and still remains a serious threat in the underdeveloped and developing world. This study evaluates the prevalence of Schistosoma haematobiuminfection  among school aged children in Biase, Obubra and Ogoja Local Government Areas of Cross River State. Five hundred (500) pupils were examined and selected randomly from a public primary and secondary schools in the study area. Freshly passed mid-day urine samples were collected and transferred to the laboratory where there were examined for the presence of Schistosoma haematobium eggs. Study participants were grouped into three age groups,8-10 years. 11-13 years, and 14-16 years old. Overall prevalence of S. heamatobium was (13.6%). Infection was more prevalent among the age group of 14-16years, the percentage of prevalence and intensity of infection were higher in males (14.1%) than in females (6.9%). Inter simple sequence repeats of PCR test performed for the collected urine samples using ISSR test of the Dral-1 gene reveals 73% study subjects had a polymorphism for UPA02 and UPA13 primers, while primer UPA13 showed 24% polymorphism. Total number of polymorphic bands were 2 each for primers UPA02 and UPA13 primers while UPA12 showed only one polymorphic band. Major allele frequencies (MAF) were 0.53 for each of UPA02 and UPA 13 primers but showed 0.71 frequency with UPA12 primer. Allele frequencies (AF) also varied slightly among the primers used. UPA02 and UPA 13 had allele frequencies of 8 each while UPA12 had 4 allele frequencies (Table 13). Nei’s genetic diversity indices for the primers revealed variations among the different primers. UPA02 and UPA13 Nei’s gene diversity of 0.64 each while primer UPA12 showed gene diversity of 0.28. Results of polymorphic information content showed that primers UPA02 and UPA13 discriminately revealed a PIC of 0.68 while UPA12 discriminated 0.28 PIC. This study therefore, revealed a critical need for targeting health campaign towards school age children and heads of households in order to empower them with the basic knowledge to recognize, treat and manage their health challenges.Applications of one to two doses of praziquantel considerably reduced the severity of urinary Schistosomiasis in the study area.

Aims: To investigate the effect of NaCl stress on parent Nostoc muscorum and its spontaneously occurring mutant clone showing resistance to growth inhibitory action of NaCl in terms of various physiological parameters. We have further analyzed the role of iron uptake systems in providing a resistant phenotype.

Place and Duration of Study: Division of Microbiology, Department of Botany, Government Motilal Science College, Bhopal 462008 (M.P.) India. This work was carried out between August 2021 to May 2022.

Methodology: We have examined the various physiological parameters viz. growth, specific growth rate, photosynthetic O₂ evolution, and nitrogenase activity as per the prescribed protocol. Further, DNA microarray analysis was carried out using the Agilent platform.

Results: NaCl stress adversely affected growth, photosynthetic O₂ evolution, and nitrogenase activity of the wild-type Nostoc muscorum, while NaCl-resistant mutant remains unaffected under a given stress. Microarray data analysis identified 24 ORF related to the uptake of iron with fold regulation ≥2 in the mutant strain. These ORFs belonging to the ABC-type ferric iron transporter that plays a significant role in the iron acquisition were identified in the mutant strain.

Conclusion: The mechanism of iron homeostasis in the NaCl-resistant mutant has been explained. The results presented are essential to explain the regulatory role of the iron uptake system in stressed conditions.