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PeerJ 2024This study explored the utilization of luffa sponge (LS) in enhancing acetification processes. LS is known for having high porosity and specific surface area, and can...
BACKGROUND
This study explored the utilization of luffa sponge (LS) in enhancing acetification processes. LS is known for having high porosity and specific surface area, and can provide a novel means of supporting the growth of acetic acid bacteria (AAB) to improve biomass yield and acetification rate, and thereby promote more efficient and sustainable vinegar production. Moreover, the promising potential of LS and luffa sponge coated with κ-carrageenan (LSK) means they may represent effective alternatives for the co-production of industrially valuable bioproducts, for example bacterial cellulose (BC) and acetic acid.
METHODS
LS and LSK were employed as adsorbents for UMCC 2951 in a submerged semi-continuous acetification process. Experiments were conducted under reciprocal shaking at 1 Hz and a temperature of 32 °C. The performance of the two systems (LS-AAB and LSK-AAB respectively) was evaluated based on cell dry weight (CDW), acetification rate, and BC biofilm formation.
RESULTS
The use of LS significantly increased the biomass yield during acetification, achieving a CDW of 3.34 mg/L versus the 0.91 mg/L obtained with planktonic cells. Coating LS with κ-carrageenan further enhanced yield, with a CDW of 4.45 mg/L. Acetification rates were also higher in the LSK-AAB system, reaching 3.33 ± 0.05 g/L d as opposed to 2.45 ± 0.05 g/L d for LS-AAB and 1.13 ± 0.05 g/L d for planktonic cells. Additionally, BC biofilm formation during the second operational cycle was more pronounced in the LSK-AAB system (37.0 ± 3.0 mg/L, as opposed to 25.0 ± 2.0 mg/L in LS-AAB).
CONCLUSIONS
This study demonstrates that LS significantly improves the efficiency of the acetification process, particularly when enhanced with κ-carrageenan. The increased biomass yield, accelerated acetification, and enhanced BC biofilm formation highlight the potential of the LS-AAB system, and especially the LSK-AAB variant, in sustainable and effective vinegar production. These systems offer a promising approach for small-scale, semi-continuous acetification processes that aligns with eco-friendly practices and caters to specialized market needs. Finally, this innovative method facilitates the dual production of acetic acid and bacterial cellulose, with potential applications in biotechnological fields.
Topics: Carrageenan; Acetobacter; Biomass; Acetic Acid; Luffa; Adsorption; Cellulose; Biofilms
PubMed: 38952965
DOI: 10.7717/peerj.17650 -
PeerJ 2024Watermelon is commonly affected by Fusarium wilt in a monoculture cropping system. Wheat intercropping alleviates the affection of Fusarium wilt of watermelon. The...
Watermelon is commonly affected by Fusarium wilt in a monoculture cropping system. Wheat intercropping alleviates the affection of Fusarium wilt of watermelon. The objective of this study was to determine the effects of wheat and watermelon intercropping on watermelon growth and Fusarium wilt. Our results showed that wheat and watermelon intercropping promoted growth, increased chlorophyll content, and photosynthesis of watermelon. Meanwhile, wheat and watermelon intercropping inhibited watermelon Fusarium wilt occurrence, decreased spore numbers, increased root vigor, increased antioxidant enzyme activities, and decreased malondialdehyde (MDA) content in watermelon roots. Additionally, wheat and watermelon intercropping enhanced the bacterial colonies and total microbes growth in soil, decreased fungi and f. sp. (FON) colonies, and increased soil enzyme activities in watermelon rhizosphere soil. Our results indicated that wheat and watermelon intercropping enhanced watermelon growth and decreased the incidence of Fusarium wilt in watermelon. These effects could be due to intercropping inducing physiological changes, regulating soil enzyme activities, and/or modulating soil microbial communities.
Topics: Citrullus; Triticum; Fusarium; Plant Diseases; Soil Microbiology; Plant Roots
PubMed: 38952963
DOI: 10.7717/peerj.17587 -
Data in Brief Aug 2024This dataset involves a collection of soybean market news through web scraping from a Brazilian website. The news articles gathered span from January 2015 to June 2023...
This dataset involves a collection of soybean market news through web scraping from a Brazilian website. The news articles gathered span from January 2015 to June 2023 and have undergone a labeling process to categorize them as relevant or non-relevant. The news labeling process was conducted under the guidance of an agricultural economics expert, who collaborated with a group of nine individuals. Ten parameters were considered to assist participants in the labeling process. The dataset comprises approximately 11,000 news articles and serves as a valuable resource for researchers interested in exploring trends in the soybean market. Importantly, this dataset can be utilized for tasks such as classification and natural language processing. It provides insights into labeled soybean market news and supports open science initiatives, facilitating further analysis within the research community.
PubMed: 38952954
DOI: 10.1016/j.dib.2024.110545 -
RSC Advances Jun 2024The adsorbent material humic acid-coated FeO nanoparticle-modified biochar from filamentous green algae was fabricated by introducing the composites of humic acid-coated...
The adsorbent material humic acid-coated FeO nanoparticle-modified biochar from filamentous green algae was fabricated by introducing the composites of humic acid-coated FeO nanoparticles onto biochar from filamentous green algae using the co-precipitation method. Then, the removal of U(vi) from solution by humic acid-FeO/BC was carried out through batch experiments. The results of the characterization showed that the reaction conditions had an important influence on U(vi) removal by humic acid-FeO/BC. The pseudo-second-order kinetic model and Langmuir model better illustrate the adsorption process of U(vi) on the surface of humic acid-FeO/BC. The adsorption processes were dominated by chemisorption and monolayer adsorption. The maximum adsorption capacity of U(vi) by humic acid-FeO/BC could be calculated, and it could reach 555.56 mg g. The probable mechanisms of U(vi) removal by humic acid-FeO/BC were reduction reaction, inner-sphere surface complexation and electrostatic adsorption. The high stability and reusability of humic acid-FeO/BC made it more promising in U(vi) removal applications.
PubMed: 38952931
DOI: 10.1039/d4ra03421j -
RSC Advances Jun 2024Utilization of cell wall components of woody biomass has attracted attention as alternatives for fossil fuels towards a sustainable society. A semi-flow hydrothermal...
Fractionation of beech wood cell walls into digestible cellulose-rich residues and photoluminescent lignin-rich precipitates semi-flow hot-compressed water treatment with 2-naphthol.
Utilization of cell wall components of woody biomass has attracted attention as alternatives for fossil fuels towards a sustainable society. A semi-flow hydrothermal treatment was used to fractionate the beech () wood into cellulose-rich residues and lignin-rich precipitates. The enzymatic saccharification of the cellulose component in the residue was enhanced significantly because the preferential delignification from the secondary wall increased enzyme accessibility. Meanwhile, the precipitated lignin was soluble in organic solvent and exhibited clear photoluminescence (PL) according to the chromophore distances. Furthermore, the carbocation scavenger, 2-naphthol, was impregnated into the beech wood to inhibit the lignin re-condensation reaction. As a result, the digestibility of the cellulose component in the residue increased because unproductive enzymatic binding of lignin and lignin re-condensation were both suppressed. In addition, the PL intensity of the precipitates was significantly enhanced, indicating that 2-naphthol bound to the lignin molecules influenced the PL properties. Overall, fractionation using a semi-flow hydrothermal treatment efficiently uses both polysaccharides and lignin, especially the impregnation of 2-naphthol provided advantages for both saccharides and lignin. Monosaccharides can be converted into valuable products a sugar platform, and the lignin precipitates exhibit useful PL properties that give them significant potential as a feedstock for numerous valuable materials, such as fluorescence reagents and spectral conversion agents. The results presented herein provide insights that are crucial for the comprehensive utilization of cell wall components for sustainable biorefinery systems.
PubMed: 38952928
DOI: 10.1039/d4ra03094j -
Frontiers in Physiology 2024Alternative splicing is an essential post-transcriptional regulatory mechanism that diversifies gene function by generating multiple protein isoforms from a single gene...
Alternative splicing is an essential post-transcriptional regulatory mechanism that diversifies gene function by generating multiple protein isoforms from a single gene and act as a crucial role in insect environmental adaptation. Olfaction, a key sense for insect adaptation, relies heavily on the antennae, which are the primary olfactory organs expressing most of the olfactory genes. Despite the extensive annotation of olfactory genes within insect antennal tissues facilitated by high-throughput sequencing technology advancements, systematic analyses of alternative splicing are still relatively less. In this study, we focused on the oriental fruit fly (), a significant pest of fruit crops. We performed a detailed analysis of alternative splicing in its antennae by utilizing the full-length transcriptome of its antennal tissue and the insect's genome. The results revealed 8600 non-redundant full-length transcripts identified in the oriental fruit fly antennal full-length transcriptome, spanning 4,145 gene loci. Over 40% of these loci exhibited multiple isoforms. Among these, 161 genes showed sex-biased isoform switching, involving seven different types of alternative splicing. Notably, events involving alternative transcription start sites (ATSS) and alternative transcription termination sites (ATTS) were the most common. Of all the genes undergoing ATSS and ATTS alternative splicing between male and female, 32 genes were alternatively spliced in protein coding regions, potentially affecting protein function. These genes were categorized based on the length of the sex-biased isoforms, with the highest difference in isoform fraction (dIF) associated with the ATSS type, including genes such as , , and Additionally, transcription factor binding sites for doublesex were identified upstream of both BdorABCA13 and BdorCAT2. Besides being expressed in the antennal tissues, and are also expressed in the mouthparts, legs, and genitalia of both female and male adults, suggesting their functional diversity. This study reveals alternative splicing events in the antennae of from two aspects: odorant receptor genes and other types of genes expressed in the antennae. This study not only provides a research foundation for understanding the regulation of gene function by alternative splicing in the oriental fruit fly but also offers new insights for utilizing olfaction-based behavioral manipulation techniques to manage this pest.
PubMed: 38952867
DOI: 10.3389/fphys.2024.1384426 -
Frontiers in Plant Science 2024Accurate and real-time field wheat ear counting is of great significance for wheat yield prediction, genetic breeding and optimized planting management. In order to...
Accurate and real-time field wheat ear counting is of great significance for wheat yield prediction, genetic breeding and optimized planting management. In order to realize wheat ear detection and counting under the large-resolution Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) video, Space to depth (SPD) module was added to the deep learning model YOLOv7x. The Normalized Gaussian Wasserstein Distance (NWD) Loss function is designed to create a new detection model YOLOv7xSPD. The precision, recall, F1 score and AP of the model on the test set are 95.85%, 94.71%, 95.28%, and 94.99%, respectively. The AP value is 1.67% higher than that of YOLOv7x, and 10.41%, 39.32%, 2.96%, and 0.22% higher than that of Faster RCNN, SSD, YOLOv5s, and YOLOv7. YOLOv7xSPD is combined with the Kalman filter tracking and the Hungarian matching algorithm to establish a wheat ear counting model with the video flow, called YOLOv7xSPD Counter, which can realize real-time counting of wheat ears in the field. In the video with a resolution of 3840×2160, the detection frame rate of YOLOv7xSPD Counter is about 5.5FPS. The counting results are highly correlated with the ground truth number (R0.99), and can provide model basis for wheat yield prediction, genetic breeding and optimized planting management.
PubMed: 38952848
DOI: 10.3389/fpls.2024.1346182 -
Frontiers in Plant Science 2024Effectively monitoring pest-infested areas by computer vision is essential in precision agriculture in order to minimize yield losses and create early scientific...
Effectively monitoring pest-infested areas by computer vision is essential in precision agriculture in order to minimize yield losses and create early scientific preventative solutions. However, the scale variation, complex background, and dense distribution of pests bring challenges to accurate detection when utilizing vision technology. Simultaneously, supervised learning-based object detection heavily depends on abundant labeled data, which poses practical difficulties. To overcome these obstacles, in this paper, we put forward innovative semi-supervised pest detection, PestTeacher. The framework effectively mitigates the issues of confirmation bias and instability among detection results across different iterations. To address the issue of leakage caused by the weak features of pests, we propose the Spatial-aware Multi-Resolution Feature Extraction (SMFE) module. Furthermore, we introduce a Region Proposal Network (RPN) module with a cascading architecture. This module is specifically designed to generate higher-quality anchors, which are crucial for accurate object detection. We evaluated the performance of our method on two datasets: the corn borer dataset and the Pest24 dataset. The corn borer dataset encompasses data from various corn growth cycles, while the Pest24 dataset is a large-scale, multi-pest image dataset consisting of 24 classes and 25k images. Experimental results demonstrate that the enhanced model achieves approximately 80% effectiveness with only 20% of the training set supervised in both the corn borer dataset and Pest24 dataset. Compared to the baseline model SoftTeacher, our model improves (mean Average Precision) at 7.3 compared to that of SoftTeacher at 4.6. This method offers theoretical research and technical references for automated pest identification and management.
PubMed: 38952847
DOI: 10.3389/fpls.2024.1369696 -
Frontiers in Plant Science 2024Reduced glutathione (γ-glutamyl-cysteinyl-glycine, GSH), the primary non-protein sulfhydryl group in organisms, plays a pivotal role in the plant salt stress response....
Reduced glutathione (γ-glutamyl-cysteinyl-glycine, GSH), the primary non-protein sulfhydryl group in organisms, plays a pivotal role in the plant salt stress response. This study aimed to explore the impact of GSH on the photosynthetic apparatus, and carbon assimilation in tomato plants under salt stress, and then investigate the role of nitric oxide (NO) in this process. The investigation involved foliar application of 5 mM GSH, 0.1% (w/v) hemoglobin (Hb, a nitric oxide scavenger), and GSH+Hb on the endogenous NO levels, rapid chlorophyll fluorescence, enzyme activities, and gene expression related to the Calvin cycle in tomato seedlings ( L. cv. 'Zhongshu No. 4') subjected short-term salt stress (100 mM NaCl) for 24, 48 and 72 hours. GSH treatment notably boosted nitrate reductase (NR) and NO synthase (NOS) activities, elevating endogenous NO signaling in salt-stressed tomato seedling leaves. It also mitigated chlorophyll fluorescence (OJIP) curve distortion and damage to the oxygen-evolving complex (OEC) induced by salt stress. Furthermore, GSH improved photosystem II (PSII) electron transfer efficiency, reduced Q accumulation, and countered salt stress effects on photosystem I (PSI) redox properties, enhancing the light energy absorption index (PI). Additionally, GSH enhanced key enzyme activities in the Calvin cycle and upregulated their genes. Exogenous GSH optimized PSII energy utilization via endogenous NO, safeguarded the photosynthetic reaction center, improved photochemical and energy efficiency, and boosted carbon assimilation, ultimately enhancing net photosynthetic efficiency (P) in salt-stressed tomato seedling leaves. Conversely, Hb hindered P reduction and NO signaling under salt stress and weakened the positive effects of GSH on NO levels, photosynthetic apparatus, and carbon assimilation in tomato plants. Thus, the positive regulation of photosynthesis in tomato seedlings under salt stress by GSH requires the involvement of NO.
PubMed: 38952846
DOI: 10.3389/fpls.2024.1413653 -
Frontiers in Plant Science 2024The large water demand, insufficient deposition on the back of the leaf and the uneven distribution of droplets are the problems of traditional agricultural ground plant...
The large water demand, insufficient deposition on the back of the leaf and the uneven distribution of droplets are the problems of traditional agricultural ground plant protection machinery, which leads to low agricultural control efficiency. Combined with the advantages of electrostatic spray technology and the characteristics of high working efficiency and low probability of droplets drift of ground sprayer, an inductive electrostatic boom spray system based on embedded electrode structure is designed and mounted on a large self-propelled boom sprayer for field testing. Based on the working characteristics of the fan nozzle and the analysis of the theory of charge, the inductive electrostatic spray device is designed. The performance of the device is tested and the rationality of the system design is verified by COMSOL numerical simulations, charge-to-mass ratio, and particle size distribution measurements. The spray deposition scanning software and the Box-Behnken experimental design method are used to analyze the spray droplet deposition rate and coverage density of the sprayer on the front and back of the target leaves. The results show that the embedded closed electrode structure designed in this paper can avoid the problem of electrode wetting, and the electric field generated by it is mainly concentrated in the spray liquid film area, and the intensity reaches 6~7 V/m. At the conventional application height (500 mm), the maximum charge-to-mass ratio is 2.91 mC/kg, and the average particle size is 168.22 μm, which is 12.87% lower than that of ordinary spray, when the spray pressure is 0.3 MPa and the electrostatic voltage is 12 kV. The results of field experiments show that the optimum combination of the working parameters with the spray speed is 8.40 m/s, the spray pressure is 0.35 MPa, the charging voltage is 11.50 kV, the amount of droplet deposition in the lower dorsal area of the blade is 1.44 µL·cm. This study can provide a certain basis for the application of electrostatic spray technology in ground sprayers.
PubMed: 38952844
DOI: 10.3389/fpls.2024.1367781