Pseudocercospora fijiensis, causal agent of the black Sigatoka disease (BSD) of Musa spp., has spread globally since its discovery in Fiji 1963 to all the banana and plantain growing areas across the globe. It is becoming the most damaging and economically important disease of this crop. The identification and characterization of genes that regulate infection processes and pathogenicity in P. f...

Plant diseases are important factors as they result in serious reduction in quality and quantity of agriculture products. Therefore, early detection and diagnosis of these diseases are important. To this end, we propose a deep learning-based approach that automates the process of classifying banana leaves diseases. In particular, we make use of the LeNet architecture as a convolutional neural n...

Promoter regions associated with each of the six ssDNA components of banana bunchy top virus (BBTV) have been characterized. DNA segments incorporating the intergenic regions of BBTV DNA-1 to -6 were isolated and fused to the uidA (beta-glucuronidase) reporter gene to assess promoter activity. In tobacco cell suspensions, the BBTV DNA-2 and -6 promoters generated levels of GUS expression 2-fold...

Most parasitoids of aphids are small wasps belonging to the families Braconidae or Aphelinidae. However, some dipteran parasitoids are also known to use aphids as hosts. We describe and give life-history information on a new species of aphid parasitoid, Endaphis fugitiva Gagné and Muratori, found to parasitize the banana aphid, Pentalonia nigronervosa Coquerel, the vector of banana bunchy top v...

Banana bunchy top virus (BBTV; family Nanoviridae, genus Babuvirus) is a multi-component single-stranded DNA virus, which infects banana plants in many regions of the world, often resulting in large-scale crop losses. We analyzed 171 banana leaf samples from fourteen countries and recovered, cloned, and sequenced 855 complete BBTV components including ninety-four full genomes. Importantly, full...

in recent years different additives have been used for enhancing quality and nutritional value of bread. banana flour is a useful additive that contains significant amounts of fiber, protein, minerals and vitamins. in this research chemical tests (moisture, ash, protein and fiber) were carried on the wheat flour, banana flour was then added at levels of 10, 15 and 20% and toast breads were prep...

Background: Mushroom cultivation increased throughout the world with utilization of crop residues. Oyster mushroom (Pleurotus spp.) is suitable for most area and less expensive availability paddy straw. Increasing demand straw compels to search alternate source substrate production. Based on this information efforts were taken compare many locally available leaf substrates Pleurotus citrinopile...

Background and aims Banana (Musa acuminata) is a crop contributing to global food security. Many varieties lack resistance to biotic stresses, due to sterility and narrow genetic background. The objective of this study was to develop an expressed sequence tag (EST) database of transcripts expressed during compatible and incompatible banana–Mycosphaerella fijiensis (Mf) interactions. Black leaf ...

Short banana fiber reinforced composites have been prepared in laboratory to determine mechanical properties. It has been observed that as soon as the percentage of the banana fiber increases slightly there is a tremendous increase in ultimate tensile strength, % of strain and young modulus of elasticity. Reinforcement of banana fibers in epoxy resin increases stiffness and decreases damping pr...