Dracocephalum kotschyi Boiss, a member of Labiatae family, is a native plant to Iran, which has been reported to have immunomodulatory, antihyperlipidemic and antispasmodic activities. The objective of this research was to study the antispasmodic and antidiarrhoeal activities of hydroalcoholic and hexane extracts of D. kotschyi in mice. Furthermore, the antidiarrhoeal and antispasmodic effect o...

Plants using the C3 and C4 photosynthetic pathways differ in carbon-isotope composition, and this difference offers a means to estimate the relative abundance of these two functional groups in the palaeorecord. We report here results of a study aiming to evaluate pollen dC (dCp) of Poaceae (the grass family) as a proxy indicator for palaeoecological studies. On average dCp differs by /13 betwee...

African woodlands form a major part of the tropical grassy biome and support the livelihoods of millions of rural and urban people. Charcoal production in particular is a major economic activity, but its impact on other ecosystem services is little studied. To address this, our study collected biophysical and social datasets, which were combined in ecological production functions, to assess eco...

This study was designed to investigate the removal of reactive violet 48 from wastewater using Commercial activated carbon and Coir pith activated carbon. Its adsorption capacity has been tested for the decolourization of waste water containing reactive violet 48. The effect of system variables such as concentration, temperature, contact time and pH were studied. The adsorption data follow Lang...

North American pawpaw [Asimina triloba (L.) Dunal] is a temperate climate member of the Annonaceae used as an ornamental and specialty tree fruit crop. Micropropagation could provide a clonal propagation method for plant production and contribute to germplasm preservation. A pawpaw culture was established that has produced shoot-bud clusters for over six years when maintained on a plant growth ...

An ethnobotanical study in Agew-Awi and Amhara peoples in northwest Ethiopia reported that Cordia africana is used traditionally in the treatment of liver disease, amebiasis, stomachache, and diarrhea. The root and root bark are reported to be used in the treatment of diarrhea. Therefore, this study was intended to evaluate the antidiarrheal effect of C. africana against castor oil-induced diar...

A total of 360 bacteria, isolated from the rhizospheres of a system of rice intensification (SRI) fields, were characterized for the production of siderophore, fluorescence, indole acetic acid (IAA), hydrocyanic acid (HCN) and solubilization of phosphorus. Of them, seven most promising isolates (SRI-156, -158, -178, -211, -229, -305 and -360) were screened for their antagonistic potential again...

In this paper, we compared the efficacy of observation based modeling approach using a genetic algorithm with the regular statistical analysis as an alternative methodology in plant research. Preliminary experimental data on in vitro rooting was taken for this study with an aim to understand the effect of charcoal and naphthalene acetic acid (NAA) on successful rooting and also to optimize the ...

Macrophomina phaseolina (Tassi) Goid is a destructive pathogen of cowpea that causes serious charcoal rot disease with significant yield losses. Antifungal activity of three indigenous Ascomycetes viz., Trichoderma harzianum, T. viride, and T. hamatum, and two Meliaceae members, i.e., Melia azedarach L. and Azadirachta indica L. were assessed against the pathogen. Laboratory screening trials wi...

Most of the plant regeneration processes in citrus, through tissue culture, involve indirect somatic embryogenesis. The optimization of these processes is important for the development of in vitro plant improvement and micropropagation studies. Studies to evaluate the effect of different carbohydrates in somatic embryogenesis were conducted using calli from ‘Ponkan’ mandarin (Citrus reticulata,...