Potassium-Induced Regulation of Cellular Antioxidant Defense and Improvement of Physiological Processes in Wheat under Water Deficit Condition

Drought is the most common form of abiotic stress that reduces plant growth and productivity.It causes plant injuries through elevated production of reactive oxygen species(ROS).Potassium(K)is a vital plant nutrient that notably ameliorates the detrimental effect of drought stress in the plant.A pot experiment was conducted at the Laboratory of Plant Stress Responses,Faculty of Agriculture,Kagawa University,Japan,under controlled environment of green house to explore the role of K in mitigating drought severity in wheat(Triticum asevitum L.)seedlings.Three days after germination,seedlings were exposed to three water regimes viz.,100,50,and 20%field capacity(FC)for 21 days.Potassium was adjusted in Hoagland nutrient solution at 0,6 and 12 mM concentration and applied to pot instead of normal water.Results show that,water deficit stress notably reduced plant growth,biomass accumulation,leaf relative water content(RWC)along with reduced photosynthetic pigments.Increased amount of biochemical stress markers viz.,malondialdehyde(MDA),hydrogen peroxide(H_(2)O_(2)),methylglyoxal(MG),proline(Pro)as well as an impaired antioxidant defense system were observed in drought affected wheat plants.On the contrary,K supplementation resulted in improvement of biochemical and physiological parameters that worked behind in improving growth and development of the wheat plants.In addition,enzymes of ascorbateglutathione(AsA-GSH)cycle were also enhanced by supplemented K that accelerated the ROS detoxification process in plant.Although glyoxalse system did not performed well till MG was detoxified might following another short stepped pathways.Our results revealed that drought stressed plants showed better performances in terms of biochemical and physiological attributes,antioxidant defense and glyoxalase system,as well as ROS detoxification due to K supplementation with better performance at 12 mM K added in 50%FC growing condition.

Change Detection of Rice Cultivation in Bangladesh Based on the Phenological Analysis of MODIS Data

Mapping rice cultivation is indispensable for monitoring food supply conditions in Bangladesh because of the economical importance of the crop for supporting ever increasing population in the country. In this paper, we extract the rice paddy field using the MODIS satellite data for five districts of Pabna, Manikganj, Sherpur, Sylhet, and Gazipur, each of which is characterized with its own aspects in terms of rice cultivation. Land classification is implemented using the vegetation index information derived from the red (band 1) and near-infrared (band 2) bands of MODIS 8-day composite time series data for the two time periods of 2001-2003 and 2011-2013. Results of unsupervised classification indicate that the paddy area coverage increased about 4% and 1% in Gazipur and Sylhet, respectively. In Pabna, Manikganj, and Sherpur, on the other hand, paddy area decreased by 10%, 2% and 5%, respectively, whereas notable increase of 12%, 2% and 7% was found in homestead area coverage, which is becoming more and more important for better management of small-scale agroforestry. At the same time, in Sherpur and Sylhet, forest area increased by 1% and 2% over the same time period. As a validation of these results, the changes detected in Gazipur are compared with those previously derived from the analysis of Landsat data with higher spatial resolution of 30 m as compared with that of MODIS (250 m). Also, the seasonal rice cropping pattern is studied in these five districts for discriminating cultivated rice types. These changes suggest that as a whole, efforts are being made to increase the food production, though the influence of population pressure and economic growth is apparent in these regions.

Agricultural Land Cover Change in Gazipur, Bangladesh, in Relation to Local Economy Studied Using Landsat Images

Land classification is conducted in Gazipur district, located in the northern neighborhood of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. Images of bands 1 - 5 and 7 of Landsat 4 - 5 TM and Landsat 7 ETM+ imagery recorded in years 2001, 2005 and 2009 are classified using unsupervised classification with the technique of image segmentation. It is found that during the eight year period, paddy area increased from 30% to 37%, followed by the increase in the homestead (55% to 57%) and urban area (1% to 3%). These changes occurred at the expense of the decrease in forest land cover (14% to 3%). In the category of homestead, the presence of different kinds of vegetation often makes it difficult to separate the category from paddy field, though paddy exhibits accuracy of 93.70% - 99.95%, which is better than the values for other categories. In addition, the analysis based on digital elevation model reveals that paddy cultivation is implemented in lowland rather than highland. Homestead areas have spread from south (low elevation) to north (high elevation), in association with the decrease in forest-covered areas.

Methanotrophy-driven accumulation of organic carbon in four paddy soils of Bangladesh

Biological methane oxidation is a crucial process in the global carbon cycle that reduces methane emissions from paddy fields and natural wetlands into the atmosphere.However,soil organic carbon accumulation associated with microbial methane oxidation is poorly understood.Therefore,to investigate methane-derived carbon incorporation into soil organic matter,paddy soils originated from different parent materials(Inceptisol,Entisol,and Alfisol) were collected after rice harvesting from four major rice-producing regions in Bangladesh.Following microcosm incubation with 5%(volume/volume)^(13) CH_(4),soil^(13) C-atom abundances significantly increased from background level of 1.08% to 1.88%–2.78%,leading to a net methane-derived accumulation of soil organic carbon ranging from 120 to 307 mg kg^(-1).Approximately 23.6%–60.0% of the methane consumed was converted to soil organic carbon during microbial methane oxidation.The phylogeny of^(13) C-labeled pmoA(enconding the alpha subunit of the particulate methane monooxygenase) and 16 S rRNA genes further revealed that canonical α(type II) and γ(type I) Proteobacteria were active methane oxidizers.Members within the Methylobacter-and Methylosarcina-affiliated type Ia lineages dominated active methane-oxidizing communities that were responsible for the majority of methane-derived carbon accumulation in all three paddy soils,while Methylocystis-affiliated type IIa lineage was the key contributor in one paddy soil of Inceptisol origin.These results suggest that methanotroph-mediated synthesis of biomass plays an important role in soil organic matter accumulation.This study thus supports the concept that methanotrophs not only consume the greenhouse gas methane but also serve as a key biotic factor in maintaining soil fertility.