International Journal of Applied Sciences and Biotechnology

108-126

Authors: Pradeep Kumar Singh, Ram Lakhan Singh

Synthetic dyes are widely used in textile, paper, food, cosmetics and pharmaceutical industries with the textile industry as the largest consumer. Among all the available synthetic dyes, azo dyes are the largest group of dyes used in textile industry. Textile dyeing and finishing processes generate a large amount of dye containing wastewater which is one of the main sources of water pollution problems worldwide. Several physico-chemical methods have been applied to the treatment of textile wastewater but these methods have many limitations due to high cost, low efficiency and secondary pollution problems. As an alternative to physico-chemical methods, biological methods comprise bacteria, fungi, yeast, algae and plants and their enzymes which received increasing interest due to their cost effectiveness and eco-friendly nature. Decolorization of azo dyes by biological processes may take place either by biosorption or biodegradation. A variety of reductive and oxidative enzymes may also be involved in the degradation of dyes. This review provides an overview of decolorization and degradation of azo dyes by biological processes and establishes the fact that these microbial and plant cells are significantly effective biological weapon against the toxic azo dyes.

133-140

Authors: Gowri Rajkumar, Jagathpriya Weerasena, Kumudu Fernando

Oryza rhizomatis is an endemic wild rice species in Sri Lanka with some unique characteristics of biotic and abiotic stress resistance. Hence characterization of desirable novel genes found in Oryza rhizomatis will be useful for transferring traits to commercial varieties. Therefore, in this study, a species-specific cDNA library was constructed from the wild rice species O. rhizomatis to isolate and characterize novel genes which are specifically present in this species but absent in cultivated rice (Oryza sativa). Forty recombinant clones were randomly selected from the cDNA SSH library and the inserts were sequenced. Sequence analysis of all forty clones indicated that the suppression and hybridization procedures in the library construction were successful as most of the clones have significant alignment with other wild rice species than O. sativa used as a reference cDNA for construction of subtraction library in this study. Therefore the genes which were specifically expressed in the wild rice species O. rhizomatis enriched in the SSH library. From this study it was possible to characterize O. rhizomatis nsLTP1 proteins (non specific Lipid Transfer Protein 1) super family AAI_LTSS which are found to be involved in control of pathogen attack related responses in plants.

150-158

Authors: Ghuzala Anwar, Ghalib Nawaz, Muhammad Afzal, Iram Majeed, Ali Waqas

Nursing is an art science and an essential health care profession in which the skilled knowledgeable persons are committed to provide care to sick peoples and strive for the, protection and promotion of health and prevention against diseases and helps to minimize the risk and risk related injuries. Urinary tract infections are very common infection in the hospital settings almost responsible for 40% nosocomial infections. All the urinray tract infection is expected that approximately more than 70% infection reported because of indewelling cathters. Objectives: To assess the perceptions of nurses regarding indwelling urinary catheter and its care. To assess the practices of nurses to prevent the indwelling catheter related urinary tract infection. Methodology: Descriptive cross sectional design and data was collected through a five point Likert scale questioner. Study population was the nursing staff from the Jinnah hospital Lahore. Sample size was 184 nurses from all indoor departments of the Jinnah Hospital Lahore. Results: The findings show that the practice and perceptions scores of the registered nurses’ in the study group are insignificant with age, qualification and experience (i.e., p-value > 0.05) with the evidence-based guidelines for prevention of catheter associated urinary tract infection. Results of study indicated insignificant relationship between registered nurses’ practice and perceptions regarding the indwelling urinary catheter associated infection.

168-171

Authors: Janetha D Prakash, David Samuel P

The aim of this study was to synthesis of Silver Nanoparticles in the ethanol extract of Boucerosia procumbens. Nanoparticles are being used in many commercial applications. The synthesized Silver Nanoparticles were characterized by SEM (Scanning Electron Microscopy). It was found that ethanol silver iron can be reduced by ethanol plant extracts of plant to generate to extremely stable Silver Nanoparticles.

180-187

Authors: B.P. Yadav, D.N. Yadav, K.B. Koirala, K.R. Pandey, R.B. Thapa

A field experiment was conducted at Agronomy research farm of IAAS, Rampur, chitwan, Nepal during summer and winter season 2010 and 2011 to study the effect of crop sequence and nitrogen rates on hybrid maize. The research finding revealed that maximum gross return (Rs 53660 /ha in 2010 and Rs 60450/ha in 2011) was obtained from maize grown after greengraml while maximum net return (Rs 30170/ha in 2010 and Rs 33440/ha in 2011) was obtained from maize under greengram-maize sequences. Benefit & cost ratio was maximum (1.22 in 2010 and 1.18 in 2011) from maize under greengram-maize sequences while it was minimum (0.50 in 2010 and 0.47 in 2011) under maize–maize sequences. Maximum maize equivalent yield 11516 kg /ha in 2010 and 12710 kg /ha in 2011) was obtained under maize-maize sequences while it was minimum (4310 kg /ha in 2010 and 4624 kg /ha in 2011) under clusterbean-maize sequences. Maize equivalent yield was maximum (10824 kg /ha in 2010 and 11923 kg /ha in 2011) with 200 kg N/ha while it was minimum (7384 kg /ha in 2010 and 8206 kg /ha in 2011) without nitrogen. Grain production efficiency was maximum (32.0 kg /ha/day under greengram– maize sequences in 2010. but in 2011, maximum grain production efficiency (34.8 kg /ha /day) was recorded under maize–maize sequences which was comparable to grain production efficiency under greengram-maize sequence. Maximum grain production efficiency (29.2 kg/ha/day in 2010 and 32.8 kg /ha/day in 2011) was obtained with 200 kg N/ha.

194-202

Authors: Ramji Prasad Bhattarai, Bishnu Raj Ojha, Dhruba Bahadur Thapa, Raju Kharel, Ankit Ojha, Manoj Sapkota

Thirty International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT) elite lines and Nepalese commercial wheat varieties were grown at Agriculture and Forestry University, Chitwan in Alpha-lattice design to identify high yielding genotypes, yield attributing parameters and correlations between them. Observations were taken for different morpho-physiological and yield attributing traits i.e., days to booting, heading, anthesis, maturity, flag leaf senescence, flag leaf duration, grain filling duration, plant height, spike length, number of grains per spike, thousand kernel weight, hectoliter weight, grain yield and biomass yield. Significant genotypic differences were observed for all the traits studied indicating considerable amount of variation among genotypes for each character. The mean grain yield was 2148 kg/ha and it ranged from 1000 to 3425 kg/ha. BLOUK#1/4/WHEAR/KUKUNA/3/C80.1/3*BATAVIA//2*WBLL1/5/MUNAL #1 (35th ESWYT138) was the highest grain yielding genotype among all followed by CHIBIA//PRLII/CM65531/3/FISCAL/4/DANPHE#1/5/CHIBIA//PRLII/CM65531/3/SKAUZ/BAV92 (ESWYT 141), Gautam, Vijay and CHYAK1*2/3/HUW234+LR34/PRINIA//PFAU/WEAVER (ESWYT129). Grain yield had significant strong positive correlation with grain filling duration (0.685**), plant height (0.606**), thousand kernel weight (0.675**), biomass yield (0.892**) and hectoliter weight (0.586**). Four clusters were formed by cluster analysis and genotypes were grouped in a particular cluster on the basis of similarity of morpho-physiological traits. So, these genotypes may be exploited for their direct release or as parents in hybridization programmes to develop high yielding wheat varieties.

208-215

Authors: Shumaila Aslam, Muhammad Afzal, Robina Kousar, Ali Waqas, Syed Amir Gilani

Background: In order to maintain the health, the homeostasis dynamics and balance process is most important. Among the critically ill cardiac surgery patients the homeostasis is imbalance and results in insufficient tissues perfusion and many organs of the body lead to the failure condition. It is necessary to monitor actively the intake and output during electrolytes administration in the cardiac surgery patients. Objectives: To assess the knowledge and practice of the registered nurses about fluid and electrolytes monitoring and administration in the cardiac surgery patients. Methodology: This study is of descriptive and cross sectional study design. The questioner of knowledge and practices regarding fluid and electrolytes administration was adopted from the article of Vijayan (Vijayan, 2011) which is based on 5-point Likert scale. The data was collected from 208 nurses of Punjab Institute of Cardiology, Lahore, Pakistan. Conclusion: The findings of the current study show that the nurses have poor knowledge and practices of nurses, so, public hospital’s administration should focus on the strategies and activities which become helpful to increase the knowledge and practices of nurses regarding fluid and electrolytes administration.

222-226

Authors: Rajani Osti, Dinesh Bhattarai, Harshika Chaudhary, Virendra Singh

Poultry farming is integral part of agriculture in Nepal. The objective of this research was to analyze the prevailing production constraints, characterization of poultry farming and its economic analysis using questionnaire-based survey and on-site investigation. 180 farms were selected from 3 major districts. Garrett’s ranking technique was used to analyze the constraints. Highly significant difference (P<0.01) in size of poultry farm was found. We found significant difference in feeding, housing and drinking system for the chicken. Un-organized chicken marketing channel was observed in the study area. High chicks’ mortality, wastage of feed, insecure vaccination and frequent drop in egg production were characteristic of laying hens. Newcastle disease and Chronic Respiratory Disease were acknowledged as the biggest constraint of chicken production. Government and concerned agencies need to take active part for the extension service to strengthen the health of chicken and organized marketing channel is essential for selling of poultry products which can improve the profit to the farmers.

237-242

Authors: Chandra Bahadur Thapa

In the present study, documentation of farmer’s knowledge on Integrated Pest Management (IPM) was carried out in Rupandehi district during the year 2016. The objective of this paper is to assess the knowledge of farmers about IPM and its effectiveness in this district. It was carried out by conducting semi-structured interview with the participants of IPM FFS, vegetable growing farmers, stakeholders and local people with the help of standard questionnaire, Focus Group Discussion (FGD) and key informant interview. The IPM program is found to be conducted by an international non-government organization viz. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and government organizations viz. Plant Protection Directorate (PPD), Agronomy Development Directorate (ADD) and District Agriculture Development Organization (DADO) through Farmer’s Field School (FFS) in this district. In total forty IPM FFS was conducted from 1998 to 2015 which provided training about IPM in rice and vegetable crops to 1057 farmers in which 393 were male and 664 female. Although a significant difference has been found in the knowledge about the amount of pesticide used, biological method of pest control for IPM by FFS participant and nonparticipant farmers, it is not observed in their behavior during the cultivation of crops in the farm. The result showed that only 5% of participants of Farmer’s Field School (FFS) are following IPM practices in their own farm after taking training.

250-255

Authors: Ramesh Acharya, Santosh Marahatta, Lal P Amgain

A field experiment with three wheat varieties at different sowing dates on two crop establishment methods was accomplished to identify the optimum sowing date at AFU Rampur during winter season of 2014/2015. Three wheat varieties namely: Tillotama, Danfe and Vijay sown on three dates: 14th November, 29th November, and 14th December under two crop establishment practices: Conservational and conventional agriculture were evaluated with strip –split plot design in three replications. The field data onyield attributes and yields were collected. Earlier sowing on 14th November gave the highest yield (3427.15 kg ha-1), total dry matter (8154.44 kg ha-1), with longest days to crop maturation (133.11 days). In case of varieties, Vijay gave the highest grain yield (3458.61 kg ha-1) and total dry weight (4456.11 and 8832.42 kg ha-1 respectively) with earliest days to heading and maturity. The straw yield was the highest for 29th November sowing (5821 kg ha-1) and for Danfe variety (5756 kg ha-1). Vijay variety recorded the highest test weight (43.60 g) and highest harvest index (35.89%) even though with the lowest effective tillers per square meter (320.83), it proved to be the most promising variety.

261-266

Authors: M. Sanjay, B. Kalpana

Nucleic acid based diagnostics are the standard means for diagnosis of infected plant material. However, these methods are expensive and time-consuming, but they are accurate. On the contrary, disease prediction methods based on Volatile organic compound (VOC) emission from plants are less accurate but, allow for screening of large volumes of samples. This work reports the methodology for development of an inexpensive electronic nose for implementation as early warning systems intended to prevent plant disease outbreaks using VOC pattern analysis. It is proven that plants emit VOCs in response to pathogenic attacks. In this project, efforts were made to register the pattern of VOCs released by the diseased plants. The disease taken for this purpose was Fusarium wilt disease of banana. The E-Nose was successfully fabricated using five MOS sensors connected to a microcontroller, which along with a microSD card module was able to store the acquired VOC data. The VOC data analysis was done in MS-Excel, using NeuroXL Predictor, a neural networking add-in. A small scale banana field containing 35 plants, divided into disease, test and control groups, was established. The disease and test sets were subjected to similar disease induction protocols and VOC data was collected over a period of 40 days. NeuroXL Predictor was trained to recognize odours corresponding to diseases by feeding the neural network with the disease set VOC data. Finally, the training model was validated by providing the test set VOC data to the neural network and the results were found to be accurate. Efforts were made to automate the VOC data acquisition from the plants, as it will be impractical to carry around, a device, through several hectares of plantation. Therefore, a simple autonomous rover was fabricated using DC motors connected to a microcontroller. A DC motor placed on top was used to move the E-nose towards the plants in left and right of the rover. The microcontroller was programmed to stop, move forward and turn the E-nose towards left or right as per the measurements of the field.