Simple Sequence Repeat Markers in Genetic Divergence and Marker-Assisted Selection of Rice Cultivars: A Review

Sequencing of rice genome has facilitated the understanding of rice evolution and has been utilized extensively for mining of DNA markers to facilitate marker-assisted breeding. Simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers that are tandemly repeated nucleotide sequence motifs flanked by unique sequences are presently the maker of choice in rice improvement due to their abundance, co-dominant inheritance, high levels of allelic diversity, and simple reproducible assay. The current level of genome coverage by SSR markers in rice is sufficient to employ them for genotype identification and marker-assisted selection in breeding for mapping of genes and quantitative trait loci analysis. This review provides comprehensive information on the mapping and applications of SSR markers in investigation of rice cultivars to study their genetic divergence and marker-assisted selection of important agronomic traits.     

Potential for rice straw ethanol production in the Mekong Delta,Vietnam

This study is to evaluate the potential for development of a cellulosic ethanol facility in Vietnam. Rice straw is abundant in Vietnam and highly concentrated in the Mekong Delta, where about 26 Mt year⁻¹ of rice straw has been yearly produced. To minimize the overall production cost (PC) of ethanol from rice straw, it is crucial to choose the optimal facility size. The delivered cost of rice straw varied from 20.5 to 65.4 $ dry t⁻¹ depending on transportation distance. The Mekong Delta has much lower rice straw prices compared with other regions in Vietnam because of high density and quantity of rice straw supply. Thus, this region has been considered as the most suitable location for deploying ethanol production in Vietnam. The optimal plant size of ethanol production in the region was estimated up to 200 ML year⁻¹. The improvement in solid concentration of material in the hydrothermal pre-treatment step and using residues for power generation could substantially reduce the PC in Vietnam, where energy costs account for the second largest contribution to the PC, following only enzyme costs. The potential for building larger ethanol plants with low rice straw costs can reduce ethanol production costs in Vietnam. The current estimated production cost for an optimal plant size of 200 ML year⁻¹ was 1.19 $ L⁻¹. For the future scenario, considering improvements in pre-treatment, enzyme hydrolysis steps, specific enzyme activity, and applying residues for energy generation, the ethanol production cost could reduce to 0.45 $ L⁻¹ for a plant size of 200 ML year⁻¹ in Vietnam. These data indicated that the cost-competitiveness of ethanol production could be realized in Vietnam with future improvements in production technologies.     

Insights into biological delignification of rice straw by Trametes hirsuta and Myrothecium roridum and comparison of saccharification yields with dilute acid pretreatment

Rice straw is the most abundant agricultural residue on a global scale and is widely available as feedstock for cellulosic fuel production. However, it is highly recalcitrant to biochemical deconstruction and also generates inhibitors that affect enzymatic saccharification. Rice straw from eastern Arkansas was subjected to dilute acid pretreatment (160 °C, 48 min and 1.0% sulfuric acid) and solid-state fermentation with two lignocellulolytic fungi, Trametes hirsuta and Myrothecium roridum, and their saccharification efficacies were compared. T. hirsuta and M. roridum were tested separately; pretreatment of rice straw with either strain for seven days resulted in 19 and 70% enrichment of its holocellulose content, respectively. However, liquid chromatography analysis of the alkali extracts showed significant differences in cell wall degradation by T. hirsuta and M. roridum. T. hirsuta removed 15% more phenolic compounds and 38% more glucan than M. roridum, while M. roridum removed 77% more xylan than T. hirsuta. Fungal and dilute acid pretreated biomass was then hydrolyzed using Accellerase^® 1500, a saccharification cocktail. Saccharification efficiency of M. roridum was 37% higher than that of dilute acid pretreatment of rice straw, requiring 8% lower enzyme loading and 50% shorter enzymatic hydrolysis duration. Alkali extraction of fungal pretreated biomass also yielded 10–15 g kg⁻¹ of acid precipitable polymeric lignin (APPL), which is a valuable co-product for biorefineries. In comparison to dilute acid pretreatment, fungal pretreatment could be a cost-effective alternative for the degradation of recalcitrant biomass, such as rice straw.     

Synthesis of Rice Processing Plants. I. Development of Simplified Models

This article, the first of three articles on the synthesis of rice processing plants, focuses on the development of simplified mathematical models necessary for use in optimizing rice processing plants. The second concentrates on the optimal synthesis of a rice plant and the third on the sensitivity of the optimization to uncertainty in model parameters. Existing models for rice processing unit operations are not suitable for flowsheet optimization and new models need to be developed to overcome numerical difficulties that occur in optimization applications, specifically in mixed integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) applications. Simplified models of the drying, cooling, and tempering units are developed. In addition head rice yield models, used as a quality indicator, energy consumption, and economic models were also developed. Naturally, the new models exhibit some mismatch with respect to the existing models from which they were developed. However, a sensitivity analysis, presented in Part III, has shown that the optimal flowsheet structure was not sensitive to a lack of fit between the simplified and complex models. The simplified models were found adequate to be appropriate for use at the synthesis stage.     

Synthesis and characterization of zeolite NaY from rice husk silica

Rice husk silica (RHS) in amorphous phase with 98% purity was prepared from a waste rice husk from rice milling by leaching with hydrochloric acid and calcination. The RHS was used effectively as a silica source for the synthesis of zeolite Y in sodium form (NaY). The zeolite in pure phase was obtained from a two-step synthetic route in which the starting gels were mixed, aged for 24 h at room temperature and crystallized for 24 h at 90 °C. The diameter of single crystal particles from a scanning electron microscope was approximately 1.0 μm, whereas the average particle diameter from laser diffraction particle size analyzer was approximately 10 μm because of the agglomeration of small crystals. Longer crystallization time in this route resulted in a mixed phase containing NaY and zeolite P in sodium form (NaP). In addition, a one-step synthetic route (no aging) was studied and the product was also a mixed phase zeolite.     

Effect of the absence of lipoxygenase isoenzymes on the storage characteristics of rice grains

Three varieties of paddy rice with and three varieties without lipoxygenase (LOX) isoenzymes were stored at room temperature, in dark conditions for 42 months. Insect damage and viability were investigated during that time. Varieties without LOX-1,2 and their offspring were screened with a rapid method of estimating LOX isoenzymes, and subjected to an accelerated-ageing experiment. The results indicated that in varieties without LOX-1,2, after long storage, rice quality was normal, but for varieties with LOX-1,2, rice quality deteriorated. With increase of storage time, the germination rate of the seed of most varieties decreased greatly except for varieties without LOX-1,2 where there was almost no change in the germination rate. In varieties without LOX-1,2 and their offspring, after an accelerated ageing experiment the germination rate of some varieties changed slowly, but with others, the germination rate changed quickly. This indicated that a definitive factor, which influenced the life of seeds, may be the loss of LOX-1,2. During storage, there was also a significant difference in the degree of insect damage. In varieties without LOX-3 insect damage was lower, but in varieties with LOX-3 insect damage was higher. Therefore, the absence of LOX-3 may be very important in insect resistance in rice grain.     

有广阔市场前景的化工产品—过氧化钙

本文叙述过氧化钙的性质,并以实例说明过氧比钙在水产养殖、食品加上、果蔬保鲜。环境保护、农作物栽培、橡胶及化工等奋方面的应用。     

机器视觉在水稻空壳率统计中的应用研究

针对水稻空壳率的自动化检测问题,采用机器视觉技术,设计一种实验设备,利用稻谷的透光性,使用普通可见光照射,对获得的图像进行分析处理,并比较采用灰度特征以及YUV颜色模型两种方法进行统计的结果,表明该设备和相关图像处理算法完全可以胜任空壳率的自动统计工作,为后续发展实际的应用设备奠定基础。     

Low-complexity low-memory energy-efficient image coding for wireless image sensor networks

Wireless image sensor networks are capable of sensing, processing and transmitting the image in hard-to-access regions without expensive network infrastructure and will have great contribution in Internet of Things. These networks are resource constraint systems with limited memory, energy, processing speed and bandwidth. Low computational energy and communication energy will improve the lifetime of these resource-limited networks. In this paper, an energy-efficient low-memory and low-bitrate image coding is designed exclusively for low-power camera-equipped sensor node. The performance of the proposed image coder is analysed in terms of bitrate, image quality, memory size and energy consumption. Experiments are carried out with Atmel ATmega128 processor. The experimental results show that this system consumes only 0.23% of energy consumed by true Discrete Cosine Transform-based Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) standard and offers reasonable image quality suitable for visual perception at low bitrate. This system requires only 19% of memory required by standard JPEG.     

粉煤灰磁化肥对杂交水稻效应研究

粉煤灰磁化肥在水稻土上对水稻作物试验结果表明：粉煤灰磁化肥在水稻土上一般用量为９２６ｋｇ／ｈｍ２左右．粉煤灰磁化肥比对照增产２７．７％,增产１９７７．８ｋｇ／ｈｍ２;比当地农民习惯施肥增产１０．６％,增产８７０ｋｇ／ｈｍ２;　比未磁化粉煤灰复混肥增产５．９％,增产５０７　ｋｇ／ｈｍ２．最高产量施用粉煤灰磁化肥为１１６９　ｋｇ／ｈｍ２,水稻产量为９２５３　ｋｇ／ｈｍ２;最佳产量施用粉煤灰磁化肥为９２６　ｋｇ／ｈｍ２,水稻产量为９１３１　ｋｇ／ｈｍ２．粉煤灰磁化复混肥在改善水稻生物学及经济性状,提高叶绿素含量和光合速率方面有显著的效应．