<div>The staining of free hair samples is considered as one of the biggest problem by the Histologists. This technique has been developed for processing and routine staining of free hair samples without the skin. It is based on paraffin embedded blocks of hair samples. The blocks were cut in the rotary microtome at 6 &micro; thickness. After obtaining the sections of 6 &micro; thickness in rotary microtome, the sections were not required to be put in water bath as the hair samples were hard and did not get folded. Further, if water bath was used, this could result in the loss of the hair part from the section. The cuticle did not take any color in the routine staining as it was composed of enucleated or keratinized cells. The cortex had taken the pink colour of eosin which might be due to the composition of cortex with flattened cornified cells and numerous air spaces. The medulla showed a mixture of pink and blue color on staining with Hematoxylin and Eosin solutions.</div>

Technique for Processing and Routing Staining of Hair Samples for Histological Study

<div>Background: Foliar application or foliar nutrition is a technique of feeding plants by applying liquid fertilizer directly to their leaves. Water soluble fertilizers have been introduced exclusively for foliar feeding and fertilization. There is very little information about the foliar application of water soluble fertilizers. There is need for more research in this field. Therefore, foliar nutrition is being recognized as an important method of fertilization in modern agriculture. The current study aimed to study the effect of foliar application of water soluble fertilizers on growth and yield of chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.).&nbsp; 
 
Methods: The field experiment was conducted during rabi 2017-18, 11 different treatments were laid out in a randomized block design on clay loam soil. In the field, the data was collected and analyzed and the final result was concluded.&nbsp; 
 
Result: The experiment revealed that the growth attributes such as plant height (60.28 cm), number of primary branches (5.22), number of secondary branches (22.93) and dry matter accumulation (241.61 g) were maximum with 75% RDF + foliar application of 2% DAP + 2% Urea + 2% WSF at 60 and 80 DAS (T10) and minimum in control (T1) at harvest stage. Further, seed yield (24.26 q ha-1), stover yield (31.38 q ha-1) and biological yield (55.65 q ha-1) was maximum with 75% RDF + foliar application of 2% DAP + 2% Urea + 2% WSF at 60 and 80 DAS (T10) and minimum in control (T1).</div>

<div>Effect of Foliar Application of Water Soluble Fertilizers on Growth and Yield of Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.)</div>

Background: Picobirnavirus (PBV) is an enteric virus with potential for interspecies transmission, affecting various animal species and possibly humans. This study aimed to investigate the prevalence and molecular characterization of PBV in faecal samples from various animal species in Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, India. Diarrhoeic and non-diarrhoeic samples from calves (cattle and buffalo), goats, pigs, dogs and poultry were collected for analysis. 
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Methods: A total of 150 faecal samples, including diarrhoeic and non-diarrhoeic samples, were collected from calves (cattle and buffalo), goats, pigs, dogs and poultry. Faecal suspensions were prepared and RNA extraction was performed. Both RNA-PAGE (Polyacrylamide Gel Electrophoresis) and PCR techniques were employed to detect PBV, with PCR also used for Rotavirus detection. Various primer sets targeting the RdRp gene of segment 2 were utilized for PBV detection, while specific primers were applied for Rotavirus detection. Sequencing and phylogenetic analysis were conducted on selected samples to characterize viral genetic similarity. 
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Result: Among the 150 faecal samples, 4.0% (6/150) were positive for PBV by RNA-PAGE, with three buffalo and three dog samples displaying a three-band pattern. RT-PCR using different primer sets revealed a 7.33% (11/150) prevalence of PBV, with buffalo and goats showing the highest rates. Co-infection of PBV and Rotavirus was observed in some samples, suggesting possible interactions between these viruses. Nucleotide identities of the goat isolate S14 (GenBank OP866965) with other PBV sequences in GenBank ranged from 93.40% to 95.73%. 
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Detection and Molecular Analysis of Picobirnavirus and Rotavirus from Animal Faecal Samples

<div style="text-align:justify">Background: Pre-sowing seed hardening and foliar spray with plant growth regulators is an easy, low cost and low risk technique and also an alternative approach recently used to mitigate the effect of abiotic stresses in agricultural production. 
 
Methods: The mung bean var. GAM-5 was treated with seed hardening treatments and also for foliar spray using CaCl2 2% and 1%, CCC 500 mg/L, CCC 1000 mg/L, NAA 25 mg/L, NAA 50 mg/L. during summer season of 2015-16 and 2016-17. The trial was laid out in RBD with three replications and sixteen treatment combinations.&nbsp; &nbsp; 
 
Result: The results indicated a significant improvement in morpho-physiological growth parameters, dry matter production and thereby yield potential increased due to the application of plant growth regulators and agrochemical under field conditions. Among the different treatments, seed hardening with 2% CaCl2 + 1% foliar spraying at 30 DAS (T11) treatment significantly improved most of morpho-physiological parameters and thereby yield in green gram followed by the seed hardening treatments of Cycocel 1000 mg/L + foliar spraying at 30 DAS (T13) and seed hardening with NAA 50 mg/L + foliar spraying at 30 DAS (T15).</div>

Influence of Seed Hardening and Foliar Spraying of PGRs on Morpho-physiological Parameters in Green Gram (Vigna radiata L.)

<div>Background: Pre-sowing seed priming and foliar spraying with Plant Growth Regulators is an easy, low cost and low risk technique and also an alternative approach recently used to mitigate the effect of abiotic stresses in agricultural production. 
 
Methods: Seeds of Mung bean var. GAM-5 were primed and also foliar spraying at 30 DAS with CaCl2 2% and 1%, Cycocel 500, 1000 ppm, NAA 25, 50 ppm during summer season of 2015-16 and 2016-17. 
 
Result: The results indicated a significant improvement in morpho-physiological traits, growth parameters, biochemical constituents and thereby yield due to the application of PGRs. Seed priming with 2% CaCl2 followed by 1% foliar spraying at 30 DAS (T11) significantly improved most of morpho-physiological parameters viz., plant height, number of branches per plant, days to 50% flowering, maturity, leaf area, chlorophyll content, seed protein content, number of pods per plant, number of seeds per pod, test weight, pod length, yield per plant, yield per hectare, harvest index in green gram followed by the seed priming with Cycocel 1000 ppm followed by foliar spraying at 30 DAS (T13) and seed priming with NAA 50 ppm followed by foliar spraying at 30 DAS (T15). The treatment T11 was more efficient.</div>

<div>Effect of Seed Priming and Foliar Spraying of PGRs on Morpho-Physiology, Growth and Yield in Green gram (Vigna radiata L.)</div>

<div>Background: Proper diagnosis of a foliar disease is a prerequisite to undertaking any crop protection strategy under field conditions. Poor diagnosis and a delay in confirmation in turn decrease the crop yield and increase the cost of plant protection. In this background, advanced machine learning techniques were used for diagnosis of major foliar diseases in black gram using image detection. Casually, black gram yields are highly reduced due to anthracnose and powdery mildew diseases up to 40-67%. To address the issues, the advanced disease identification method of Convolution Neural Network (CNN) is proposed for automated diagnosis in its early stages to assist farmers. 
 
Methods: Disease infected leaf samples and their images were collected from different cultivated areas of Tanjore district, Tamil Nadu, India. The image noises were removed and enhanced to improve the accuracy of the training network. A Convolution Neural Network was built with five layers to work on disease images. The first stage of training is to load the image set for training, establish the learning rate, run the optimizer and compile the training convolution model. The final part is to save the loss and accuracy during the training process and evaluate the accuracy of the model. To improve the training learning rate, the Adam optimizer and RMSprop algorithm are used to dynamically adjust the learning rate. The image dataset holds a total of 2002 images of black gram anthracnose and powdery mildew for evaluation. 
 
Result: The experiment result showed that the accuracy of disease detection in black gram is about 92.50 per cent with a Precision: 97.14 per cent, Recall: 87.17 per cent, F1 score: 91.89 per cent which proves that convolutional neural network has a faster training speed and higher accuracy. In addition, the proposed method is less time consuming, an early detection tool for the farmers to identify the anthracnose and powdery mildew in black gram leaf which is essential for the application of proper disease management strategies and reduction of yield loss and aids in promotion of smart agriculture.</div>

Diagnosis of Major Foliar Diseases in Black gram (Vigna mungo L.) using Convolution Neural Network (CNN)&nbsp;

<div style="text-align:justify">Background: Nontuberculous mycobacteria are opportunistic pathogens and some of them may cause disease in humans and animals causing pulmonary infections, mastitis, lesions in respiratory tract and lymph nodes of cattle, due to which they are being recognized worldwide and also interfere with the diagnosis of bovine tuberculosis. 
 
Methods: The present study was conducted for detection of nontuberculous mycobacterial species (NTM) in tissue samples (with and without tubercle lesions) in cattle and buffaloes from postmortem hall GADVASU, Ludhiana. Polymerase Chain Reaction and PCR-RFLP which involved hsp65 gene amplification (439 bp) and restriction analysis of amplified product was performed on 30 tissue samples for detection of nontuberculous mycobacterial species. 
 
Result: Three out of 30 samples showed hsp65 gene amplification and 2 were identified as M. kansasii using restriction analysis technique and one could not be identified as the RFLP patterns was different from other known PCR-RFLP profiles. NTM such as M. kansasi may cause infection in animals and PRA (PCR-Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism Analysis) technique was found to be a rapid tool for identification and differentiation of NTM upto species level.</div>

Detection of Nontuberculous Mycobacterial Species from Tissue Samples of Cattle and Buffaloes by PCR and PRA (PCR-RFLP)

<div>Background: Black gram is one of the important pulse crops of the world and India is the major producer and consumer of pulses in the world. One of the main reason for low productivity of pulses is that they are cultivated mostly in areas with low soil moisture and poor soil fertility. In order to overcome such adverse conditions, low-cost techniques like seed hardening/pelleting are preferred. Seed pelleting provides package of nutrients that influences seed or soil at the seed-soil interface. Since the cost involved is very less, an attempt has been made to study the effect of botanical seed pelleting and foliar spary on growth and yield parameters in black gram cv. CO 6. &nbsp;&nbsp; 
 
Methods: Field experiments were conducted to evaluate the cumulative effect of botanical seed pelleting with pungam leaf powder @ 150g kg-1 and foliar spray of prosopis and moringa leaf powders with different concentrations (2%, 4%, 6% and 8%) on morpho physiological, leaf chlorophyll, gas exchange and yield parameters in black gram cv. CO 6 in the study. The observations on morpho physiological, leaf chlorophyll, gas exchange and yield parameters were recorded, statistically analysed and discussed here. 
 
Result: From the results, it was found that among the treatments, seed pelleting with pungam leaf powder @ 150 g kg-1 + foliar spray of prosopis leaf powder @ 6% recorded higher morpho physiological parameters viz., plant height (48.73 cm), number of branches plant-1 (8.78), dry matter production (14.83 g plant-1), chlorophyll &lsquo;a&rsquo; (1.03 mg g-1), chlorophyll &lsquo;b&rsquo; (1.11 mg g-1) and total chlorophyll content (2.14 mg g-1), photosynthesis and transpiration rates (27.33 mg CO2 m-2 s-1 and 10.60 mg H2O m-2 s-1), intercellular CO2 concentration and stomatal conductance (274.30 &micro; mol mol-1 and 0.82 mol-2 s-1). This treatment also recorded lower number of days to first flowering (23.23 days), earliness in 50 per cent flowering (30.12 days) and also recorded higher yield parameters such as lengthier pods, more number of pods plant-1, pod yield plant-1, number of seeds pod-1, seed yield &nbsp;plant-1, seed yield ha-1 and hundred seed weight of 5.60 cm, 26.30, 8.20 g, 7.30, 5.30 g, 795.12 kg ha-1 and 5.83 g, respectively as compared to other treatments. To conclude, seed pelleting with pungam leaf powder @ 150 g kg-1 + foliar spray of prosopis leaf powder @ 6% proved to be the best in enhancing morpho physiological, growth and yield parameters.</div>

<div>Cumulative Effect of Botanical Seed Pelleting and Foliar Spray on Morpho Physiological, Leaf Chlorophyll, Gas Exchange and Yield Parameters in Black gram</div>

Background: Grapes are a potentially valuable crop for the Philippine economy, providing income to farmers and contributing to the country&rsquo;s agricultural sector. Grape propagation is a crucial practice in grape production as it improves yield, disease resistance and high-quality grapevines. This practice is critical for commercial grape production for developing new grapevine varieties, desirable traits and helping preserve genetic diversity, ensuring the long-term sustainability of grape production. 
 
Methods: Thus, this study was conducted to explore the enhanced propagation of grape cuttings through basal scarification techniques. Research evaluated seven (7) basal scarification techniques of grape &ldquo;catawba&rdquo; cuttings (T1- control/ without basal scarification, T2- 1 slit basal scarification, T3- 2 slit basal scarification, T4- 3 slit basal scarification, T5- 4 slit basal scarification, T6- 5 slit basal scarification and T7- 6 slit basal scarification) with 10 samples per treatment laid out in a randomized complete block design (RCBD) replicated four (4) times.&nbsp; 
 
Result: Results revealed that slit basal scarification enhances growth and rooting response of grapes cuttings. Six slit basal scarification techniques on grape cuttings obtained the highest in terms of the number of leaves (5.87), percentage of survival (76.67%), rooting percentage (60.1%) and the longest length of shoots (9.07 cm). No significant differences were observed among other data parameters evaluated. By applying basal scarification to grape cuttings, growers can improve the chances of successful propagation and establish healthy, productive grapevines. 
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Basal Scarification: A Technique for Improved Grapevine Rooting and Propagation

Background: Probiotic snack foods are gaining popularity due to their benefits, including improving gut health and boosting immunity. Carrot based probiotic snacks, incorporating Bacillus coagulans, provide an innovative way to combine the nutritional and functional benefits of both probiotics and vegetables This investigation aimed to assess the influence of two different methodologies for probiotic integration, specifically impregnation and coating, on the physicochemical, sensory and microbial attributes of freeze-dried probiotic carrot snacks throughout the storage period. 
 
Methods: Fresh carrots were processed by slicing into uniform pieces and subjected to either an impregnation or coating technique for incorporating Bacillus coagulans. The impregnation process involved immersing the carrot slices in a probiotic suspension under vacuum, while the coating method involved dipping the slices in a probiotic-enriched alginate solution followed by gel formation in a calcium chloride bath. The samples that were carefully prepared were subsequently subjected to freeze-drying and maintained at ambient temperature for a period of up to 180 days. The physical, chemical, proximate, mineral, sensory and microbial characteristics of the snacks were assessed at different storage intervals. 
 
Result: The results showed that both impregnation and coating methods resulted in a significant reduction in moisture content, with the coating method maintaining slightly higher mineral content and sensory acceptability. The viability of Bacillus coagulans was better preserved in the coated samples, with higher probiotic counts maintained throughout the storage period compared to the impregnated samples. Sensory evaluation indicated that both methods were acceptable, with the coated samples receiving slightly higher ratings for flavor and overall acceptability. 
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