Gamma amino butyric acid (GABA) application modulated the morpho-physiological and yield traits of fragrant rice under well-watered and drought conditions.

BACKGROUND: Changing climate is causing erratic rainfall and prolonged drought periods, thus posing serious threats to crop productivity. Owing to severity of drought events, it is imperative to take proactive measures to enhance the resilience of drought sensitive crops like rice. Therefore, the present study was carried out to improve the drought stress tolerance in rice through gamma amino butyric acid (GABA) application. METHODS: The experiment was included four GABA concentrations i.e., 0 mM as control, 1 mM, 1.5 mM, and 2 mM, two water levels i.e., 100% and 50% field capacity (referred as FC100 for well-watered and FC50 for drought conditions, respectively), and two fragrant rice cultivars i.e., Super Basmati and Basmati-515. RESULTS: The findings unveiled a comprehensive improvement in various parameters with GABA application in fragrant rice under both well-watered (FC100) and water-limited (FC50) conditions, compared to the control. Specifically, GABA induced enhancements were observed in plant height, root length, fresh weight, dry weight, total soluble protein content, and total free amino acid content across both cultivars. Moreover, GABA application significantly improved peroxidase (POD) and catalase (CAT) enzyme activities, alongside elevating anthocyanin levels, while concurrently reducing H2O2 contents in both FC100 and FC50 treatments. Furthermore, the positive impact of GABA extended to morphological traits, with notable increases in panicle length, total tillers and productive tillers per hill, branch and grain numbers per panicle, and 1000-grain weight for Super Basmati and Basmati 515 cultivars under both water regimes, compared to Ck. Similarly, the grain yield increased by 31.01% and 27.32% under FC100 and 36.85% and 27.71% under FC50 in Super Basmati and Basmati-515, respectively, in response to GABA application, compared to Ck. Additionally, principal component analysis (PCA) revealed significant variances attributed to Dim1 and Dim2, with 86.1% and 4.0% of the variance, respectively, across three bi-plots encompassing rice cultivars, water levels, and GABA treatments. Notably, all tested indices, except for H2O2 and non-productive tillers per hill, exhibited positive correlations amongst themselves and with rice yield, further emphasizing the beneficial effects of GABA application on fragrant rice under well-watered and drought conditions. CONCLUSIONS: GABA significantly improved fragrant rice performance under both well-watered (FC100) and water-limited (FC50) conditions. Moreover, integrating GABA application into rice cultivation practices could not only improve the crop resilience to drought stress but also potentially benefiting the future food and nutritional security globally. However, however; further research is needed to understand the cellular and molecular mechanisms of the functionality of GABA in fragrant rice, particularly under drought conditions.

Impact of green supply chain management and green human resource management practices on the sustainable performance of manufacturing firms in Pakistan.

Using the resource-based view theory, this paper explores the association between green human resource management and green supply chain management. Moreover, the collective impact of green human resource management and green supply chain management on the triple bottom lines (social, environmental, and economic performance) was tested. The current study employed a random sampling technique in evaluating data from 212 firms from the chemical, pharmaceutical, automotive, textile, and food industries. Our main findings include the following. First, green human resource management positively influenced the triple bottom lines. Second, green supply chain management mediates green human resource management and triple bottom lines. Specifically, internal green supply chain management mediates green human resource management practices and sustainable performance. In contrast, external green supply chain management practices only mediate the relationship between green human resource management practices and the environmental and social perspective of sustainable performance. The study provides managerial implications and future recommendations.

Impact of Critical Success Factors on Project Success Through the Mediation of Knowledge Creation.

Several factors affect health project success. This research aims to examine the impact of critical success factors on health project success and show how the essential factors of success interact with knowledge creation to impact health project success. The self-administered questionnaire was distributed to collect data from 246 managers, supervisors and zonal supervisors of DHQ hospital Attock and PIMS hospital Islamabad. The analysis was done using Smart PLS to understand the effect of exogenous variables over endogenous variables and the impact of mediating variables between two constructs. The results show that all critical success factors (MGTRF, DRF, CRF, PMRF, CLRF) are significantly affecting project success, in addition, tacit knowledge creation mediate the association between critical success factors and project success. In contrast, explicit knowledge creation does not mediate the relationship between critical success factors and project success. This study intends to expand the theoretical understanding of process improvement by providing practical insights into the impact of strategies used by project managers to develop new knowledge by capturing explicit and implicit information. This study also reinforces past findings and increases awareness about using knowledge creation to gain a competitive advantage in the health sector.

A mini-review: positive impact of COVID-19 on Arial health and ecology.

COVID-19 can cause global pandemics; however, no specific vaccine has been recommended for COVID-19. Nearly 216 countries are trying to stop the spread of the disease, recover from it, and improve its mobility. In a way that people have not experienced in recent years, the COVID-19 pandemic affected humans through the year 2020. To stop the spread of the disease, many governments declared a complete lockdown.The nationwide lockdown had some positive effects on the environment even though it led to a decline in global economic growth. Air pollution levels reduced dramatically as a result of this lockdown on pollution. Most of Europe's populated cities saw a reduction in NO2 concentration of 45-54%. COVID-19 and air, water, and ecology are connected via two pathways, one occurring before the spread of the disease and the other following after. As a result of industrial activity, transportation, and high human density, pollutants were high in many areas before the disease spread. There was a reduction in population movements as well as a decline in human activities which resulted in a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions, an improvement of the ozone layer, as well as improvements in the Earth's weather and environment. As a result of a COVID-19 pandemic, human activities are negatively impacted, and the environment is positively affected. Our objective is to provide an assessment of the impact of human activities on the environment and ecology. During times of lockdown, there is a correlation between atmospheric changes and the behavior of natural creatures. Several significant findings are presented, including air pollution reduction, air quality improvement, ozone healing, and ecological sustainability. COVID-19 is beneficial for aerial health, aquatic health, and ecology in this paper.

Immobilization of ß-glucosidase by self-catalysis and compared to crosslinking with glutaraldehyde.

Nanoparticles have been successfully used for immobilization of different enzymes. The enzyme immobilized by nanomaterials has promising application in the biotechnological industry. The ß-glucosidase is very important in industrial field. The immobilization of ß-glucosidase by nanomaterials increases its activity and reusability. In this work, the ß-glucosidase was extracted from fruiting bodies of Agrocybe aegirit and was purified by anion exchange. The ß-glucosidase was immobilized by SiO2 nanoparticles (nano-SiO2) crosslink with glutaraldehyde (GA). On the other hand, the ß-glucosidase firstly immobilized by process adsorption and then crosslink with genipin (GP) which was produced by the hydrolysis of geniposide by ß-glucosidase. Then we compared the properties of both immobilized GA-crosslinked ß-glucosidase and GP-crosslinked ß-glucosidase, their immobilization yields were 83.34% and 96.29% respectively. The GA-crosslinked ß-glucosidase and free ß-glucosidase revealed optimal pH at 6.0. The optimal pH of GP-crosslinked ß-glucosidase was ranging between 4.5 and 7.5. The GA-crosslinked ß-glucosidase and GP-crosslinked ß-glucosidase revealed the optimal temperature at 50 °C, 70 °C respectively. For the free ß-glucosidase, the optimal temperature was 55 °C. Furthermore, the GA-crosslinked ß-glucosidase and GP-crosslinked ß-glucosidase were characterized by scanning electron microscope (SEM). The geniposide consumption in the reaction system of GA-crosslinked ß-glucosidase was analyzed by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC).

The effects of NaCl on enzyme encapsulation by zeolitic imidazolate frameworks-8.

Metal-organic framework (MOF) has generated a lot of research interests for it can be employed as immobilization material for enzyme. There are many small molecules in enzyme solution during the extraction process, such as NaCl. It is important to study the effects of the small molecules on MOFs. Here we report a facile and efficient method to encapsulate (R)-1-phenylethanol dehydrogenase ((R)-PEDH) into zeolitic imidazolate framework-8 (ZIF-8). In this work, the effects of NaCl on shape of ZIF-8 and enzyme encapsulation have been investigated. The scanning electron microscope (SEM) results showed that 0.1 M NaCl affect the morphology of ZIF-8 while the crystal structure was not changed analyzed by X-ray diffraction (XRD), and 0.1 M NaCl consisted in the encapsulation system of (R)-PEDH@ZIF-8 enhanced the activity up to 2.5 folds than no NaCl consisted during prepared (R)-PEDH@ZIF-8. The (R)-PEDH@ZIF-8 (prepared with 0.1 M NaCl) enhanced the storage stability and resist ability against trypsin, and the (R)-PEDH@ZIF-8 has been successfully reused.

Improvement in ocular myasthenia gravis during CPAP therapy for sleep apnea.

We describe the case of a 73-year-old male with a history of ocular myasthenia gravis (OMG) who was followed through diagnosis and treatment of sleep-disordered breathing (SDB). Therapeutic use of continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) led to improvement of not only SDB but also OMG. To our knowledge, this is the first paper describing this treatment benefit. This case report emphasizes the need to obtain a sleep history in patients with ocular myasthenia gravis in order to screen for SDB.