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<jats:p>Seaweed-based biostimulants are sustainable agriculture inputs that are known to have a multitude of beneficial effects on plant growth and productivity. This study demonstrates that Agrogain<jats:sup>®</jats:sup> (Product code: LBS6), a <jats:italic>Kappaphycus alvarezii</jats:italic>-derived biostimulant induced the expansion of cucumber cotyledons. Seven days treatment of LBS6-supplementation showed a 29.2% increase in area of expanded cotyledons, as compared to the control. LBS6-treated cotyledons also showed higher amylase activity, suggesting starch to sucrose conversion was used efficiently as an energy source during expansion. To understand the mechanisms of LBS6-induced expansion, real time gene expression analysis was carried out. This revealed that LBS6-treated cotyledons differentially modulated the expression of genes involved in cell division, cell number, cell expansion and cell size. LBS6 treatment also differentially regulated the expression of those genes involved in auxin and cytokinin metabolism. Further, foliar application of LBS6 on cucumber plants being grown under hydroponic conditions showed improved plant growth as compared to the control. The total leaf area of LBS6-sprayed plants increased by 19.1%, as compared to control. LBS6-sprayed plants efficiently regulated photosynthetic quenching by reducing loss <jats:italic>via</jats:italic> non-photochemical and non-regulatory quenching. LBS6 applications also modulated changes in the steady-state photosynthetic parameters of the cucumber leaves. It was demonstrated that LBS6 treatment modulated the electron and proton transport related pathways which help plants to efficiently utilize the photosynthetic radiation for optimal growth. These results provide clear evidence that bioactive compounds present in LBS6 improved the growth of cucumber plants by regulating the physiological as well as developmental pathways.</jats:p>

<jats:p>Understanding vegetation C, N, and P stoichiometry helps us not only to evaluate biogeochemical cycles and ecosystem functions but also to predict the potential impact of environmental change on ecosystem processes. The foliar C, N, and P stoichiometry in Northern Tibetan grasslands, especially the controlling factors, has been highlighted in recent years. In this study, we have collected 340 plant samples and 162 soil samples from 54 plots in three grassland types, with the purpose of evaluating the foliar C, N, and P stoichiometry and underlying control factors in three grassland types along a 1,500-km east-to-west transect in the Northern Tibetan Plateau. Our results indicated that the averaged foliar C, N, and P concentrations were 425.9 ± 15.8, 403.4 ± 22.2, and 420.7 ± 30.7 g kg<jats:sup>−1</jats:sup>; 21.7 ± 2.9, 19.0 ± 2.3, and 21.7 ± 5.2 g kg<jats:sup>−1</jats:sup>; and 1.71 ± 0.29, 1.19 ± 0.16, and 1.59 ± 0.6 g kg<jats:sup>−1</jats:sup> in the alpine meadow (AM), alpine steppe (AS), and desert steppe (DS) ecosystems, respectively. The foliar C and N ratios were comparable, with values of 19.8 ± 2.8, 20.6 ± 1.9, and 19.9 ± 5.8 in the AM, AS, and DS ecosystems, respectively. Both the C/P and N/P ratios are the lowest in the AM ecosystem, with values of 252.2 ± 32.6 and 12.8 ± 1.3, respectively, whereas the highest values of 347.3 ± 57.0 and 16.2 ± 3.2 were obtained in the AS ecosystem. In contrast, the soil C, N, C/P, and N/P values decreased from the AM to DS ecosystem. Across the whole transects, leaf C, N, and P stoichiometry showed no obvious trend, but soil C and N concentrations showed an increasing trend, and soil P concentrations showed a decreasing trend with the increasing longitude. Based on the general linear model analysis, the vegetation type was the dominant factor controlling the leaf C, N, and P stoichiometry, accounting for 42.8% for leaf C, 45.1% for leaf N, 35.2% for leaf P, 52.9% for leaf C/N, 39.6% for leaf C/P, and 48.0% for leaf N/P; the soil nutrients and climate have relatively low importance. In conclusion, our results supported that vegetation type, rather than climatic variation and soil nutrients, are the major determinants of north Tibet grassland leaf stoichiometry.</jats:p>

<jats:p>A rapidly increasing human population coupled with climate change and several decades of over-reliance on synthetic fertilizers has led to two pressing global challenges: food insecurity and land degradation. Therefore, it is crucial that practices enabling both soil and plant health as well as sustainability be even more actively pursued. Sustainability and soil fertility encompass practices such as improving plant productivity in poor and arid soils, maintaining soil health, and minimizing harmful impacts on ecosystems brought about by poor soil management, including run-off of agricultural chemicals and other contaminants into waterways. Plant growth promoting bacteria (PGPB) can improve food production in numerous ways: by facilitating resource acquisition of macro- and micronutrients (especially N and P), modulating phytohormone levels, antagonizing pathogenic agents and maintaining soil fertility. The PGPB comprise different functional and taxonomic groups of bacteria belonging to multiple phyla, including <jats:italic>Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes</jats:italic>, and <jats:italic>Actinobacteria</jats:italic>, among others. This review summarizes many of the mechanisms and methods these beneficial soil bacteria use to promote plant health and asks whether they can be further developed into effective, potentially commercially available plant stimulants that substantially reduce or replace various harmful practices involved in food production and ecosystem stability. Our goal is to describe the various mechanisms involved in beneficial plant-microbe interactions and how they can help us attain sustainability.</jats:p>

<jats:p>Pest profiles in today’s global food production system are continually affected by climate change and extreme weather. Under varying climatic conditions, plant-parasitic nematodes (PPNs) cause substantial economic damage to a wide variety of agricultural and horticultural commodities. In parallel, their herbivory also accredit to diverse ecosystem services such as nutrient cycling, allocation and turnover of plant biomass, shaping of vegetation community, and alteration of rhizospheric microorganism consortium by modifying the root exudation pattern. Thus PPNs, together with the vast majority of free-living nematodes, act as ecological drivers. Because of direct exposure to the open environment, PPN biology and physiology are largely governed by environmental factors including temperature, precipitation, humidity, atmospheric and soil carbon dioxide level, and weather extremes. The negative effects of climate change such as global warming, elevated CO<jats:sub>2</jats:sub>, altered precipitation and the weather extremes including heat waves, droughts, floods, wildfires and storms greatly influence the biogeographic range, distribution, abundance, survival, fitness, reproduction, and parasitic potential of the PPNs. Changes in these biological and ecological parameters associated to the PPNs exert huge impact on agriculture. Yet, depending on how adaptable the species are according to their geo-spatial distribution, the consequences of climate change include both positive and negative effects on the PPN communities. While assorting the effects of climate change as a whole, it can be estimated that the changing environmental factors, on one hand, will aggravate the PPN damage by aiding to abundance, distribution, reproduction, generation, plant growth and reduced plant defense, but the phenomena like sex reversal, entering cryptobiosis, and reduced survival should act in counter direction. This seemingly creates a contraposition effect, where assessing any confluent trend is difficult. However, as the climate change effects will differ according to space and time it is apprehensible that the PPNs will react and adapt according to their location and species specificity. Nevertheless, the bio-ecological shifts in the PPNs will necessitate tweaking their management practices from the agri-horticultural perspective. In this regard, we must aim for a ‘climate-smart’ package that will take care of the food production, pest prevention and environment protection. Integrated nematode management involving precise monitoring and modeling-based studies of population dynamics in relation to climatic fluctuations with escalated reliance on biocontrol, host resistance, and other safer approaches like crop rotation, crop scheduling, cover cropping, biofumigation, use of farmyard manure (FYM) would surely prove to be viable options. Although the novel nematicidal molecules are target-specific and relatively less harmful to the environment, their application should not be promoted following the global aim to reduce pesticide usage in future agriculture. Thus, having a reliable risk assessment with scenario planning, the adaptive management strategies must be designed to cope with the impending situation and satisfy the farmers’ need.</jats:p>

<jats:p>Bombyx batryticatus is derived from the dried larva of <jats:italic>Bombyx mori</jats:italic> Linnaeus infected by <jats:italic>Beauveria bassiana</jats:italic> (Bals.) Vuillant. Raw Bombyx batryticatus should be stir-fried before oral administration due to its irritation to the gastrointestinal tract. Nevertheless, it is still an arduous task to uncover the intrinsic mechanism of Bombyx batryticatus processing. In this study, we collected two types of Bombyx batryticatus, one being stir-fried and the other serving as a control. Then, an informative approach, which integrated matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry imaging (MALDI-MSI) with chemometrics analysis, was established to screen processing-associated markers and reveal <jats:italic>in situ</jats:italic> spatial distribution patterns of protein-related metabolites. After optimization of experimental conditions, 21 ions were initially detected from Bombyx batryticatus, including amino acids and peptides. In addition, 15 differential markers were screened by orthogonal projection to potential structure discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA), which were localized and visualized in the transverse section of Bombyx batryticatus by MSI. Eventually, it can be demonstrated that the stir-frying process reduces toxicity while potentially boosting specific biological activities of Bombyx batryticatus. In summary, the established strategy could not only clarify the chemical transformation of protein-related metabolites from Bombyx batryticatus before and after frying with wheat bran, but also reveal the significance of Chinese medicine processing technology.</jats:p>

<jats:p>Tracking plant water status is a critical step towards the adaptive precision irrigation management of processing tomatoes, one of the most important specialty crops in California. The photochemical reflectance index (PRI) from proximal sensors and the high-resolution unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) imagery provide an opportunity to monitor the crop water status efficiently. Based on data from an experimental tomato field with intensive aerial and plant-based measurements, we developed random forest machine learning regression models to estimate tomato stem water potential (<jats:italic>ψ</jats:italic><jats:sub>stem</jats:sub>), (using observations from proximal sensors and 12-band UAV imagery, respectively, along with weather data. The proximal sensor-based model estimation agreed well with the plant <jats:italic>ψ</jats:italic><jats:sub>stem</jats:sub> with <jats:italic>R</jats:italic><jats:sup>2</jats:sup> of 0.74 and mean absolute error (MAE) of 0.63 bars. The model included PRI, normalized difference vegetation index, vapor pressure deficit, and air temperature and tracked well with the seasonal dynamics of <jats:italic>ψ</jats:italic><jats:sub>stem</jats:sub> across different plots. A separate model, built with multiple vegetation indices (VIs) from UAV imagery and weather variables, had an <jats:italic>R</jats:italic><jats:sup>2</jats:sup> of 0.81 and MAE of 0.67 bars. The plant-level <jats:italic>ψ</jats:italic><jats:sub>stem</jats:sub> maps generated from UAV imagery closely represented the water status differences of plots under different irrigation treatments and also tracked well the temporal change among flights. PRI was found to be the most important VI in both the proximal sensor- and the UAV-based models, providing critical information on tomato plant water status. This study demonstrated that machine learning models can accurately estimate the water status by integrating PRI, other VIs, and weather data, and thus facilitate data-driven irrigation management for processing tomatoes.</jats:p>

<jats:p>Purple corn (<jats:italic>Zea mays</jats:italic> L.) is a special variety of corn, rich in a large amount of anthocyanins and other functional phytochemicals, and has always ranked high in the economic benefits of the corn industry. However, most studies on the stability of agronomic traits and the interaction between genotype and environment in cereal crops focus on yield. In order to further study the accumulation and stability of special anthocyanins in the growth process of purple corn, this review starts with the elucidation of anthocyanins in purple corn, the biosynthesis process and the gene regulation mechanism behind them, points out the influence of anthocyanin metabolism on anthocyanin metabolism, and introduces the influence of environmental factors on anthocyanin accumulation in detail, so as to promote the multi-field production of purple corn, encourage the development of color corn industry and provide new opportunities for corn breeders and growers.</jats:p>

<jats:p>On-farm sorting and transportation of postharvest fruit include sorting out defective products, grading them into categories based on quality, distributing them into bins, and carrying bins to field collecting stations. Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) can speed up on-farm sorting and transportation with high accuracy and robustness and significantly reduce postharvest losses. The primary objective of this literature review is to provide an overview to present a critical analysis and identify the challenges and opportunities of AI applications for on-farm sorting and transportation, with a focus on fruit. The challenges of on-farm sorting and transportation were discussed to specify the role of AI. Sensors and techniques for data acquisition were investigated to illustrate the tasks that AI models have addressed for on-farm sorting and transportation. AI models proposed in previous studies were compared to investigate the adequate approaches for on-farm sorting and transportation. Finally, the advantages and limitations of utilizing AI have been discussed, and in-depth analysis has been provided to identify future research directions. We anticipate that this survey will pave the way for further studies on the implementation of automated systems for on-farm fruit sorting and transportation.</jats:p>

<jats:p>Tea plant (<jats:italic>Camellia sinensis</jats:italic>) is a widely cultivated cash crop and tea is a favorite functional food in the world. Fresh tea leaves (FTLs) play a critical role in bridging the two fields closely related to tea cultivation and tea processing, those are, tea plant biology and tea biochemistry. To provide a comprehensive overview of the development stages, authorship collaboration, research topics, and hotspots and their temporal evolution trends in the field of FTLs research, we conducted a bibliometric analysis, based on 971 publications on FTLs-related research published during 2001-2021 from Web of Science Core Collection. CiteSpace, R package Bibliometrix, and VOSviewer were employed in this research. The results revealed that the development history can be roughly divided into three stages, namely initial stage, slow development stage and rapid development stage. <jats:italic>Journal of Agricultural &amp;amp; Food Chemistry</jats:italic> published most articles in this field, while <jats:italic>Frontiers in Plant Science</jats:italic> held the highest total citations and h-index. The most influential country, institution, and author in this field was identified as China, the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and Xiaochun Wan, respectively. FTLs-related research can be categorized into three main topics: the regulation mechanism of key genes, the metabolism and features of essential compounds, and tea plants’ growth and stress responses. The most concerning hotspots are the application of advanced technologies, essential metabolites, leaf color variants, and effective cultivation treatments. There has been a shift from basic biochemical and enzymatic studies to studies of molecular mechanisms that depend on multi-omics technologies. We also discussed the future development in this field. This study provides a comprehensive summary of the research field, making it easier for researchers to be informed about its development history, status, and trends.</jats:p>

<jats:p>Forest species in the course of their evolution have experienced several environmental challenges, which since historic times include anthropogenic pollution. The effects of pollution on the genetic and epigenetic diversity in black pine (<jats:italic>Pinus nigra</jats:italic>) forests were investigated in the Amyntaio – Ptolemais – Kozani Basin, which has been for decades the largest lignite mining and burning center of Greece, with a total installed generating capacity of about 4.5 GW, operating for more than 70 years and resulting in large amounts of primary air pollutant emissions, mainly SO<jats:sub>2</jats:sub>, NOx and PM10. <jats:italic>P. nigra</jats:italic>, a biomarker for air pollution and a keystone species of affected natural ecosystems, was examined in terms of phenology (cone and seed parameters), genetics (283 AFLP loci) and epigenetics (606 MSAP epiloci), using two populations (exposed to pollution and control) of the current (mature trees) and future (embryos) stand. It was found that cone, seed, as well as genetic diversity parameters, did not show statistically significant differences between the exposed population and the control. Nevertheless, statistically significant differences were detected at the population epigenetic level. Moreover, there was a further differentiation regarding the intergenerational comparison: while the epigenetic diversity does not substantially change in the two generations assessed in the control population, epigenetic diversity is significantly higher in the embryo population compared to the parental stand in the exposed population. This study sheds a light to genome dynamics in a forest tree population exposed to long term atmospheric pollution burden and stresses the importance of assessing both genetics and epigenetics in biomonitoring applications.</jats:p>