The Deuteromycetes fungal genus Alternaria comprises of different saprophytic as well as endophytic species and is well known for its notoriously destructive plant pathogen members. It has been found to have a drastic effect on the members belonging to the plant families such as Cucurbitaceae, Brassicaceae, Solanaceae which are having nutritional as well as economical food value. Majority of the members of Alternaria lack sexuality altogether, although few species have been found to have sexual stage in their life cycles. Several types of genes ranging from protein encoding genes to those involved in signal transduction cascades are found to be responsible for the pathogenesis. Production of host-specific toxins (HSTs) is found to be an affirming factor of pathogenesis. Most fungal host-specific toxins are metabolites although toxic substances including despipeptides and fucicoccin-like compounds. Genes encoding the biosynthesis of these HSTs are often contained on mostly conditionally dispensable chromosomes. The necrotrophic nature of Alternaria species typically leads to extensive damage of the plant and harvest product, with seedlings seldom surviving an attack. Apart from the role of toxins in Alternaria pathogenesis, few genes and /or gene products have been found to have a propounding effect as a pre-requisite for pathogenicity. For controlling the diseases, numbers of new chemicals are evaluated along with various biological control agents including bacteria, actinomycetes and fungi. Some plants and plant products are also found to be useful in controlling Alternaria infection.

Human has been always enthusiastic of gardening with flowers and ornamentals since ancient periods of time. The economic importance of ornamentals (floricultural plants) has been increasing and its world-wide international demand has rapidly expanded with the passage of time. Worldwide trends and production centres of floricultural crops are changing continually. A predictable trend in the international flower market is the increased emphasis on quality. Quality factors related to post-harvest keeping quality include environmental influences on flower longevity, as well as the influence of pathogenic microorganisms, including virus diseases. As competition in the world market is increasing, quality has become a more important factor. Increasing vase-life or flower-life on a pot plant is an important goal. A large number of floriculture units based on green house technologies for the export of their produce have been set up. These developments had an effect on the flower cultivation in the open field condition and thus significant growth took place in the floriculture sector which is now experiencing a change in terms of technology of production, packaging and storage, varieties and qualities of product, quantum of production and the marketing mechanism. In this recent platform, Caryophyllacean dicot plant member Dianthus caryophyllus (Carnation) is an important, commercial season based floricultural crop. It grows well in temperate climate all over the world and popular as cut-flowers for its variegated petal’s colour. So, it has terrific market demands in international trading. In this modern era, an agronomic demand of high yielding cultivar of this crop was noticed. Development of cultivars with more desirable floral characteristics and higher productivity are also very important in this crop. Various biometrical/agrometrical characters viz. growth parameters (mature plant height, number and length of shoots and internode, number of tillers, nodes, leaves, stem diameter, length-breadth of leaf etc.), flowering parameters (days to flowering, bud opening, flower development, flower longevity etc.), flower quality parameters (length, girth and diameter, weight of flower, petal number, calyx splitting etc.) and yield parameters (number of flower/plant and seeds/inflorescence, seed weight etc.) were varied greatly from cultivar to cultivar. These parameters serve as key traits for crop improvement programme in which mutation breeding plays a vital stage.

Upland rice plays a major role in the sustainable food security of the country. Early vigour trait is important in the drill-sown rice for weed suppression as well as initial establishment. The IR64/Azucena was used as a reference population to identify Quantitative Trait Loci (QTLs) for early vigour related traits. The Simple Sequence Repeat (SSR) markers flanking QTLs in IR64/Azucena and other populations were used for validation in the new populations (BPT5204/A67 and BPT5204/Dodiga). Twenty-two QTLs distributed on chromosomes 1 to 6 were identified for different vigour related traits. The QTLs controlling germination were located on chromosome 1 in the region RM5-RM306 near to alpha-amylase genes which controls germination. The congruence of QTLs was observed on Chromosome 5 in the region RM87-RM334 for rate of germination, seedling dry weight and vigour index. RM253 (Chromosome 6) was associated with the shoot length at 10th and 14th day after sowing (DAS) with 9.6% and 10.1% contribution in BPT5204/A67. RM178 (Chromosome 5) was associated with shoot length (18%) and root length (11.2%) at 10th DAS in BPT5204/Dodiga.

Adventitious shoot regeneration in sesame, via de-embryonated cotyledonary explants, was attempted using six diverse genotypes; two were land races (Kankapura Local – KNL and Tamil Nadu Local- TNL), three were released varieties (DS-1, DSS-9 and WII) and a breeding line (RT-273). Three media compositions (½ MS basal media supplemented with 20 μM TDZ + 2.5 μM IAA and with or without 25 μM BAP and full MS basal media supplemented with only 25 μM BAP) were used of which highest shoot regeneration (100%) with 8.15 and 7.37 shoot numbers per cotyledon was achieved in RT-273 in both the combinations (½ MS with 20 µM TDZ+ 2.5 µM IAA+ 25 µM BAP or without BAP) followed by DS-1(100% and 95.55% with 6.15 and 3.89), KNL (88.88% and 7.55) and TNL (88.88% and 5.73) respectively in ½ MS with 20 µM TDZ+ 2.5 µM IAA+ 25 µM BAP. MS with 25 µM BAP alone failed to induce shoot regeneration.

Isolation of IgM from Bengal goat blood serum was carried out by centrifugation of the collected serum to eliminate the blood corpuscles and purity of serum was affirmed by the absence of pellets. Purified serum was obtained by ammonium sulphate precipitation. The isolated IgM obtained through dialysis, was quantified through silica gel chromatography using phosphate buffer saline (PBS) as a solvent with varied pH and obtained different fractions (namely I, II, III, IV and V). Quantification of protein was carried out by Lowry method and the molecular weight was determined by SDS-PAGE with a standard marker. The presence of IgM was confirmed by Immunodiffusion and Immuno Dot Blot. The results of the experiment suggest that Fractions I, II and III contain more stressed protein which has some similarity with ovalbumin. The resulting colour intensity obtained on performing Immuno Dot Blot using IgM as primary antibody, demonstrates that Fraction II contains maximum concentration of stressed protein.

There are a numbers of Bambusa species in India which have been rendering service towards social welfare since ancient times of human civilization. Since then, it plays an immense role not only in building of huts and mansion for the poor and rich men in the modern era, but also it is used as making fancy house-hold furniture and other wood work purposes . It requires certain agronomic as well as propagation factors in specific agro-climatic areas for its large scale population. Now-a-days, the natural regeneration process only can’t fulfill the demands of the society. So, the methods other than rhizome propagation are essential for its rapid multiplication. Keeping all these views in mind we have undertaken a venture of vegetative propagation by means of cuttings of different species of Bambusa and compared with the seed propagated population. The main aims and objective of this experimentation were to explore the possibilities of rapid multiplication of Bambusa sp. in this tropical plain of West Bengal.