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Publications

NIBIOs employees contribute to several hundred scientific articles and research reports every year. You can browse or search in our collection which contains references and links to these publications as well as other research and dissemination activities. The collection is continously updated with new and historical material.

2018

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Abstract

Virus diseases have been a great threat to production of economically important crops. In practice, the use of virus-free planting material is an effective strategy to control viral diseases. Cryotherapy, developed based on cryopreservation, is a novel plant biotechnology tool for virus eradication. Comparing to the traditional meristem culture for virus elimination, cryotherapy resulted in high efficiency of pathogen eradication. In general, cryotherapy includes seven major steps: (1) introduction of infected plant materials into in vitro cultures, (2) shoot tip excision, (3) tolerance induction of explants to dehydration and subsequent freezing in liquid nitrogen (LN), (4) a short-time treatment of explants in LN, (5) warming and post-culture for regeneration, (6) re-establishment of regenerated plants in greenhouse conditions, and (7) virus indexing.

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Abstract

Viral diseases (a biotic stress) and salinity (an abiotic stress) have been/are the two major constraints for sustainable development of the world’s agricultural production including potato. Crops grown in field are often exposed simultaneously to abiotic and biotic stress, and responses of plants to co-stress by two or more factors may differ from those to each of the multiple stresses. Using in vitro cultures, we demonstrated that virus infection (singly and in combination) or salt, and co-stress by virus infection (singly and in combination) and salt significantly reduced growth and microtuber production, and caused severely oxidative cell damage determined by levels of O2·− and methane dicarboxylic aldehyde, and H2O2 localization in situ. Alterations in physiological metabolism by increasing total soluble sugar and free proline, and by decreasing chlorophyll content are responses of potato plantlets to virus infection (singly and in combination) or salt stress and co-stress by virus infection (singly and in combination) and salt. Oxidative cell damage and reduced chlorophyll content caused by virus and/or salt are believed to be responsible for the reduced growth, eventually resulting in decreased tuber yield. Results reported here would help us to better understand possible mechanism of reduced tuber yield by virus infection and/or salt stress.

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Abstract

Availability of and easy access to diverse plant viruses and viroids is a prerequisite in applied and basic studies related to viruses and viroids. Long-term preservation of viruses and viroids is difficult. A protocol was described for long-term preservation of potato leafroll virus (PLRV), potato virus S (PVS), and potato spindle tuber viroid (PSTVd) in cryopreserved shoot tips of potato cv. Zihuabai. Shoot regrowth levels following cryopreservation were higher in 1.5 mm-shoot tips (58–60%) than in 0.5-mm-ones (30–38%). All shoots recovered from 0.5-mm-shoot tips were PVS- and PSTVd-preserved, but none of them were PLRVpreserved. Cryopreservation of 1.5-mm-shoot tips resulted in 35% and 100% of PLRV- and PVS- and PSTVd-preserved shoots. Studies on cell survival patterns and virus localization provided explanations to the varying PLRV-preservation frequencies produced by cryopreservation of the two sizes of shoot tips. Although micropropagation efficiencies were low after 12 weeks of subculture following cryopreservation, similar efficiencies were obtained after 16 weeks of subculture in pathogen-preserved shoots recovered from cryopreservation, compared with the diseased in vitro stock shoots (the control). Pathogen concentrations in the three pathogens-preserved shoots analyzed by qRT-PCR were similar to those in micropropagated shoots. The three pathogens cryopreserved in shoot tips were readily transmitted by grafting and mechanical inoculation to potato plants. PLRV, PVS, and PSTVd represent a diverse range of plant viruses and viroid in terms of taxonomy and infectious ability. Therefore, shoot tip cryopreservation opens a new avenue for long-term preservation of the virus and viroid.

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Abstract

Freezing and thawing have large effects on water flow in soils since ice may block a large part of the pore space and thereby prevent infiltration and flow through the soil. This, in turn, may have consequences for contaminant transport. For example, transport of solutes contained at or close to the soil surface can be rapidly transported through frozen soils in large pores that were air filled at the time of freezing. Accounting for freezing and thawing could potentially improve model predictions used for risk assessment of contaminant leaching. A few numerical models of water flow through soil accounts for freezing by coupling Richards’ equation and the heat flow equation using of the generalized Clapeyron equation, which relates the capillary pressure to temperature during phase change. However, these models are not applicable to macroporous soils. The objective of this study was to develop and evaluate a dual-permeability approach for simulating water flow in soil under freezing and thawing conditions. To achieve this we extended the widely used MACRO-model for water flow and solute transport in macroporous soil. Richards’ equation and the heat flow equation were loosely coupled using the Clapeyron equation for the soil micropore domain. In accordance with the original MACRO model, capillary forces were neglected for the macropore domain and conductive heat flow in the macropores was not accounted for. Freezing and thawing of macropore water, hence, were solely governed by heat exchange between the pore domains. This exchange included a first-order heat conduction term depending on the temperature difference between domains and the diffusion pathlength (a proxy variable related to the distance between macropores) and convective heat flow. As far as we know, there are no analytical solutions available for water flow during freezing and thawing and laboratory data is limited for evaluation of water flow through macropores. In order to evaluate the new model approach we therefore first compared simulation results of water flows during freezing for the micropore domain to existing literature data. Our model was shown to give similar results as other available models. We then compared the first-order conductive heat exchange during freezing to a full numerical solution of heat conduction. Finally, simulations were run for water flow through frozen soil with initially air-filled macropores for different boundary conditions. Simulation results were sensitive to parameters governing the heat exchange between pore domains for both test cases.