Nano-calcium carbonate reinforced polypropylene and propylene-ethylene copolymer nanocomposites: Tensile vs. impact behavior

Improvement of both the tensile and impact strength of the same polymeric material has always been a great challenge for the plastic industry. The study focuses on the effect of incorporation of calcium carbonate nanoparticles (0.3 wt% to 15 wt%) into three polypropylene (PP) based matrices viz. PP homopolymer, propylene-ethylene (PP-PE) copolymer and the blend of PP:PP-PE (30:70) to improve their impact behavior without hampering the tensile strength much. A loss in both the tensile and impact properties was observed in PP based nanocomposite. However, PP-PE based nanocomposites showed a significant improvement in impact strength (47 %) at 10 wt% loading with a loss of tensile strength by 22 %. To minimize this loss a blend of PP:PP-PE (30:70) was explored as a matrix. At 10 wt% loading, this matrix showed an improvement of 30 % in impact strength whereas the tensile loss was minimized to 10 %. Further, silane coupling agent which promoted good interfacial adhesion was used for best compositions. The variation of crystalline morphology of the nanocomposites with various formulations was analyzed using differential scanning calorimetry and X-ray diffraction.     

Identification of favorable alleles in the <Emphasis Type="Italic">non</Emphasis>-<Emphasis Type="Italic">yellow coloring 1</Emphasis> gene by association mapping in maize

Association mapping was conducted to explore favorable alleles of the chlorophyll-related non-yellow coloring 1 (NYC1) gene under light and dark using an association panel of 146 maize inbred lines. A total of 14 polymorphic sites were identified to be significantly associated with at least one of the chlorophyll-related traits at the seedling stage. Four single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) (S320, S2951, S3901, and S3355) from the NYC1 gene were respectively strongly associated with chlorophyll b (chlb), the ratio of chlorophyll a to chlorophyll b (chl_ratio), chlorophyll a degradation (chla_deg), and total chlorophyll degradation (total_chl_deg). SNPs S320 (C/A) in exon 1, and S2951 (A/G) in intron 8 was related to chlb, with 6.01 and 8.89% of phenotypic variation under light treatment, respectively. Under dark treatment, SNP S3901 (C/T), located in 3′ untranslated region (3′UTR), was associated with chl_ratio, explaining 7.01% of the observed phenotypic variation, whereas SNP S3355 (C/G) in intron 9 explained 6.48 and 5.18% of phenotypic variations in chla_deg and total_chl_deg, respectively. Taken together, these results indicated that the NYC1 gene plays an important role in chlorophyll content and other related traits, and different sites act on chlorophyll metabolism under different light intensities in maize seedlings. Furthermore, these findings improve our understanding of the genetic basis of chlorophyll metabolism under different light conditions.     

Association mapping reveals loci associated with multiple traits that affect grain yield and adaptation in soft winter wheat

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) are useful to facilitate crop improvement via enhanced knowledge of marker-trait associations (MTA). A GWAS for grain yield (GY), yield components, and agronomic traits was conducted using a diverse panel of 239 soft red winter wheat (Triticum aestivum) genotypes evaluated across two growing seasons and eight site-years. Analysis of variance showed significant environment, genotype, and genotype-by-environment effects for GY and yield components. Narrow sense heritability of GY (h ²  = 0.48) was moderate compared to other traits including plant height (h ²  = 0.81) and kernel weight (h ²  = 0.77). There were 112 significant MTA (p < 0.0005) detected for eight measured traits using compressed mixed linear models and 5715 single nucleotide polymorphism markers. MTA for GY and agronomic traits coincided with previously reported QTL for winter and spring wheat. Highly significant MTA for GY showed an overall negative allelic effect for the minor allele, indicating selection against these alleles by breeders. Markers associated with multiple traits observed on chromosomes 1A, 2D, 3B, and 4B with positive minor effects serve as potential targets for marker assisted breeding to select for improvement of GY and related traits. Following marker validation, these multi-trait loci have the potential to be utilized for MAS to improve GY and adaptation of soft red winter wheat.     

球孢白僵菌不同施用方式对玉米促生作用的研究

采用土壤施用和叶面喷施2种方式将球孢白僵菌(Beauveria bassiana)菌株Bb202接种至玉米,研究不同接种方式及处理浓度对玉米生长的影响。结果表明,2种喷施方式对玉米苗均存在促生作用,且这种促生作用与孢子接种浓度密切相关。在叶面喷施处理中,白僵菌仅对玉米地上部分生长指标有促进作用,而对玉米苗的根长无显著影响;其中1.0×10~4孢子/m L处理组对玉米苗的促生效果最佳,其株高、叶长、叶宽、鲜重指标比蒸馏水对照组分别高出7.47%、15.42%、25.70%和16.85%。在土壤喷施处理中,白僵菌对玉米苗地上与地下部分均有显著促生作用;其中1.0×106孢子/m L和1.0×10~8孢子/m L处理组,玉米株高、叶长、根长、生物量指标较蒸馏水对照组分别提高了28.66%和29.59%、30.66%和37.85%、43.08%和33.60%、28.35%和32.55%。从对玉米苗的促生作用来看,用1.0×106孢子/m L的白僵菌悬浮液处理土壤,可以取得最经济、最显著的促生效果。     

Correction to: Impact of leaf infestation by herbivorous insects on the elemental uptake of citrus trees

Journal of Plant Diseases and Protection - In the original publication, the article title was incorrectly published as ‘Impact of leave infestation by herbivorous insects on the elemental...     

基于ANSYS Workbench的乘坐式割草机刀盘模态分析

刀盘是割草机重要部件,其工作时固有频率与振型的大小直接关系到整机的可靠性与安全性。为此,利用CAD/CAM软件Pro/E建立刀盘的三维实体模型,并将其导入有限元分析软件ANSYS Workbench,对所建模型进行模态有限元仿真分析,提取前6阶固有频率,与刀盘转速进行比较,计算出其工作时的危险转速范围。分析结果表明:刀盘最高工作转速远低于其1阶临界转速,有效地避免了共振的发生,验证了刀盘设计的合理性,可为刀盘其它的动力学分析奠定基础。     

基于自适应全局阈值融合标记的遥感图像建筑群分割

针对分割遥感图像建筑群时,标记不完全所产生的过分割和欠分割并存问题,提出一种基于自适应全局阈值融合标记的图像分割算法.该算法根据建筑群的分布和纹理特点,利用小波变换提取图像梯度,通过形态学重构对梯度图像进行滤波;采用局部极小值法提取背景标记,并应用自适应全局阈值法提取建筑群标记.采用逻辑运算进行标记融合,用融合后的标记修改加权像素的Sobel梯度图实现精准分割.实验结果表明,该算法能够弥补形态学滤波梯度图的局部极值标记不足问题,抑制了建筑群的过分割和欠分割,准确地将建筑群从背景中提取出来,分割正确率达到90.7％.