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The presented review discusses current situation with heavy metal pollution in the various regions of Ukraine and possible pollution of important crop. It is suggested that violent conflict of 2022 in Ukraine may cause development of polluted areas with Pb, Ni, Cr, Cu. Especially such tendency is dangerous for Ukrainian regions with high level of heavy metals level where is military conflict was in an active phase: Donetsk, Zaporizhia, Kyiv, Lugansk, Sumy, Kharkiv, Kherson, Chernihiv, Mykolaiv, Zhytomyr, Dnipropetrovsk, and Odessa regions. The analysis of monitoring data related heavy metals pollution has been described in regions of Ukraine. Current ccharacteristics of major crop production areas in Ukraine regarding their possible yield production and presence of heavy metals in the soil are presented. Near 70% of planted areas for major exported plants in the areas of conflict may be under additional increased effects of heavy metals. The wheat, corn, barley, rapeseed, sunflower have been presented and discussed their cultivation potential as major crops in Ukraine. It is recommended to use modern technologies of phytoremediation with use crop rotation of plants hyperaccumulators of heavy metals at these areas afterword's.

Diabetes is a metabolic disease with multifactorial causes which requires lifelong drug therapy as well as lifestyle changes. There is now growing scientific evidence to support the effectiveness of the use of herbal supplements in the prevention and control of diabetes. Curcumin is one of the most studied bioactive components of traditional medicine, but its physicochemical characteristics are represented by low solubility, poor absorption, and low efficacy. Nanotechnology-based pharmaceutical formulations can help overcome the problems of reduced bioavailability of curcumin and increase its antidiabetic effects. The objectives of this review were to review the effects of nanocurcumin on DM and to search for databases such as PubMed/MEDLINE and ScienceDirect. The results showed that the antidiabetic activity of nanocurcumin is due to complex pharmacological mechanisms by reducing the characteristic hyperglycemia of DM. In light of these results, nanocurcumin may be considered as potential agent in the pharmacotherapeutic management of patients with diabetes.

The genus Hyssopus is widespread in central Asia, East Mediterranean, and Mongolian areas. It has six main species which are used as herbal remedies, such as Hyssopus officinalis which is used as a condiment and flavoring agent in food industry. The other five species are H. ambiguus, H. cuspidatus, H. latilabiatus, H. macranthus, and H. seravschanicus. Its species are used in the treatment of various ailments such as cold, cough, loss of appetite, fungal infection, and spasmodic condition. Its constituents especially essential oils are popularly used as an additive in beverages, foods, and cosmetics. The volatile constituents are used for aroma in the food industry, cosmetic industry, and household products. The important active constituents in its essential oils are β-pinene, pinocamphone, isopinocamphone, and other terpenoids. Hyssopus genus is also bundled with other secondary metabolites including flavonoids luteolin, quercetin, apigenin, and their glucosides, as well as phenolic compounds including ferulic, p-hydroxy-benzoic acid, protocatechuic acid, chlorogenic, and caffeic acid. Combinedly, the extracts of Hyssopus are reported to have potential antiviral and antifungal activities proven using in vitro studies, whereas in vivo investigations have reported the crucial role of Hyssopus extracts in plasma membrane relaxation, cytotoxic, and sedative effects. This plant is believed to be relatively safe at levels commonly used in foods; nevertheless, more studies are needed to determine the safety profile.

Paclitaxel is a broad-spectrum anticancer compound, which was derived mainly from a medicinal plant, in particular, from the bark of the yew tree Taxus brevifolia Nutt. It is a representative of a class of diterpene taxanes, which are nowadays used as the most common chemotherapeutic agent against many forms of cancer. It possesses scientifically proven anticancer activity against, e.g., ovarian, lung, and breast cancers. The application of this compound is difficult because of limited solubility, recrystalization upon dilution, and cosolvent-induced toxicity. In these cases, nanotechnology and nanoparticles provide certain advantages such as increased drug half-life, lowered toxicity, and specific and selective delivery over free drugs. Nanodrugs possess the capability to buildup in the tissue which might be linked to enhanced permeability and retention as well as enhanced antitumour influence possessing minimal toxicity in normal tissues. This article presents information about paclitaxel, its chemical structure, formulations, mechanism of action, and toxicity. Attention is drawn on nanotechnology, the usefulness of nanoparticles containing paclitaxel, its opportunities, and also future perspective. This review article is aimed at summarizing the current state of continuous pharmaceutical development and employment of nanotechnology in the enhancement of the pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic features of paclitaxel as a chemotherapeutic agent.

Coumarins belong to the benzopyrone family commonly found in many medicinal plants. Natural coumarins demonstrated a wide spectrum of pharmacological activities, including anti-inflammatory, anticoagulant, anticancer, antibacterial, antimalarial, casein kinase-2 (CK2) inhibitory, antifungal, antiviral, Alzheimer’s disease inhibition, neuroprotective, anticonvulsant, phytoalexins, ulcerogenic, and antihypertensive. There are very few studies on the bioavailability of coumarins; therefore, further investigations are necessitated to study the bioavailability of different coumarins which already showed good biological activities in previous studies. On the evidence of varied pharmacological properties, the present work presents an overall review of the derivation, availability, and biological capacities of coumarins with further consideration of the essential mode of their therapeutic actions. In conclusion, a wide variety of coumarins are available, and their pharmacological activities are of current interest thanks to their synthetic accessibility and riches in medicinal plants. Coumarins perform the valuable function as therapeutic agents in a range of medical fields.

Genistein is an isoflavone first isolated from the brooming plant Dyer’s Genista tinctoria L. and is widely distributed in the Fabaceae family. As an isoflavone, mammalian genistein exerts estrogen-like functions. Several biological effects of genistein have been reported in preclinical studies, such as the antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, and antiviral activities, the effects of angiogenesis and estrogen, and the pharmacological activities on diabetes and lipid metabolism. The purpose of this review is to provide up-to-date evidence of preclinical pharmacological activities with mechanisms of action, bioavailability, and clinical evidence of genistein. The literature was researched using the most important keyword “genistein” from the PubMed, Science, and Google Scholar databases, and the taxonomy was validated using The Plant List. Data were also collected from specialized books and other online resources. The main positive effects of genistein refer to the protection against cardiovascular diseases and to the decrease of the incidence of some types of cancer, especially breast cancer. Although the mechanism of protection against cancer involves several aspects of genistein metabolism, the researchers attribute this effect to the similarity between the structure of soy genistein and that of estrogen. This structural similarity allows genistein to displace estrogen from cellular receptors, thus blocking their hormonal activity. The pharmacological activities resulting from the experimental studies of this review support the traditional uses of genistein, but in the future, further investigations are needed on the efficacy, safety, and use of nanotechnologies to increase bioavailability and therapeutic efficacy.

Due to its vast therapeutic potential, the plant-derived polyphenol curcumin is utilized in an ever-growing number of health-related applications. Here, we report the extraction methodologies, therapeutic properties, advantages and disadvantages linked to curcumin employment, and the new strategies addressed to improve its effectiveness by employing advanced nanocarriers. The emerging nanotechnology applications used to enhance CUR bioavailability and its targeted delivery in specific pathological conditions are collected and discussed. In particular, new aspects concerning the main strategic nanocarriers employed for treating inflammation and oxidative stress-related diseases are reported and discussed, with specific emphasis on those topically employed in conditions such as wounds, arthritis, or psoriasis and others used in pathologies such as bowel (colitis), neurodegenerative (Alzheimer’s or dementia), cardiovascular (atherosclerosis), and lung (asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) diseases. A brief overview of the relevant clinical trials is also included. We believe the review can provide the readers with an overview of the nanostrategies currently employed to improve CUR therapeutic applications in the highlighted pathological conditions.

Cereal crops are the major contributors to the global dietary intake of nutrients, and therefore, grain quality is an important trait for crop improvement. Grain quality in cereals is strongly influenced by genotype and environmental factors. Drought stress alone significantly reduces grain yield and quality of cereal crops worldwide. The present paper discusses the impact of drought on qualitative traits of cereal crops and suggests strategies to enhance grain quality. Drought significantly affects the nutritional properties and quality traits of crops by modifying morphological, physiological, and biochemical traits in plants. This understanding may help plant breeders in developing drought-tolerant varieties while maintaining the desired quality characteristics. Various management techniques have been suggested to enhance grain quality of crops under harsh environments. Among those, exogenous application of potential osmoprotectants (OSP) alone or in combination with soil organic amendments is a promising approach to alleviate drought stress and could be helpful in ameliorating the harmful effects of drought stresses on crop quality.

International audience; The combined effects of climate change and population growth have made agriculture appear as one of the most important challenge of the century. In order to be able to produce food for everyone in the coming decades, there is an urgent need to build more knowledge about plants, and how to grow them in a sustainable way, i.e., how to produce enough biomass without resorting to pollutant chemicals inputs. Hence, plant biologists need to understand what makes plants resistant to diseases, parasites, insects and hydric stress, among other environment effects. The functional plant body, called the phenotype, is the result of the combination of the plan genotype with the environment: two plants with the same DNA will not have the same development under different environment conditions. As the so-called \textit{plant performance} is the result of phenotype, a lot of effort has recently been devoted to study plants phenotype. More specifically, biologists run large scale experiments on hundreds or thousands of plants, for example to determine how resistant is a particular plant to a wide range of environment conditions. To this end, the plants are settled in pots, and these pots are moved by a conveyor belt from a cultivation chamber to different quantitative automated measurement stations, where RGB cameras, spectrography and other techniques are employed to monitor plants growth on a regular basis. The European project EPPN2020 aims at gathering a large number of such facilities to share experience and accelerate the research progresses in plant biology. It currently involves 31 plant phenotyping platforms and 21 partners across Europe from 12 countries (including the Slovak University of Agriculture in Nitra), under the coordination of INRA, with a budget of \euro 10 million for four years. It can be observed that the phenotyping platforms available in EPPN2020 and everywhere else in the world have a very similar structure.

The biochemical features and biological function of dietary phenols, which are widespread in the plant kingdom, have been described in the present review. The ways of phenols classification, which were collected from literature based on structural and biochemical characteristics with description of source and possible effects on human, organisms and environment have been presented. The bioactivities of phenolic compounds described in literature are reviewed to illustrate their potential for the development of pharmaceutical and agricultural products.

Paclitaxel is a broad-spectrum anticancer compound, which was derived mainly from a medicinal plant, in particular, from the bark of the yew tree Taxus brevifolia Nutt. It is a representative of a class of diterpene taxanes, which are nowadays used as the most common chemotherapeutic agent against many forms of cancer. It possesses scientifically proven anticancer activity against, e.g., ovarian, lung, and breast cancers. The application of this compound is difficult because of limited solubility, recrystalization upon dilution, and cosolvent-induced toxicity. In these cases, nanotechnology and nanoparticles provide certain advantages such as increased drug half-life, lowered toxicity, and specific and selective delivery over free drugs. Nanodrugs possess the capability to buildup in the tissue which might be linked to enhanced permeability and retention as well as enhanced antitumour influence possessing minimal toxicity in normal tissues. This article presents information about paclitaxel, its chemical structure, formulations, mechanism of action, and toxicity. Attention is drawn on nanotechnology, the usefulness of nanoparticles containing paclitaxel, its opportunities, and also future perspective. This review article is aimed at summarizing the current state of continuous pharmaceutical development and employment of nanotechnology in the enhancement of the pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic features of paclitaxel as a chemotherapeutic agent.