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Pulse crop rotation in rice cultivation is a widely accepted agronomic practice. Depending upon the water regime, rice cultivation has been classified into wetland and aerobic practices. However, no studies have been conducted so far to understand the impact of pulse crop rotation and rice mono-cropping on fungal diversity, particularly in aerobic soil. A targeted metagenomic study was conducted to compare the effects of crop rotations (rice-rice and rice-pulse) on fungal diversity in wetland and aerobic rice soils. Out of 445 OTUs, 41.80% was unknown and 58.20% were assigned to six phyla, namely Ascomycota (56.57%), Basidiomycota (1.32%), Zygomycota (0.22%), Chytridiomycota (0.04%), Glomeromycota (0.03%), and Blastocladiomycota (0.02%). Functional trait analysis found wetland rice-pulse rotation increased symbiotrophs (36.7%) and saprotrophs (62.1%) population, whereas higher pathotrophs were found in aerobic rice-rice (62.8%) and rice-pulse (61.4%) cropping system. Certain soil nutrients played a major role in shaping the fungal community; Ca had significant (p < 0.05) positive impact on saprotroph, symbiotroph and endophytes, whereas Cu had significant (p < 0.05) negative impact on pathotrophs. This study showed that rice-pulse crop rotation could enhance the saprophytic and symbiotic fungal diversity in wetland and reduce the population of pathogens in aerobic rice cultivation., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest Authors declare that they have no competing interests., (Copyright © 2023 British Mycological Society. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The inheritance of the mitochondria genome and its diversity is unique for genetic and evolutionary studies relative to nuclear genomes. Northeast India and Himalayan regions are considered as one of the centres of indica rice origin. Also, rice diversity in northeast India is very distinct and highly suited for evolutionary studies. Although reports are available on the genetic diversity of indigenous northeast rice landraces, its relationship with the wild relatives is not yet properly explored and understood. In an attempt, mitochondrial markers were used to study the evolutionary relationship between the 68 landraces of northeast India and wild relatives ( O. rufipogon and O. nivara ) along with IR64 ( indica ) and Nipponbare ( japonica ) were taken as reference cultivars. Phylogenetically, the findings include two distinct clusters in the indigenous northeast India landraces representing indica and japonica groups. Further, the wild relatives and ~60% of northeast India landraces were identified to be closely related to the Nipponbare cluster. Besides, landraces of northeast India grouping with the indica group (IR64) are characterized by the absence of wild relatives. This indicates that there are two distinct evolutionary paths in the origin of northeast Indian rice landraces based on mitochondrial markers diversity and it is proposed that the inheritance of mitochondria, mitonuclear genome interactions, and bottleneck events could have genetically separated these two phylogenetically unique groups of northeast rice landraces.

Background: The potential of paddy breeding has reached its pinnacle, and hybrids have been the principal research outcome. Hence, our hypothesis was based on improvising the callus induction efficiency of recalcitrant Oryza sativa sub. indica hybrids by intervening into their cellular functions like cell division and histone regulation for the production of doubled haploids, a better output compared to hybrids., Methodology and Results: Insight into the mechanism of cell division is the foremost concern in altering the same and hence studies on evolution, expression and action of histone deacetylase and its 12 genes (9 HDA and 3 HD-tunin genes) were chosen in the hypothesis. Expression of HDA genes at three stages (anther dehiscence, 1st callusing and second callusing stages) with inhibitor (trichostatin-A) interventions indicated 1st callusing stage as the most important in influencing callus induction and also the genes HDA19, 6, 15 and 5 were the most important. TSA alone had a significant impact on the regulation of the genes HDT 702, HDA19, HDA9, and HDA6. Higher expression of HDA19 and HDA6 was involved in maximizing callus induction; HDA15 had an antagonistic expression compared to HDA19/6 and might be involved in chlorophyll regulation during regeneration. Results of evolutionary analysis on histone deacetylases indicated a long and single lineage of origin denoting its importance in the basic cellular functions. The tubulin deacetylation gene HDA5, which was exclusively found in dicotyledons, had a recent evolutionary history only from terrestrial plants, and also had significant conservation in its motifs and NLS region., Conclusion: By combating the recalcitrant nature of Indica cultivars, molecular editing on a combination of HDA genes will enhance the callus induction and regeneration efficiency of the next generation of doubled haploids, therby improving the total yield., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V.)

The grain size is one of the complex trait of rice yield controlled by a plethora of interaction of several genes in different pathways. The present study was undertaken to investigate the influence of seven known grain size regulating genes: DEP1, GS7, GS3, GW8, GL7, GS5 and GW2. A wide phenotypic variation for grain length, grain width and grain length-width ratio were observed in 89 germplasm. The correlation analysis showed a strong association among these three grain traits viz. GL, GW, GLWR and TGW which play important roles in determining the final rice grain size. Except for GW2, all six genes showed strong association with grain size traits. A total of 21 alleles were identified with an average of 2.1 allele/locus in 89 germplasm of which seven alleles were found to be favourable alleles for improving the grain size with the frequency range of 24 (26.97%) to 82 (92.13%); the largest was found in GS5 followed by GW8, GL7, DEP1, GS3 and GS7 genes. Through ANOVA, four markers (GS3-PstI, S9, GID76 and GID711) of three genes (GS3, DEP1 and GL7) were found significantly associated with all the three traits (GL, GLWR and TGW). Concurrent results of significant associations of grain size traits with other markers were observed in both analysis of variance and genetic association through the general linear model. Besides, the population structure analysis, cluster analysis and PCoA divided the entire germplasm into three sub-groups with the clear-cut demarcation of long and medium grain types. The present results would help in formulating strategies by selecting suitable candidate markers/genes for obtaining preferred grain shape/size and improving grain yield through marker-assisted breeding.