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Lipid and protein oxidation occurs in meat during storage, that deteriorate the quality of meat, therefore the aim of study was to evaluate the impact of natural marinades on spent hen meat to reduce the oxidation and increase the shelf life of spent hen meat. The Meat sample was divided into seven groups i.e. control, yoghurt, ginger extract, tamarind juice, honey 20%, 25%, and 30% respectively. All groups were analyzed for thiobarbituric acid (TBA), free fatty acid (FFA), and peroxide value (POV) in lipid oxidation, for protein oxidation, tyrosine and sulfhydryl content. At intervals of 72 hours, the fresh TBA value (0.11) showed a significant difference (P=0.05) with the control, tamarind juice and honey 30%. The FFA and POV showed non-significant (P=0.05) deference with all treated groups, lowest value was observed in honey20%. The tyrosine value of fresh meat at 00 storage time was 0.65 in terms of protein oxidation; at 48 and 72 hour intervals, significant (P=0.05) differences were noted with tamarind juice, honey 25%, and honey 30%, respectively. Fresh meat had a sulfhydryl content of 2.17, with exception of honey 20% at 48 hours of storage, showed significant (P=0.05) difference with the control and all marinade groups at 48 and 72 hours interval. The TVC found in fresh meat was 6.12 to 10.31 at 00 to 72 hour storage while, marinades significantly affected the shelf life of spent hen meat. The fresh value coliform count (4.71) was statistically significant (P=0.05) with all treated groups, whereas increasing trend was observed in all groups. The honey 20% showed the lowest results at 00 and 72 hours, respectively. It was observed that the marinades effectively reduce oxidation and extend shelf life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extreme environmental conditions like high salinity and temperature are continuously affecting fertile lands and trigger an ecological imbalance, thereby inducing indigenous microbial communities for adaptation to such extreme environments. Present study relates with the isolation and characterization of halo-thermotolerant bacteria (HTTB) from hyper-saline areas of districts Kashmore and Khairpur, Sindh, Pakistan. The isolated bacteria were initially screened for their tolerance to elevated salt concentrations and extreme temperature ranges. Out of twenty-six bacterial isolates, six bacteria from district Kashmore (60%) and thirteen bacterial isolates from district Khairpur (81.25%) tolerated NaCl concentration up to 15–17% (w/v), and grown efficiently when incubated in the temperature ranges 55–65 °C. The principle component and multivariate cluster analyses revealed three different clusters of HTTB bacteria based on their tolerance and spatial distribution. In general, the hyper-saline environments of district Kashmore harbored more HTTB than Khairpur, but individually there was extreme halotolerance and thermotolerance among Khairpur isolates. Finally, the PCR-based molecular typing of 16S rRNA genes revealed, majority of the isolates were identified to be various strains of genus Bacillus, i.e., Bacillus subtilis, B. licheniformis, B. aerius, B. vallismortis, B. aquimaris and B. flexus. Only one bacterial strain, i.e., KJ1WB, was identified as Pseudomonas pseudoalcaligenes. These HTTB bacterial strains may extend significant potential for future applications like environmental, biotechnological and enormous industrial due to their valuable enzymatic profiles and metabolite repositories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The world is facing severe environmental challenges as it heavily relies on a USD 100 trillion fossil-fuel-based economy. Its transition from a fuel-intensive to a material-intensive economy is not well understood. The conventional energy resources are responsible for the excessive generation of Green House Gas (GHG) emissions resulting in increased environmental degradation owing to climate change. The human impact has been cited as highly indisputable in this respect. Pakistan is one of the most climate-vulnerable countries highly suffering from such increased impact of climate change and, thus, has been warned against the excessive use of conventional resources. As such, in the premises of Pakistan, conventional products are being excessively utilized in both power generation and transport sectors. Apart from the electrical power sector, the transport sector is also one of the main contributors to GHG emissions. In this context, the automobile industry has emerged as an environmentally friendly solution, which presents Electric Vehicles (EVs) as an efficient and feasible alternative to mitigate the GHG footprint. The transition from fossil-fuel-based vehicles (FFVs) to EVs is, therefore, considered as a potential way to decarbonize the transport sector, where the socio-economic conditions may be improved to a significant extent. A major prerequisite under planning and implementation in Pakistan is forecasting of load growth of EVs in Pakistan. Therefore, this paper proposes a load growth model (load forecast), used to forecast the load growth expected for electric vehicles in Pakistan from 2021 to 2030. This paper discusses in detail the original and revised models. According to the revised model, total EV energy demand stood at 24.61 GWh in 2020 and increased up to 2862.54 GWh in 2030. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At present time, every nation is absolutely concern about increasing agricultural production and bioremediation of petroleum-contaminated soil. Hence, with this intention in the current study potent natural surfactants characterized as lipopeptides were evaluated for low-cost production by Bacillus subtilis SNW3, previously isolated from the Fimkessar oil field, Chakwal Pakistan. The significant results were obtained by using substrates in combination (white beans powder (6% w/v) + waste frying oil (1.5% w/v) and (0.1% w/v) urea) with lipopeptides yield of about 1.17 g/L contributing 99% reduction in cost required for medium preparation. To the best of our knowledge, no single report is presently describing lipopeptide production by Bacillus subtilis using white beans powder as a culture medium. Additionally, produced lipopeptides display great physicochemical properties of surface tension reduction value (SFT = 28.8 mN/m), significant oil displacement activity (ODA = 4.9 cm), excessive emulsification ability (E24 = 69.8%), and attains critical micelle concentration (CMC) value at 0.58 mg/mL. Furthermore, biosurfactants produced exhibit excellent stability over an extensive range of pH (1–11), salinity (1–8%), temperature (20–121°C), and even after autoclaving. Subsequently, produced lipopeptides are proved suitable for bioremediation of crude oil (86%) and as potent plant growth-promoting agent that significantly (P < 0.05) increase seed germination and plant growth promotion of chili pepper, lettuce, tomato, and pea maximum at a concentration of (0.7 g/100 mL), showed as a potential agent for agriculture and bioremediation processes by lowering economic and environmental stress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biosurfactants offer numerous advantages over the chemical surfactants, especially in energy and environment-related applications. Microbial enhanced oil recovery (MEOR) is a technique to recover oil from reservoirs by using microbes and their metabolites. In present study, total sixteen morphologically distinct bacterial strains isolated from different salty areas of the district Khairpur Mir's, Pakistan, were investigated for their MEOR potential. Screening assays for thermotolerance and halotolerance declared 7 out of 16 (43.75%) bacterial isolates as thermotolerant (capable of growing in the temperature range 60–70 °C) and halotolerant (tolerating NaCl concentrations up to 17%, w/v). Moreover, five of them were screened as biosurfactant producers. Among, the lowest surface tension reduction was achieved with biosurfactants produced by the strains KJ2MO (27.8 mN/m) and KJ2SK (29.3 mN/m). The biosurfactant activity was found stable at temperature (100–121 °C, 1 h) and pH (4–10). Moreover, maximum oil recovery was obtained with biosurfactant of bacterial strain KJ2MO (54.7%, 51.25%) followed by KJ2SK (44.7%, 40.5%), KJ1WB (37%, 35.5%) and KJ2MD (37.8%, 31.9%) by using either techniques, i.e., soil washing and sand-packed column, respectively. Moreover, the potent species were identified as Pseudomonas pseudoalcaligenes KJ1WB, Bacillus aerius KJ2MD, Bacillus licheniformis KJ2SK, and Bacillus subtilis KJ2MO using 16S rRNA ribo-typing. The investigated species were found to be promising biosurfactants producers having potential for enhanced oil recovery and could be used in other environmental applications like bioremediation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]