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INTRODUCTION: Papua New Guinea (PNG) is a country made up of 22 provinces and has a population of over 7 million people, with over 852 known languages between them. The country itself is drastically different between each region, with landscapes varying between mountainous in some parts and low-lying seaside in others. Previous research has indicated that persons who live in certain regions or have certain genetic backgrounds may have superior physiological and anthropometric characteristics compared to those from other regions. Although study on this topic has been completed in parts of Africa, currently in the Asia Pacific region there has been limited research on the effect of region of origin on the above-mentioned characteristics. METHODS: The study consists of the testing of secondary school children within the Port Moresby region. 44 participants aged between 14 and 20 years old were selected for this study. Participants completed a questionnaire that asked about their Heritage, place of upbringing and current residence. Following this, anthropometric measurements such as, height, seated height, BMI, weight and arm span were recorded. After undergoing warm up, participants completed a battery of performance tests, focusing on aspects such as; flexibility (sit and reach), anaerobic power (vertical jump, medicine ball throw), agility testing (Illinois agility test), speed (20m sprint), local muscular endurance (push-ups & sit-ups) and aerobic capacity (Multi-stage fitness test). Data collected was analysed through use of dummy coding and multiple regression analysis to compare independent variables (e.g. birth place) and dependent variable (e.g. sprint speed). Data is presented with 95% confidence levels. RESULTS: A multiple regression analysis showed birthplace of the father could significantly predict push-up and sit-up ability (p<0.05) with R2 values of 0.512 and 0.463 respectively. It was also determined that the participant's birth place has a significant relationship with both Illinois agility and push-up test scores (p<0.05), despite having low predictive values (R2=0.323; R2=0.337). A significant relationship between participant childhood province and weight, body mass index (BMI), Illinois agility and push-up performance was also determined, with BMI and weight having high R2 values; (0.560, 0.432). DISCUSSION: The results suggest that birth province of the Father, the birth province of the participant and the province in which the participant spent a majority of their childhood have a significant impact on some anthropometric and performance characteristics. This may indicate that anthropometric and performance characteristics may be influenced not only by inherited factors but also by environmental factors that occur during childhood. PRACTICAL APPLICATION: The information gathered by this project can be used to determine which areas of PNG are host to certain physical and performance attributes. It may also assist in discovery and development of talent within PNG to assist the country's future sporting aspirations. The results from this research may also open the door to further research in the area of specific environmental influences and their relationship with development of performance attributes. Findings from this study are to be used as part of a larger research project entitled "Influence of region of origin on the anthropometric and performance characteristics in Papua New Guineans". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wheat ( Triticum aestivum ) is one of the most important staple crops worldwide. To ensure its global supply, the timing and duration of its growth cycle needs to be closely monitored in the field so that necessary crop management activities can be arranged in a timely manner. Also, breeders and plant researchers need to evaluate growth stages (GSs) for tens of thousands of genotypes at the plot level, at different sites and across multiple seasons. These indicate the importance of providing a reliable and scalable toolkit to address the challenge so that the plot-level assessment of GS can be successfully conducted for different objectives in plant research. Here, we present a multimodal deep learning model called GSP-AI, capable of identifying key GSs and predicting the vegetative-to-reproductive transition (i.e., flowering days) in wheat based on drone-collected canopy images and multiseasonal climatic datasets. In the study, we first established an open Wheat Growth Stage Prediction (WGSP) dataset, consisting of 70,410 annotated images collected from 54 varieties cultivated in China, 109 in the United Kingdom, and 100 in the United States together with key climatic factors. Then, we built an effective learning architecture based on Res2Net and long short-term memory (LSTM) to learn canopy-level vision features and patterns of climatic changes between 2018 and 2021 growing seasons. Utilizing the model, we achieved an overall accuracy of 91.2% in identifying key GS and an average root mean square error (RMSE) of 5.6 d for forecasting the flowering days compared with manual scoring. We further tested and improved the GSP-AI model with high-resolution smartphone images collected in the 2021/2022 season in China, through which the accuracy of the model was enhanced to 93.4% for GS and RMSE reduced to 4.7 d for the flowering prediction. As a result, we believe that our work demonstrates a valuable advance to inform breeders and growers regarding the timing and duration of key plant growth and development phases at the plot level, facilitating them to conduct more effective crop selection and make agronomic decisions under complicated field conditions for wheat improvement., Competing Interests: Competing interests: The authors declare that they have no competing interests., (Copyright © 2024 Liyan Shen et al.)

Raspberry production is under threat from the emerging fungal pathogenic genus Cladosporium. We used amplicon-sequencing, coupled with qPCR, to investigate how fruit age, fruit location within a polytunnel, polytunnel location and sampling date affected the fruit epiphytic microbiome. Fruit age was the most important factor impacting the fungal microbiome, followed by sampling date and polytunnel location. In contrast, polytunnel location and fruit age were important factors impacting the bacterial microbiome composition, followed by the sampling date. The within-tunnel location had a small significant effect on the fungal microbiome and no effect on the bacterial microbiome. As fruit ripened, fungal diversity increased and the bacterial diversity decreased. Cladosporium was the most abundant fungus of the fruit epiphytic microbiome, accounting for nearly 44% of all fungal sequences. Rotorod air samplers were used to study how the concentration of airborne Cladosporium inoculum (quantified by qPCR) varied between location (inside and outside the polytunnel) and time (daytime vs. nighttime). Quantified Cladosporium DNA was significantly higher during the day than the night and inside the polytunnel than the outside. This study demonstrated the dynamic nature of epiphytic raspberry fruit microbiomes and airborne Cladosporium inoculum within polytunnels, which will impact disease risks on raspberry fruit., (© 2024 The Authors. Environmental Microbiology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Inefficient nitrogen (N) utilization in agricultural production has led to many negative impacts such as excessive use of N fertilizers, redundant plant growth, greenhouse gases, long-lasting toxicity in ecosystem, and even effect on human health, indicating the importance to optimize N applications in cropping systems. Here, we present a multiseasonal study that focused on measuring phenotypic changes in wheat plants when they were responding to different N treatments under field conditions. Powered by drone-based aerial phenotyping and the AirMeasurer platform, we first quantified 6 N response-related traits as targets using plot-based morphological, spectral, and textural signals collected from 54 winter wheat varieties. Then, we developed dynamic phenotypic analysis using curve fitting to establish profile curves of the traits during the season, which enabled us to compute static phenotypes at key growth stages and dynamic phenotypes (i.e., phenotypic changes) during N response. After that, we combine 12 yield production and N-utilization indices manually measured to produce N efficiency comprehensive scores (NECS), based on which we classified the varieties into 4 N responsiveness (i.e., N-dependent yield increase) groups. The NECS ranking facilitated us to establish a tailored machine learning model for N responsiveness-related varietal classification just using N-response phenotypes with high accuracies. Finally, we employed the Wheat55K SNP Array to map single-nucleotide polymorphisms using N response-related static and dynamic phenotypes, helping us explore genetic components underlying N responsiveness in wheat. In summary, we believe that our work demonstrates valuable advances in N response-related plant research, which could have major implications for improving N sustainability in wheat breeding and production., Competing Interests: Competing interests: The authors declare that they have no competing financial interests., (Copyright © 2023 Guohui Ding et al.)

As one of the most consumed stable foods around the world, wheat plays a crucial role in ensuring global food security. The ability to quantify key yield components under complex field conditions can help breeders and researchers assess wheat's yield performance effectively. Nevertheless, it is still challenging to conduct large-scale phenotyping to analyse canopy-level wheat spikes and relevant performance traits, in the field and in an automated manner. Here, we present CropQuant-Air, an AI-powered software system that combines state-of-the-art deep learning (DL) models and image processing algorithms to enable the detection of wheat spikes and phenotypic analysis using wheat canopy images acquired by low-cost drones. The system includes the YOLACT-Plot model for plot segmentation, an optimised YOLOv7 model for quantifying the spike number per m 2 (SNpM 2 ) trait, and performance-related trait analysis using spectral and texture features at the canopy level. Besides using our labelled dataset for model training, we also employed the Global Wheat Head Detection dataset to incorporate varietal features into the DL models, facilitating us to perform reliable yield-based analysis from hundreds of varieties selected from main wheat production regions in China. Finally, we employed the SNpM 2 and performance traits to develop a yield classification model using the Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) ensemble and obtained significant positive correlations between the computational analysis results and manual scoring, indicating the reliability of CropQuant-Air. To ensure that our work could reach wider researchers, we created a graphical user interface for CropQuant-Air, so that non-expert users could readily use our work. We believe that our work represents valuable advances in yield-based field phenotyping and phenotypic analysis, providing useful and reliable toolkits to enable breeders, researchers, growers, and farmers to assess crop-yield performance in a cost-effective approach., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2023 Chen, Zhou, Li, Li, Xia, Jackson, Sun, Zhou, Deakin, Jiang and Zhou.)

Wild ground-nesting bees are key pollinators of apple ( Malus domestica ). We explored, (1) where they choose to nest, (2) what influences site selection and (3) species richness in orchards. Twenty-three orchards were studied over three years; twelve were treated with additional herbicide to increase bare ground with the remainder as untreated controls. Vegetation cover, soil type, soil compaction, nest number and location, and species were recorded. Fourteen species of ground-nesting solitary/eusocial bee were identified. Most nests were in areas free of vegetation and areas treated with additional herbicide were utilised by ground nesting bees within three years of application. Nests were also evenly distributed along the vegetation-free strips underneath the apple trees. This area was an important ground-nesting bee habitat with mean numbers of nests at peak nest activity of 873 per ha (range 44-5705), and 1153 per ha (range 0-4082) in 2018 and 2019, respectively. Increasing and maintaining areas of bare ground in apple orchards during peak nesting events could improve nesting opportunities for some species of ground-nesting bee and, combined with flowers strips, be part of a more sustainable pollinator management approach. The area under the tree row is an important contributor to the ground-nesting bee habitat and should be kept bare during peak nesting.

The plant phyllosphere is colonized by microbial communities that can influence the fitness and growth of their host, including the host's resilience to plant pathogens.There are multiple factors involved in shaping the assemblages of bacterial and fungal endophytes within the phyllosphere, including host genetics and environment. In this work, the role of host genetics in plant-microbiome assembly was studied in a full-sibling family of apple (Malus x domestica) trees infected with the fungal pathogen Neonectria ditissima. A Quantitative Trait Loci (QTL) analysis showed that there are multiple loci which influence the abundance of individual endophytic taxa, with the majority of QTL having a moderate to large effect (20-40%) on endophyte abundance. QTL regions on LG 1, 3, 4, 5, 10, 12, 13, 14 and 15 were shown to affect multiple taxa. Only a small proportion of the variation in overall taxonomic composition was affected by host genotype, with significant QTL hits for principal components explaining <8% and <7.4% of the total variance in bacterial and fungal composition, respectively. Four of the identified QTL colocalised with previously identified regions associated with tolerance to Neonectria ditissima. These results suggest that there is a genetic basis shaping apple endophyte composition and that microbe-host associations in apple could be tailored through breeding., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. This study received funding from the UK Biotechnology and Biological Science Research Council BBSRC and the industry organisations: Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board AHDB, Adrian Scripps Limited, Avalon Produce Limited, T&G Global, Frank P Matthews Limited, and Worldwide Fruit Limited. The funders were not involved in the study design, collection, analysis, interpretation of data, the writing of this article or the decision to submit it for publication., (Copyright © 2023 Karlström, Papp-Rupar, Passey, Deakin and Xu.)

Rhizosphere microbial communities are recognized as crucial products of intimate interactions between plant and soil, playing important roles in plant growth and health. Enhancing the understanding of this process is a promising way to promote the next green revolution by applying the multifunctional benefits coming with rhizosphere microbiomes. In this study, we propagated eight cotton genotypes (four upland cotton cultivars and four sea-land cotton cultivars) with varying levels of resistance to Verticillium dahliae in three distinct soil types. Amplicon sequencing was applied to profile both bacterial and fungal communities in the rhizosphere of cotton. The results revealed that soil origin was the primary factor causing divergence in rhizosphere microbial community, with plant genotype playing a secondary role. The Shannon and Simpson indices revealed no significant differences in the rhizosphere microbial communities of Gossypium barbadense and G. hirsutum . Soil origin accounted for 34.0 and 59.05% of the total variability in the PCA of the rhizosphere bacterial and fungal communities, respectively, while plant genotypes within species only accounted for 1.1 to 6.6% of the total variability among microbial population. Similar results were observed in the Bray-Curtis indices. Interestingly, the relative abundance of Acidobacteria phylum in G. barbadense was greater in comparison with that of G. hirsutum. These findings suggested that soil origin and cotton genotype modulated microbiome assembly with soil predominantly shaping rhizosphere microbiome assembly, while host genotype slightly tuned this recruitment process by changing the abundance of specific microbial consortia., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Yang, Yue, Ma, Feng, Feng, Zhao, Zhang, Deakin, Xu, Zhu and Wei.)

Background: The management of asthma and COPD is largely dependent on patients being able to use their inhaled medication correctly, but poor inhaler technique continues to be a recurring theme in studies and clinical practice. This is associated with poor disease control, increased risk of exacerbations and hospital admissions, and so there is a need to redesign services for patients to optimise their medicines use., Methods: A novel ward-based dedicated inhaler technique service was developed, and pharmacy support workers trained to provide this, focusing on optimising inhaler technique using a checklist and recommending protocol-guided inhaler device switches. Inpatients on adult respiratory wards with a diagnosis of exacerbation of asthma or COPD consented to receive this service, and the impact on exacerbations and hospital admissions were compared in the 6-months before and after the intervention., Results: 266 adults (74 asthma, 188 COPD, and four asthma-COPD overlap) received the inhaler technique service. Six-month exacerbation and hospital admission data were available for 184 subjects. Optimising inhaler technique achieved a significant reduction in the combined asthma and COPD annualised rate of moderate-to-severe exacerbations (Rate Ratio [RR] 0.75, p < 0.05) and annualised rate of hospital admissions (RR 0.57, p < 0.0005). Improvements were also observed in future length of stay (- 1.6 days) and the average cost of admission (-£748)., Conclusions: This novel inhaler technique service produced a significant reduction in the rate of moderate-to-severe exacerbations of asthma and COPD, and a reduction in the rate hospital admissions, length of stay and average cost of admission., (Crown Copyright © 2021. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Background: European tarnished plant bug, Lygus rugulipennis (Heteroptera: Miridae), is a polyphagous pest damaging a range of arable and horticultural crops. Management is reliant upon chemical insecticides for control. These studies developed a synthetic semiochemical push-pull control strategy to reduce numbers of L. rugulipennis and subsequent fruit damage in UK strawberry crops. Using a series of small field experiments and testing in commercial strawberry crops we explored the efficacy of hexyl butyrate (HB) as the push element and female sex pheromone combined with phenylacetaldehyde as the pull element., Results: HB dispensers placed 1.0, 3.5, 5.0 and 7.0 m from all-green Unitraps baited with L. rugulipennis female sex pheromone significantly reduced male catches by 99%, 54%, 44% and 20% compared with untreated control, respectively. Subsequently, in commercial crops, HB dispensers at 2-m intervals along the crop row (the push) combined with a perimeter pull reduced numbers of adult and nymph L. rugulipennis by up to 80% in organic strawberry crops compared with the untreated control. Finally, the push-pull system halved fruit damage (8%) compared with untreated areas (16%) in conventional crops. In organic strawberry crops, 90% of untreated strawberries had some mirid damage compared with only 41-51% in push-pull-treated areas., Conclusion: To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of a push-pull approach using synthetic semiochemicals giving a significant reduction in crop damage by mirids and paves the way for non-pesticide control of a range of mirid species on multiple crops. © 2021 Society of Chemical Industry., (© 2021 Society of Chemical Industry.)

Rhizosphere microbial communities are known to be related to plant health; using such an association for crop management requires a better understanding of this relationship. We investigated rhizosphere microbiomes associated with Verticillium wilt symptoms in two cotton cultivars. Microbial communities were profiled by amplicon sequencing, with the total bacterial and fungal DNA quantified by quantitative polymerase chain reaction based on the respective 16S and internal transcribed spacer primers. Although the level of V. dahliae inoculum was higher in the rhizosphere of diseased plants than in the healthy plants, such a difference explained only a small proportion of variation in wilt severities. Compared to healthy plants, the diseased plants had much higher total fungal/bacterial biomass ratio, as represented by quantified total fungal or bacterial DNA. The variability in the fungal/bacterial biomass ratio was much smaller than variability in either fungal or bacterial total biomass among samples within diseased or healthy plants. Diseased plants generally had lower bacterial alpha diversity in their rhizosphere, but such differences in the fungal alpha diversity depended on cultivars. There were large differences in both fungal and bacterial communities between diseased and healthy plants. Many rhizosphere microbial groups differed in their abundance between healthy and diseased plants. There was a decrease in arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and an increase in several plant pathogen and saprophyte guilds in diseased plants. These findings suggested that V . dahliae infection of roots led to considerable changes in rhizosphere microbial communities, with large increases in saprophytic fungi and reduction in bacterial community., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2021 Wei, Feng, Zhang, Feng, Zhao, Zhang, Deakin, Peng, Zhu and Xu.)

Objectives: The objectives of this project were to conduct a retrospective healthcare records audit to determine the current compliance with evidence-based criteria regarding perioperative management of patients with diabetes; to identify barriers and facilitators to achieve compliance and develop strategies to address areas of non-compliance, and to implement evidence-based best practice recommendations for perioperative diabetic management and to assess the effectiveness of these strategies in improving compliance of perioperative diabetic management across five participating clinical areas in a large tertiary referral hospital., Introduction: Type 2 diabetes is a frequent co-morbidity among inpatients. It affects up to 20% of the general surgical population. Patients with diabetes undergoing surgery have a greater complication rate and length of hospital stay. Optimization of diabetes management of hospitalized patients will improve quality of care delivery, prevent postoperative complications and reduce length of stay and costs. However, there is limited knowledge and understanding of whether the current nursing practices concerning perioperative diabetic management meet the best practice recommendations outlined by JBI best practice criteria., Methods: A pre-post intervention healthcare record audit was conducted to examine compliance with nine best practice recommendations for perioperative diabetic management across five clinical areas. Following pre-intervention data analysis along with two focus group discussions, barriers to compliance with best practice criteria were identified and targeted strategies were used to address the issues. This project used the JBI Practice Application of Clinical Evidence System (PACES) and Getting Research into Practice (GRiP) tools., Results: Face to face education sessions and educational resources relating to perioperative diabetic management were delivered to nursing staff, which resulted in improved compliance for most of the audit criteria, with significant improvement in the areas of regular blood glucose level monitoring and nursing staff receiving education and training in the post-implementation analysis., (Copyright © 2021 JBI. Unauthorized reproduction of this article is prohibited.)

Viral interactions during multiple viral infections were examined in Agaricus bisporus cultures harboring 9 viruses (comprising 18 distinct viral RNAs) by statistically analyzing their relative abundance in fruitbodies. Four clusters of viral RNA were identified that suggested synergism and coreplication. Pairwise correlations revealed negative and positive correlations between clusters, indicating further synergisms and an antagonism involving a group containing a putative hypovirus and four nonhost ORFan RNAs (RNAs with no similarity to known sequences) possibly acting as defective interfering RNAs. The disease phenotype was observed in 10 to 15% of the fruitbodies apparently randomly located among asymptomatic fruitbodies. The degree of symptom expression consistently correlated with the levels of the multipartite virus AbV16. Diseased fruitbodies contained very high levels of AbV16 and AbV6 RNA2; these levels were orders of magnitude higher than those in asymptomatic tissues and were shown statistically to be discretely higher populations of abundance, indicating an exponential shift in the replicative capacity of the virus. High levels of AbV16 replication were specific to the fruitbody and not found in the underlying mycelium. There appeared to be a stochastic element occurring in these viral interactions, as observed in the distribution of diseased symptoms across a culture, differences in variance between experiments, and a number of additional viruses undergoing the step-jump in levels between experiments. Possible mechanisms for these multiple and simultaneous viral interactions in single culture are discussed in relation to known virus-host regulatory mechanisms for viral replication and whether additional factors could be considered to account for the 1,000-fold increase in AbV16 and AbV6 RNA2 levels. IMPORTANCE How viruses interact in a multiple-virus infection was examined by quantifying the levels of 18 viral RNAs in fruiting cultures of the agriculturally cultivated fungus Agaricus bisporus and statistically analyzing and modeling their abundance. Synergistic, antagonistic, and neutral interactions occurred simultaneously in cultures. The viral RNAs were grouped into four clusters, each displaying similar relative abundance, and between clusters, further interactions were found with positive, negative, or no correlations. Mushroom fruitbodies showing disease symptoms were distributed apparently randomly across the culture. These symptoms were associated with the presence of viral RNAs from two different clusters at very high levels, 1,000-fold higher than asymptomatic fruitbodies. The role of viral interaction together with stochastic factors and the regulation of host antiviral defenses in pathogenesis are discussed., (Copyright © 2021 Dobbs et al.)

Strawberry shape uniformity is a complex trait, influenced by multiple genetic and environmental components. To complicate matters further, the phenotypic assessment of strawberry uniformity is confounded by the difficulty of quantifying geometric parameters 'by eye' and variation between assessors. An in-depth genetic analysis of strawberry uniformity has not been undertaken to date, due to the lack of accurate and objective data. Nonetheless, uniformity remains one of the most important fruit quality selection criteria for the development of a new variety. In this study, a 3D-imaging approach was developed to characterise berry shape uniformity. We show that circularity of the maximum circumference had the closest predictive relationship with the manual uniformity score. Combining five or six automated metrics provided the best predictive model, indicating that human assessment of uniformity is highly complex. Furthermore, visual assessment of strawberry fruit quality in a multi-parental QTL mapping population has allowed the identification of genetic components controlling uniformity. A "regular shape" QTL was identified and found to be associated with three uniformity metrics. The QTL was present across a wide array of germplasm, indicating a potential candidate for marker-assisted breeding, while the potential to implement genomic selection is explored. A greater understanding of berry uniformity has been achieved through the study of the relative impact of automated metrics on human perceived uniformity. Furthermore, the comprehensive definition of strawberry shape uniformity using 3D imaging tools has allowed precision phenotyping, which has improved the accuracy of trait quantification and unlocked the ability to accurately select for uniform berries., Competing Interests: Conflict of interestThe authors declare that they have no conflict of interest., (© The Author(s) 2020.)

Verticillium wilt caused by Verticillium dahliae is a common soil-borne disease worldwide, affecting many economically important crop species. Soil microbes can influence plant disease development. We investigated rhizosphere and endosphere microbiomes in relation to cotton cultivars with differential susceptibility to Verticillium wilt. Soil samples from nine cotton cultivars were assessed for the density of V. dahliae microsclerotia; plants were assessed for disease development. We used amplicon sequencing to profile both bacterial and fungal communities. Unlike wilt severity, wilt inoculum density did not differ significantly among resistant and susceptible cultivars. Overall, there were no significant association of alpha diversity indices with wilt susceptibility. In contrast, there were clear differences in the overall rhizosphere and endosphere microbial communities, particularly bacteria, between resistant and susceptible cultivars. Many rhizosphere and endosphere microbial groups differed in their relative abundance between resistant and susceptible cultivars. These operational taxonomic units included several well-known taxonomy groups containing beneficial microbes, such as Bacillales, Pseudomonadales, Rhizobiales, and Trichoderma , which were higher in their relative abundance in resistant cultivars. Greenhouse studies with sterilized soil supported that beneficial microbes in the rhizosphere contribute to reduced wilt development. These findings suggested that specific rhizosphere and endosphere microbes may contribute to cotton resistance to V. dahliae ., (Copyright © 2019 Wei, Zhao, Xu, Feng, Shi, Deakin, Feng and Zhu.)

The microbial communities in two apple orchards were characterised using amplicon-based metabarcoding. Samples were taken from tree station locations along a linear transect and from adjacent grass aisles, at both orchards. Comparison was made between the communities occurring at tree station locations and the grass aisles, and between orchards. Further discussion of these datasets is given in https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apsoil.2018.05.015 (Deakin et al., 2018).

Characterising spatial microbial community structure is important to understand and explain the consequences of continuous plantation of one crop species on the performance of subsequent crops, especially where this leads to reduced growth vigour and crop yield. We investigated the spatial structure, specifically distance-decay of similarity, of soil bacterial and fungal communities in two long-established orchards with contrasting agronomic characteristics. A spatially explicit sampling strategy was used to collect soil from under recently grubbed rows of apple trees and under the grassed aisles. Amplicon-based metabarcoding technology was used to characterise the soil microbial communities. The results suggested that (1) most of the differences in soil microbial community structure were due to large-scale differences (i.e. between orchards), (2) within-orchard, small-scale (1-5 m) spatial variability was also present, but spatial relationships in microbial community structure differed between orchards and were not predictable, and (3) vegetation type (i.e. trees or grass and their associated management) can significantly alter the structure of soil microbial communities, affecting a large proportion of microbial groups. The discontinuous nature of soil microbial community structure in the tree stations and neighbouring grass aisles within an orchard illustrate the importance of vegetation type and allied weed and nutrient management on soil microbial community structure.

Drosophila suzukii (Matsumura) (Diptera: Drosophilidae) is a damaging pest of fruit. Reproductively diapausing adults overwinter in woodlands and remain active on warmer winter days. It is unknown if this adult phase of the lifecycle feeds during the winter period, and what the food source may be. This study characterized the flora in the digestive tract of D. suzukii using a metagenomics approach. Live D. suzukii were trapped in four woodlands in the south of England and their guts dissected for DNA extraction and amplicon-based metagenomics sequencing (internal transcribed spacer and 16S rRNA). Analysis at genus and family taxonomic levels showed high levels of diversity with no differences in digestive tract bacterial or fungal biota between woodland sites of winter-form D. suzukii. Female D. suzukii at one site appeared to have higher bacterial diversity in the alimentary canal than males, but there was a site, sex interaction. Many of the biota were associated with cold, wet climatic conditions and decomposition. This study provides the first evidence that winter-form D. suzukii may be opportunistic feeders during the winter period and are probably exploiting food sources associated with moisture on decomposing vegetation during this time. A core gut microbiome has been identified for winter-form D. suzukii., (© 2018 The Royal Entomological Society.)

Thirty unique non-host RNAs were sequenced in the cultivated fungus, Agaricus bisporus, comprising 18 viruses each encoding an RdRp domain with an additional 8 ORFans (non-host RNAs with no similarity to known sequences). Two viruses were multipartite with component RNAs showing correlative abundances and common 3' motifs. The viruses, all positive sense single-stranded, were classified into diverse orders/families. Multiple infections of Agaricus may represent a diverse, dynamic and interactive viral ecosystem with sequence variability ranging over 2 orders of magnitude and evidence of recombination, horizontal gene transfer and variable fragment numbers. Large numbers of viral RNAs were detected in multiple Agaricus samples; up to 24 in samples symptomatic for disease and 8-17 in asymptomatic samples, suggesting adaptive strategies for co-existence. The viral composition of growing cultures was dynamic, with evidence of gains and losses depending on the environment and included new hypothetical viruses when compared with the current transcriptome and EST databases. As the non-cellular transmission of mycoviruses is rare, the founding infections may be ancient, preserved in wild Agaricus populations, which act as reservoirs for subsequent cell-to-cell infection when host populations are expanded massively through fungiculture.

Purpose: This study examined the effects of strength training on alternating days and endurance training on consecutive days on running performance for 6 days., Methods: Sixteen male and 8 female moderately trained individuals were evenly assigned into concurrent-training (CCT) and strength-training (ST) groups. The CCT group undertook strength training on alternating days combined with endurance training on consecutive days for 6 days. One week later, the CCT group conducted 3 consecutive days of endurance training only to determine whether fatigue would be induced with endurance training alone (CCT-Con). Endurance training was undertaken to induce endurance-training stimulus and to measure the cost of running (CR), rating of perceived exertion (RPE), and time to exhaustion (TTE). The ST group undertook 3 strength-training sessions on alternating days. Maximal voluntary contraction (MVC), rating of muscle soreness (RMS), and rating of muscle fatigue (RMF) were collected prior to each strength and endurance session., Results: For the CCT group, small differences were primarily found in CR and RPE (ES = 0.17-0.41). However, moderate-to-large reductions were found for TTE and MVC (ES = 0.65-2.00), whereas large increases in RMS and RMF (ES = 1.23-2.49) were found prior to each strength- and endurance-training session. Small differences were found in MVC for the ST group (ES = 0.11) and during CCT-Con for the CCT group (ES = 0.15-0.31)., Conclusion: Combining strength training on alternating days with endurance training on consecutive days impairs MVC and running performance at maximal effort and increases RMS and RMF over 6 days.

Agaricus bisporus is the model fungus for the adaptation, persistence, and growth in the humic-rich leaf-litter environment. Aside from its ecological role, A. bisporus has been an important component of the human diet for over 200 y and worldwide cultivation of the "button mushroom" forms a multibillion dollar industry. We present two A. bisporus genomes, their gene repertoires and transcript profiles on compost and during mushroom formation. The genomes encode a full repertoire of polysaccharide-degrading enzymes similar to that of wood-decayers. Comparative transcriptomics of mycelium grown on defined medium, casing-soil, and compost revealed genes encoding enzymes involved in xylan, cellulose, pectin, and protein degradation are more highly expressed in compost. The striking expansion of heme-thiolate peroxidases and β-etherases is distinctive from Agaricomycotina wood-decayers and suggests a broad attack on decaying lignin and related metabolites found in humic acid-rich environment. Similarly, up-regulation of these genes together with a lignolytic manganese peroxidase, multiple copper radical oxidases, and cytochrome P450s is consistent with challenges posed by complex humic-rich substrates. The gene repertoire and expression of hydrolytic enzymes in A. bisporus is substantially different from the taxonomically related ectomycorrhizal symbiont Laccaria bicolor. A common promoter motif was also identified in genes very highly expressed in humic-rich substrates. These observations reveal genetic and enzymatic mechanisms governing adaptation to the humic-rich ecological niche formed during plant degradation, further defining the critical role such fungi contribute to soil structure and carbon sequestration in terrestrial ecosystems. Genome sequence will expedite mushroom breeding for improved agronomic characteristics.

Most studies of exercise and blood pressure have used a standard exercise programme with a single level of physical activity. To determine the nature of the dose-response relationship however it is necessary to examine several levels of activity, preferably in the same subjects. We have recently performed several randomised crossover studies comparing different levels of regular exercise. The intensity and duration of exercise bouts were constant throughout the studies, but their frequency was varied. Standard bouts consisted of 30 min of bicycling at 60%-70% of maximum work capacity. The exercise was performed either three-weekly or 7-weekly in randomised order and each level was maintained for one month. In sedentary normal subjects three bouts of exercise/week for a total of 90 min lowered blood pressure by 10/7 mmHg. With seven bouts, i.e. a total of 210 min exercise/week, blood pressure was only slightly lower than 3-week exercise and was 12/7 mmHg below sedentary values. Responses to measures of physical fitness including maximum oxygen consumption and work capacity were linearly related to the amount of exercise performed each week. Similar results were obtained in hypertensives. Another randomised study was performed amongst expeditioners to Antarctica where environmental conditions determined that they were sedentary in winter and active in summer. The addition of either 3-week or 7-week exercise in winter significantly lowered blood pressure. In summer when the background level of activity was higher, blood pressure with no added exercise was similar to exercising levels in winter. There was no further fall in blood pressure with either 3-week or 7-week additional exercise.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)