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Canola (Brassica napus) is an important oilseed crop and Sclerotinia stem rot (SSR) caused by Sclerotinia sclerotiorum, causes significant economic losses in canola. This thesis investigates the role of small RNAs (sRNAs), which are short non-coding RNAs that regulate various biological processes in eukaryotes and investigates their role in the B. napus – S. sclerotiorum interaction.

Climate change and food security are burning topics being discussed nowadays. To mitigate impact of fossil fuels, different kinds of alternative sources of energy have been researched and applied in the last decade. Generation of electricity from living plants has been evolved as a new kind of renewable source of energy known as plant microbial fuel cell (PMFC). This thesis embodies investigation of four different types of plants varied in their morphological and physiological traits accompanied with various operating conditions in PMFC system. The result reveals that plant types, support medium, configuration, and physical parameters are the drivers for electricity generation in PMFC. In the first experiment, while comparing the double chamber paddy microbial fuel cell with earthen material as a separator with traditional sediment MFC one, the former one outnumbered the performances of the latter one in terms of power generation. The main favorable conditions identified in this experiment were growth stages and volume of catholyte. In the second experiment, paddy was grown in single chamber mimicking the real field condition in terms of design and soil used. The nature of electric signal from sediments and plants were compared. Moreover, to know the effect of substrate addition, reactors were amended with Azolla which generated almost three times current than non-amended reactors. In the third experiment, hydroponic plant morning glory was assessed in stackable double chamber PMFC to determine the role of plant at anode vs cathode chamber. In the fourth experiment, long term ability of power generation from two plants, tomato and vetiver were investigated. Nature of in-situ electricity signal were determined. In this study, plant growth nature and vitality were carefully observed since it altered power output. Moreover, two types of plant performed differently under the same design. Taking account of all factors, maximum power depicted from polarization curve was n