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Foods, agricultural by-products and medicinal plants are often contaminated by pathogenic fungi and mycotoxins. Pathogenic fungi not only lead to food deterioration, but also harm people’s health. The commonly used methods for detoxification include physical, chemical and biological methods. A large number of studies have shown that natural plant essential oils inhibit the growth of pathogenic fungi and the accumulation of mycotoxins and have good biodegradability, making them a promising environmental-friendly alternative to traditional synthetic fungicides. In this review, the classification and harm of common pathogenic fungi and mycotoxins, as well as the antifungal components and mechanisms of plant essential oils are introduced, and recent progress on plant essential oils in the control of pathogenic fungi and mycotoxins is summarized. This review provides a theoretical basis for the development and application of plant essential oils.

The seed dormancy characteristic is regarded as one of the most critical factors for pre-harvest sprouting (PHS) resistance. As a wild wheat relative species, Aegilops tauschii is a potential genetic resource for improving common wheat. In this study, an advanced backcross population (201 strains) containing only Ae. tauschii segments was developed by means of synthetic octaploid wheat (hexaploid wheat Zhoumai 18 × Ae. tauschii T093). Subsequently, seed dormancy rate (Dor) in the advanced backcross population was evaluated on the day 3, 5 and 7, in which 2 major QTLs (QDor-2D and QDor-3D) were observed on chromosomes 2D and 3D with phenotypic variance explained values (PVEs) of 10.25 and 20.40%, respectively. Further investigation revealed significant correlation between QDor-3D and Tamyb10 gene, while no association was found between the former and TaVp1 gene, implying that QDor-3D site could be of closer position to Tamyb10. The obtained quantitative trait locus sites (QTLs) in this work could be applied to develop wheat cultivars with PHS resistance.

Intergeneric hybrids and amphidiploid hybrids from crosses of Aegilops tauschii and Secale cereale were produced using young embryo rescue. The hybrids showed complete sets of both parental chromosomes. The dihaploid plants showed an average meiotic pairing configuration of 10.84 I + 1.57 II + 0.01 III. Genomic in situ staining revealed 3 types of bivalent associations, i.e. D-D, R-Rand D-R at frequencies of 8.6, 8.2 and 83.3%, respectively. Trivalents consisted of D-R-D or R-D-R associations. These results suggested that both intra-and intergenomic chromosome homology were contributed to chromosome pairing. Derived amphidiploids with 2n = 28 paired at metaphase I of meiosis as 4.51 I + 11.70II + 0.03 III. Chromosome pairing of amphidiploids appeared more or less regular, i.e. bivalent-like with some trivalent configurations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We are presenting a sol-gel method for building novel nanostructures made of nanosized F-doped Na 1-2 x Ti 2 (PO 4 ) 3- x F x (NTP-F x , x = 0, 0.02, 0.05, and 0.10) particles embedded in three-dimensional (3D) carbon matrices (NTP-F x /C). This technique combines advantages of both zero-dimensional materials and 3D-carbon networks. Proper fluorine doping stabilizes the NTP structure and greatly enhances ion/electron transportation, leading to superhigh-rate electrochemical performance and ultralong cycle life. The composite electrode delivers high specific capacities of 121, 115, 112.2, 110.1, 107.7, 103.1, 85.8, and 62.5 mA h g -1 at 0.2, 0.5, 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, and 30 C, respectively. It retains an unbelievable ∼70% capacity after a thousand cycles at a rate as high as 10 C. Electroanalytical results reveal that fluorine doping significantly enhances Na + diffusion kinetics. Meanwhile, density functional theory calculations demonstrate F-doped NTPs' own outstanding electrochemical properties, which is due to the enhanced intrinsic ionic/electronic conductivity. The results show that anion doping is an efficient way to make high-performance NTP anodes for sodium-ion batteries.