Category Archives: c_review_articles

Review Articles

Pharmacological Screening of Annona Muricata: A Review

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Uzma Saleem*1, Muhammad Ejaz-ul-Haq1, Zunera Chudary1 and Bashir Ahmad2
1 Department of Pharmacology, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, G.C. University, Faisalabad-Pakistan. 
2 Riphah Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Riphah International University, Lahore campus-Pakistan
 
Abstract
 
Annona muricata L. (Annonaceae family) is a tropical plant and most prominently known for its edible fruit which has more medicinal properties but some effects are toxic. This review most commonly represents the phytochemical contents, pharmacological and biological actions and at some extent toxicological effects which depends on dose, solvent for extraction and part of plant used. More than 200 compounds have been isolated and identify from different parts of this plant. Phenols, alkaloids and acetogenins are the most important and effective compounds. Traditionally, Annona muricata is being used to treat diverse ailments such as inflammation, fever, pain, hypertension, diabetes, liver damage, bacterial infection and cancer. Pharmacologically, plant possessed antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-diabetic, anti-hypertensive, anti-nociceptive, anxiolytic, anti-pyretic, wound healing, hepatoprotective, antibacterial, antiviral phyto-chemicals and extracts of this plant have been characterized as hypoglycemic, hepatoprotective, and wound healing activities and cytotoxic, insecticidal, anti-bacterial, anti-viral activities. It could be concluded that the use of Annona muricata fruit would be beneficial for having good health.
Keywords: Pharmacological activities, Soursoap, Annona muricata

Review on Toxic Effects of Arsenic with relation to Clinical Signs in Different Animals

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Muhammad Zubair

Faculty of veterinary sciences, University of Poonch Rawalakot Azad Kashmir
 

Abstract


Arsenic is natural metalloid which is present in the universe everywhere. It is used for different insecticides and pesticides preparation. Poisoning of arsenic is a major issue that affects different species. Its occurrence is related to contamination of feed and water; therefore, it is matter of concern globally. However, its level of toxicity is increasing very rapidly in Asian countries especially Bangladesh, India and Pakistan. Its increasing level of arsenic in ground water is the major source of poisoning to human and animals. In addition, the contact of animals to arsenic lead to absorption body and accumulation in vital organs like liver and kidneys that may resulted to carcinogenic development. Elimination of absorbed arsenic in environment through excretions of animals is also one way to increase its level in water/soil. The objective of this review is to gather the information about arsenic toxicity occurrence by natural or experimentally ways and changes occurred in suffered animals related to pathological or biochemical.
Keywords: arsenic, lab animals, livestock and toxic effects

ZINC BIOFORTIFICATION OF CEREALS THROUGH FERTILIZERS: RECENT ADVANCES AND FUTURE PERSPECTIVES

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Qudsia Nazir1, Azhar Hussain2, Muhammad Imran3, Sajid Mahmood4,

Maqshoof Ahmad2 Muhammad Mazhar Iqbal5,

 

1Provincial Reference Fertilizer Testing Laboratory, Lahore, Department of Agriculture, Government of Punjab-Pakistan.

 2Department of Soil Science, University College of Agriculture & Environmental Sciences, The Islamia University of Bahawalpur, Pakistan.

3Department of Soil Science, Muhammad Nawaz Shareef University of Agriculture, Multan, Pakistan. 4Department of Arid Land Agriculture, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah-80208, Saudi Arabia.

 5Soil and Water Testing Laboratory for Research, Chiniot, Department of Agriculture, Government of Punjab-Pakistan.

 

ABSTRACT

 

Zinc (Zn) is a micronutrient, essentially required by plants, animals and humans. Zn deficiency in humans due to the consumption of food with inadequate Zn content is of global concern. Approximately, one third of poor world’s population is at high risk of Zn deficiency due to its reliance on cereals for daily caloric requirements. The cereals, generally grown on calcareous soils have low grain Zn. The major reason of lower Zn content in cereals is poor Zn bioavailability induced by various soil and/or crop management factors.  The factors responsible for low grain Zn are high soil pH, low organic matter, salinity/alkalinity, water logging, and poorly managed soil fertility. Due to its critical role in growth and development of humans, food with adequate Zn content is mandatory. This situation demands some effective strategies for the enhancement of grain Zn content to overcome human Zn deficiency. Zinc supplementation of food, Zn pills, breeding of high Zn uptake species, and biofortification through fertilizers are being employed to address the issue. Among all strategies, Zn biofortification through fertilizers is an effective and economical technique. Mineral Zn fertilizers are applied alone or in combination with organic and biofertilizers. Integrated use of mineral, organic and biofertilizers improves Zn uptake and assimilation in cereals grains. Nanotechnology and enrichment/coating techniques are also effective to enhance grains Zn. This review critically discuss the efficiency of various strategies to promote Zn availability and uptake by plants that assure food and nutrition security.  Zn enriched/coated urea is considered an effective tool to ensure crops with optimum concentration of Zn for human consumption.  

 

Keywords: Zinc; Bioavailability; Cereals; Biofortification; Biofertilizers; Food Security

REVIEW ON EFFECTS OF DIETARY POLY UNSATURATED FATTY ACIDS ON SEMEN QUALITY OF BIRDS AND MAMMALS

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Muhammad Zubair*, Mubashir Ali Khalique

Faculty of Veterinary Sciences, The University of Poonch, Rawalakot, Azad Kashmir, Pakistan

 

ABSTRACT

 

The use of poly unsaturated fatty acids has pronounced significant effects on the efficiency of male reproductive system. Poly unsaturated fatty acids like docosahexaenoic acid, omega 3, Omega 6, oleic and linolinic acid are rich in diets like flaxseed oil, soybean oil, fish oil, sunflower oil. These diets have the capability to increase serum testosterone level, fertility rate, ejaculation period, sperm motility, semen volume, sperms concentration and sexual behavior. Similarly, these fatty acids reduce the oxidative stress and maintain membrane integrity. In this review, some of the basic information regarding the importance of poly unsaturated fatty acids on semen quality parameters of male is summarized.

Keywords: poly unsaturated fatty acids, Semen quality

A REVIEW PAPER ON POTATO LEAF ROLL VIRUS (PLRV) OF POTATO IN PAKISTAN

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Aqleem Abbas1*, Muhammad Arif1, Murtaza Ali2

1Department of Plant Pathology, The University of Agriculture Peshawar Pakistan

2Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, The University of Agriculture Peshawar Pakistan

 ABSTRACT

Potato leaf roll virus (PLRV) is one of the most important viruses infecting members of Solanaceae family. Among the members of Solanaceae family, potato crop is the most significant host of PLRV. The PLRV belongs to genus Polerovirus in the family Luteoviridae. It causes variety of symptoms depending on the viral strain, time of infection, host tolerance and environmental factors. The symptoms of PLRV are stunting and dwarfing of infected potato crops, reddening or yellowing and rolling of their leaves. It also reduces the size as well as number of potato tubers with annual global yield losses up to 20 million tonnes. In Pakistan PLRV has caused severe yield losses. It contains positive sense single stranded RNA ((+)ssRNA) of 5.9 kb genome. The virus can be transmitted by aphid vectors in circulative, non-propagative manner and experimentally by grafting. Among the aphid vectors, Myzus persicae is known to be its most efficient vector. There are various management strategies but most economic and environmentally satisfactory way of managing is breeding of resistant potato cultivars with effective vector control. Other approaches are thermotherapy, tissue culture, pathogen derived resistance and seed potato certification programs. Since PLRV is responsible for significant yield loss in potato crops of Pakistan, so understanding its biology and developing an efficient management strategy is very important.

Keywords: PLRV, occurrence, distribution, symptoms, transmission, control

MODULATION OF IMMUNE SYSTEM BY TAKING PROBIOTIC BACTERIA: ESPECIALLY FOCUS ON LACTIC ACID BACTERIA

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Muhammad Shahid Riaz*1, Nagina Batool1, Semhab Saleem1, Abdul Haris2, Tayyaba Shaheen1
1Department of Bioinformatics and Biotechnology, GC University, Faisalabad-38000, Pakistan
2National Probiotic Laboratory, Health Biotechnology Division, National Institute of
Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering, Faisalabad, Pakistan
                                       
ABSTRACT
 
The lactic acid bacteria are gaining more attention as probiotics, because they are generally recognized as safe for consumption. The lactic acid bacteria are commercially very important group of bacteria and have a lot of positive impact on the health of host. The literature studies showed that the lactic acid bacteria exert positive impact on the health to modulate the immune response and protect the host against enteric pathogenic microbes. The lactic acid bacteria enhanced the secretion of IgA and improved the activity of macrophages and T cells. These, also, enhanced the production of interferon’s expression. In short, the consumption of lactic acid bacteria in food modulates the immune system by the secretion of IgA, prevents enteric infectious microbes, and improves the activity of interferon and interleukins.
Keywords: – Immune system, lactic acid bacteria, probiotic, mucosal immunity 

PAKISTAN REQUIRES MODERN TECHNIQUES AND PROPER MANAGEMENT TO BOOST UP ITS AGRICULTURE AS COMPARED TO CHINA

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Fiaz Ahmad*1, Rashid Mehmood Rana2, Ji Huang1, Hong-Sheng Zhang*1
1State key Laboratory of Crop Genetics and Germplasm Enhancement, Nanjing Agricultural University,
Nanjing 210095, P.R China
2PMAS-Arid Agriculture University Rawalpindi, Pakistan
 
ABSTRACT
In-addition to classical breeding, high throughput techniques for DNA and RNA quantification are also the demand of time in order to boost up agriculture in places like Pakistan. In the modern world,usage of high throughout techniques is very common to flourish agriculture sector. As in China, during the past five decades rice production has been increased three times more; credit goes to the increased grain yield but not to the planted area. In fact, the agriculture sector cannot be drive properly in any state unless the solutions are found for elementary issues of management. Here, in this review article, we have not tried to co-relate the performance of agriculture sector between two countries only but explained briefly the basic hurdles of management that are destroying the crop yield and their management in the agriculture sector of Pakistan as compared to China. On the other hand, with respect to current advances in the plant science, as the sequences of many plant genomes have been released and a huge array of molecular markers exists for crops. Meanwhile, the power of genomics for practical breeding is one of the best tools of recent years. We suggest that a sustainable increase in crop production is attainable in Pakistan through the adaptation of these modern techniques including; genome-wide association (GWA) studies and emerging RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) for the basic research.
Keywords: Agriculture, High through-put techniques, Management, China, Pakistan

Marine macro algae Ulva: a potential feed-stock for bio-ethanol and biogas production

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Anam Saqib1, Muhammad Rizwan Tabbssum1, Umer Rashid2, Muhammad Ibrahim3, Saba Shahid Gill1, Muhammad Aamer Mehmood1*

1Department of Bioinformatics and Biotechnology, Faculty of Science and Technology, Government College University Faisalabad, 38000, Pakistan

2Institute of Advanced Technology, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 UPM Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia

3Department of Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Science and Technology, Government College University, Faisalabad, Pakistan

*Corresponding author: e-mail: draamer@gcuf.edu.pk

ABSTRACT

Present industrialization and global mobility era is an energy intensive period of the human history with an ever increasing energy demand. Unfortunately, fossil fuels are no more sustainable due to growing gap between the demand and supply. Biofuels are considered as promising alternative liquid fuels in recent global energy scenario. Food crops and ligno-cellulosic plant biomass have been widely studied as an alternative feedstock for biofuels production. After decades of research, the competition of fuel with food and recalcitrant nature of plant biomass, these feed stocks are losing their popularity. Marine macroalgae have come forward as another potential feedstock for biofuels production. Marine algae have several advantages over the traditional energy crops including absence of lignin, higher growth rates and no competition with human food. Moreover, along with several environmental benefits, they can be grown using saline and waste water and have higher abilities to sequester the atmospheric CO2 than traditional energy crops. Although there are several challenges associated with the algal biomass conversion to bioenergy yet these problems can be overcome using integrated biorefinery approach.

Keywords: Ligno-cellulosic biomass, Marine algae, Alternative feed stock, Bioenergy production

Synthetic wheat; a new hope for the hungry world

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Rashid Mehmood Rana*, Muhammad Bilal, Shoaib Ur Rehman, Farrukh Iqbal and Muhammad Kausar Nawaz Shah

Department of Plant Breeding & Genetics, PMAS-Arid Agriculture University Rawalpindi, Pakistan

*Corresponding author: e-mail: rashid_cabb@hotmail.com

ABSTRACT

Wheat is an important staple food and most widely grown cereal of the world. The dependence of large population on this food crop and increasing population of the world requires much more wheat to be produced. Efforts were made to increase wheat productivity and a remarkable success named “Green Revolution” boosted the wheat productivity in 1960s. However, by the course of time, no further significant improvement was noted. Through successive struggles, scientists developed synthetic wheat, derived from cross between Triticum turgidum L. and Aegilops tauschii (ancestors of bread wheat; Triticum aestivum). These synthetic wheat cultivars proved a great source of unexplored genetic variability and possessed improved traits like high yield, tolerance to abiotic and biotic stresses etc. Currently, new synthetic wheat has been developed, named as “super wheat” having at least 30 % higher yield than the existing wheat cultivars. This article summarizes the efforts made and goals achieved in the field of wheat breeding with special reference to synthetic wheat.

 

Keywords: Green revolution; Super wheat; World population

A comprehensive overview of recent advances in drought stress tolerance research in wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)

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Rashid Mehmood Rana*, Shoaib Ur Rehman, Junaid Ahmed1 and Muhammad Bilal
Department of Plant Breeding & Genetics, PMAS-Arid Agriculture University Rawalpindi, Pakistan

*Corresponding author: e-mail: rashid_cabb@hotmail.com

Abstract

Wheat is an important food crop grown worldwide and used as staple food in many countries. Its production is affected by several factors including abiotic stresses and drought is one of the most damaging and frequently occurring abiotic stresses. Several efforts have been made to address and cope with it at morphological, physiological and molecular levels, have been summarized. Different morphological and physiological traits identified through successive efforts include osmotic adjustment, cell membrane stability and stomatal conductance and showed positive correlation with drought tolerance. Some quantitative trait loci have also been discovered in wheat genome on chromosome 4A that showed significant association with this mechanism. Proteomic and gene functional analysis revealed the genes involved in vital biological pathways (e.g., reactive oxygen species scavenging, etc.) and showed significant correlation with drought tolerance. Therefore, the information generated through both the QTLs and gene functional analysis could be utilized to achieve drought tolerance in wheat.

Keywords: Biological pathways; Gene expression; Osmotic adjustment; Quantitative trait loci