Salinity tolerance is an important physiological index for crop breeding.  Roots are typically the first plant tissue to withstand salt stress.  In this study, we found that the tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) trehalose-6-phosphate phosphatase (SlTPP4) gene is induced by abscisic acid (ABA) and salt, and is mainly expressed in roots.  Overexpression of SlTPP4 in tomato enhanced tolerance to salt stress, resulting in better growth performance.  Under saline conditions, SlTPP4 overexpression plants demonstrated enhanced sucrose metabolism, as well as increased expression of genes related to salt tolerance.  At the same time, expression of genes related to ABA biosynthesis and signal transduction was enhanced or altered, respectively.  In-depth exploration demonstrated that SlTPP4 enhances Casparian band development in roots to restrict the intake of Na⁺.  Our study thus clarifies the mechanism of SlTPP4-mediated salt tolerance, which will be of great importance for the breeding of salt-tolerant tomato crops.

The tetracycline (Tet)-off gene expression regulation system based on the TetR-VP16/Top10 construct has not been widely utilized in plants, for its highly expressed TetR-VP16 activator is toxic to some plants and repeatedly replenishing tetracycline to turn off the constitutively active system is a tedious process.  To solve these problems, a Tet-off and heat shock (HS)-on gene expression regulation system was constructed in this study.  This system is composed of a chimeric transactivator gene TetR-HSF that is derived from a Tet repressor (TetR) and a HS transcription factor (HSF) controlled by a HS promoter HSP70m, and a Tet operator containing hybrid promoter, Om35S, that drives expression of the β-glucuronidase (GUS) gene.  The resultant system yields a GUS expression pattern similar to that of the HSP70m promoter under inducing temperatures and at 35 and 40°C drives GUS expression to a similar level as the Cauliflower mosaic virus (CaMV) 35S promoter.  Further examination revealed that the TetR-HSF and GUS genes were induced by HS, reaching peak expression after 1 and 6 h treatment, respectively, and the HS induction of the expression system could be inhibited by Tet.  This system will provide a useful tool for transgenic studies of plants in the laboratory and in the field, including transgene function analysis, agronomic trait improvement, biopharmaceutical protein production and others.

The bsd-pg (bundle sheath defective pale green) mutant is a novel maize mutation, controlled by a single recessive gene, which was isolated from offspring of maize plantlets regenerated from tissue callus of the maize inbred line 501. The characterization was that the biogenesis and development of the chloroplasts was mainly interfered in bundle sheath cells rather than in mesophyll cells. For mapping the bsd-pg, an F2 population was derived from a cross between the mutant bsd-pg and an inbred line Xianzao 17. Using specific locus amplified fragment sequencing (SLAF-Seq) technology, a total of 5 783 polymorphic SLAFs were analysed with 1 771 homozygous alleles between maternal and paternal parents. There were 49 SLAFs, which had a ratio of paternal to maternal alleles of 2:1 in bulked normal lines, and three trait-related candidate regions were obtained on chromosome 1 with a size of 3.945 Mb. For the fine mapping, new simple sequence repeats (SSRs) markers were designed by utilizing information of the B73 genome and the candidate regions were localized a size of 850 934 bp on chromosome 1 between umc1603 and umc1395, including 35 candidate genes. These results provide a foundation for the cloning of bsd-pg by map-based strategy, which is essential for revealing the functional differentiation and coordination of the two cell types, and helps to elucidate a comprehensive understanding of the C4 photosynthesis pathway and related processes in maize leaves.

Dairy industry has become an increasingly important enterprise in China as people’s dietary preferences and composition have changed dramatically with rapid economic development in the past several decades. A number of problems, however, exist in China’s relatively young dairy industry, including the imbalanced allocation of profits throughout the dairy supply chain. One of the root causes of the melamine infant powered milk scandal in 2008 was the unfair profit allocation mechanism in dairy supply chain. The revenue sharing contract approach has proven to be effective in generating market shares and total profits. In this study, we apply the three-stage revenue sharing contract model of Giannoccaro and Pontrandolfo (2004) in an analysis of dairy supply chain to explore its problems in profit allocation and possible solutions to them. The analysis was conducted by a case study of Hohhot, often called as “milk capital of China”. Our results show that the current profit distribution in the dairy supply chain is not balanced: the supermarket’s profit>farmer’s profit>manufacturer’s profit. Under the revenue sharing contract setting, the dairy industry’s total profit increased by 12.49%. By exploring different parameters in the revenue sharing contract model, we have found that a win-win situation can be created among all the members of the supply chain. In dairy supply chain, the ratio of the revenue reserved for the supermarket itself is equal or greater than 47% and the ratio of the revenue reserved for the manufacturer itself is between 46.4 and 50.2%. The values of the parameters that generate a sustainable or win-win situation are related to the bargaining position in the dairy supply chain. The revenue sharing contract has proven to be effective and desirable by all the dairy chain partners in dairy supply chain. The results of this study provide relevant information for improving the dairy supply chain structure and the revenue sharing contract model can be applied to other industries, sectors and regions.

Two Klebsiella pneumoniae isolates (Kpc1 and Kpc2) were obtained from liver samples of seven dead chickens and identified with Vitek-32 automated identification system. Antimicrobial susceptibilities were determined by the microdilution broth method. Detection of genes encoding class A b-lactamases was performed by PCR amplification, and cloning of the ESBL gene was by plasmid restriction and fragments ligation. Conjugation assay, transformation experiments and plasmid profile analysis were performed. The incompatibility group of ESBL-carrying plasmid was determined by the PCR-based replicon typing method. Lastly, the genetic environment was analysed by direct sequencing of the DNA surrounding the ESBL gene. The genes associated with tetracycline and gentamicin resistance were also sought by PCR. The results revealed that the ESBL phenotype-negative strain Kpc2 only showed resistance to ampicillin, amoxicillin, tetracycline, and doxycycline and carried blaTEM-1 and tet(A) genes. The ESBL-producing strain Kpc1 exhibited multidrug resistant phenotype and harbored blaTEM-1, blaCTX-M-14, tet(A), tet(B), and rmtB genes. K. pneumoniae Kpc1 contained four plasmids with molecular sizes of approximately 59, 6.9, 2.8, and 1.6 kb, but only a 59-kb plasmid, carried blaTEM-1 and blaCTX-M-14 genes, was observed in its transconjugant. The incompatibility group of plasmid carrying blaCTX-M-14 gene could not be determined. The blaCTX-M-14 gene was flanked upstream by an ISEcp1 insertion sequence and downstream by an IS903 element. This work shows that CTX-M-14 is present in K. pneumoniae isolates from chickens in China. The blaCTX-M-14 gene was associated with an upstream ISEcp1 insertion sequence. Our results underline the need for continuous surveillance of the prevalence and evolution of this CTX-M-type b-lactamase in China.

Data assimilation in agricultural remote sensing research is of great significance to integrate with remote sensing observations and model simulations for parameters estimation. The present investigation not only designed and realized the Ensemble Kalman Filtering algorithm (EnKF) assimilation by combing the crop growth model (CERES-Wheat) with remote sensing data, but also optimized and updated the key parameters (LAI) of winter wheat by using remote sensing data. Results showed that the assimilation LAI and the observation ones agreed with each other, and the R2 reached 0.8315. So assimilation remote sensing and crop model could provide reference data for the agricultural production.

Magnaporthe oryzae is the causal agent of rice blast. Glycosylation plays key roles in vegetative growth, development, and infection of M. oryzae. However, several glycosylation-related genes have not been characterized. In this study, we identified a Glyco_transf_22 domain-containing protein, MoAlg9, and found that MoAlg9 is localized to the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). Deletion of MoALG9 significantly affected conidial production, normal appressorium formation, responses to stressors, and pathogenicity of M. oryzae. We also found that the ΔMoalg9 mutant was defective in glycogen utilization, appressorial penetration, and invasive growth in host cells. Moreover, we further demonstrated that MoALG9 regulates the transcription of several target genes involved in conidiation, appressorium formation, and cell-wall integrity. In addition, we found that the Glyco_transf_22 domain is essential for normal MoAlg9 function and localization. We also provide evidence that MoAlg9 is involved in N-glycosylation pathway in M. oryzae. Taken together, these results show that MoAlg9 is important for conidiation, appressorium formation, maintenance of cell wall integrity, and the pathogenesis of M. oryzae.