In China, the traditional early and late season double rice (DR) system is declining accompanied by the fast increase of two newly developed cropping systems: ratoon rice (RR) and rice–crawfish (RC).  Three methodologies: economic analysis, emergy evaluation and life cycle assessment (LCA) were employed to evaluate the economics and sustainability of this paddy cropping system change.  Economic analysis indicated that the income and profit of the RC system were far larger than those of RR and DR.  The income to costs ratio of RR and RC increased by 25.5 and 122.7% compared with that of DR, respectively.  RC had the highest emergy input thanks to increasing irrigation water, electricity, juvenile crawfish and forage input while RR showed a lower total emergy and nonrenewable emergy input, such as irrigation water, electricity, fertilizers and pesticides than DR.  The environmental loading ratios decreased by 16.7–50.4% when cropping system changed from DR to RR or from DR to RC while the emergy sustainability indexes increased by 22.6–112.9%.  The life cycle assessment indicated lower potential environmental impacts of RR and RC, whose total environmental impact indexes were 35.0–61.0% lower than that of DR.  Grain yield of RR was comparable with that of DR in spite of less financial and emergy input of RR, but RC had a much lower grain yield (a 53.6% reduction compared to DR).  These results suggested that RR is a suitable cropping system to achieve the food security, economic and environmental goals.

Oryza ridleyi is an allotetraploid wild species with the HHJJ genome, and Oryza sativa is a diploid cultivated rice that has the AA genome. Although the wide hybrid between the two species is difficult to obtain, we overcome this difficulty by young embryo rescue. An obvious heterosis was primarily found for the plant height, tillering ability, vegetative vigor, etc. However, the hybrid panicle and culm traits were found to resemble that of the wild rice parent, O. ridleyi, for the long awns, exoteric purple stigma, grain shattering, dispersed panicles, and culm mechanical strength. Genomic in situ hybridization (GISH) analysis was subsequently performed on the mitotic metaphase chromosome of the root tips, and we determined that the hybrid is an allotriploid with 36 chromosomes and its genomic constitution is AHJ. Chemical analyses conducted on the culm of O. sativa, O. ridleyi, and their interspecific hybrids showed that major changes occurred in the xylose, glucose, and arabinose concentrations, which are correlated with the specific hemicellulose polymer and cellulose components that are important in the primary cell walls of green plants. Meanwhile, the culm anatomical analyses indicated that additional large vascular bundles and an extra sclerenchyma cell layer were found in O. ridleyi. Additionally, further thickening of the secondary cell walls of the cortical fiber sclerenchyma cells and the phloem companion cells was discovered in O. ridleyi and in the interspecific hybrids. These results imply that there may be a potential link between culm mechanical strength and culm anatomical structure.

Foxtail millet (Setaria italica (L.) P. Beauv) is a naturally stress tolerant crop.  Compared to other gramineous crops, it has relatively stronger drought and lower nutrition stress tolerance traits.  To date, the scope of functional genomics research in foxtail millet (S. italic L.) has been quite limited.  NAC (NAM, ATAF1/2 and CUC2)-like transcription factors are known to be involved in various biological processes, including abiotic stress responses.  In our previous foxtail millet (S. italic L.) RNA seq analysis, we found that the expression of a NAC-like transcription factor, SiNAC110, could be induced by drought stress; additionally, other references have reported that SiNAC110 expression could be induced by abiotic stress.  So, we here selected SiNAC110 for further characterization and functional analysis.  First, the predicted SiNAC110 protein encoded indicated SiNAC110 has a conserved NAM (no apical meristem) domain between the 11–139 amino acid positions.  Phylogenetic analysis then indicated that SiNAC110 belongs to subfamily III of the NAC gene family.  Subcellular localization analysis revealed that the SiNAC110-GFP fusion protein was localized to the nucleus in Arabidopsis protoplasts.  Gene expression profiling analysis indicated that expression of SiNAC110 was induced by dehydration, high salinity and other abiotic stresses.  Gene functional analysis using SiNAC110 overexpressed Arabidopsis plants indicated that, under drought and high salt stress conditions, the seed germination rate, root length, root surface area, fresh weight, and dry weight of the SiNAC110 overexpressed lines were significantly higher than the wild type (WT), suggesting that the SiNAC110 overexpressed lines had enhanced tolerance to drought and high salt stresses.  However, overexpression of SiNAC110 did not affect the sensitivity of SiNAC110 overexpressed lines to abscisic acid (ABA) treatment.  Expression analysis of genes involved in proline synthesis, Na⁺/K⁺ transport, drought responses, and aqueous transport proteins were higher in the SiNAC110 overexpressed lines than in the WT, whereas expression of ABA-dependent pathway genes did not change.  These results indicated that overexpression of SiNAC110 conferred tolerance to drought and high salt stresses, likely through influencing the regulation of proline biosynthesis, ion homeostasis and osmotic balance.  Therefore SiNAC110 appears to function in the ABA-independent abiotic stress response pathway in plants.

By employing the unique phenological feature of winter wheat extracted from peak before winter (PBW) and the advantages of moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) data with high temporal resolution and intermediate spatial resolution, a remote sensing-based model for mapping winter wheat on the North China Plain was built through integration with Landsat images and land-use data.  First, a phenological window, PBW was drawn from time-series MODIS data.  Next, feature extraction was performed for the PBW to reduce feature dimension and enhance its information.  Finally, a regression model was built to model the relationship of the phenological feature and the sample data.  The amount of information of the PBW was evaluated and compared with that of the main peak (MP).  The relative precision of the mapping reached up to 92% in comparison to the Landsat sample data, and ranged between 87 and 96% in comparison to the statistical data.  These results were sufficient to satisfy the accuracy requirements for winter wheat mapping at a large scale.  Moreover, the proposed method has the ability to obtain the distribution information for winter wheat in an earlier period than previous studies.  This study could throw light on the monitoring of winter wheat in China by using unique phenological feature of winter wheat.

Ixodid ticks play an important role in the transmission of a variety of zoonoses of viral, bacterial and protozoan origin, and they also harbor a wealth of microorganisms. To gain more detailed insights into the potential interactions between bacterial flora and tick-borne pathogens, we investigated the midgut bacterial flora of laboratory-reared Haemaphysalis longicornis, Hyalomma asiaticum and Rhipicephalus haemaphysaloides. Based on morphological, biochemical, and 16S rDNA sequencing results, we identified 15 species belonging to 12 genera in the midgut of the three ticks. The bacterial communities were similar to those found in other studies of hematophagous arthropods. Kocuria sp. was the most frequently isolated species and its 16S rDNA gene sequence was very similar to Kocuria koreensis P31T. To our knowledge, this is the first report of the bacterial flora of tick midguts and the results show that there were many different bacterial species in each tick species. Among the most common genera, there may have been a novel species in the genus Kocuria. The results might be the first step for looking for different aspects of the pathogen and tick interaction.

For the purpose of screening and analyzing the differentially expressed genes from the salivary gland of Rhipicephalus haemaphysaloides, two salivary gland-subtracted cDNA libraries of partially fed female ticks and fed male ticks were constructed using suppression subtractive hybridization (SSH). A total of 247 female expression sequence tags (ESTs) and 168 male ESTs were obtained from the two SSH cDNA libraries. It is predicted that 25 female ESTs and 44 female ESTs contain the 5´ and 3´ ends, respectively, and that 53 male ESTs and 74 male ESTs contain the 5´ and 3´ ends, respectively. To identify the subtraction rate of the two SSH cDNA libraries, the RT-PCR method was used to test 24 female ESTs and 21 male ESTs selected randomly but not repeatedly. The results showed that there were 13 upregulated or differentially expressed genes in the partially fed salivary gland of the female R. haemaphysaloides and that the differentially expressed rate was 54%. In addition, they indicated that there were 9 upregulated or differently expressed genes in the fed salivary gland of the male R. haemaphysaloides and that the differentially expressed rate was 43%. Putative translations of 141 (57%) female ESTs and 125 (74%) male ESTs had similarity to GenBank sequences, and 32 (23%) female ESTs and 29 (23%) male ESTs exhibited similarity to tick proteins, which showed that most of the proteins in the libraries were mainly related to the feeding blood physiology of the ticks.

Streptococcus equi ssp. zooepidemicus (S. zooepidemicus) is a zoonotic pathogen with worldwide distribution. Lackingsuitable vaccine and virulent maker is still bottleneck to control this infection. An immunoproteomic approach has beenused to screen the membrane-associated and cell wall-associated proteins of S. zooepidemicus isolate in China CY todiscover vaccine candidate antigens and therapeutic agents. Finally, 11 membrane-associated proteins, and 13 cell wallassociatedproteins were successfully identified. BLAST (www.sanger.ac.uk) results also indicated that nucleotidesequences of majority identified proteins shared high homology (>60%) with S. zooepidemicus, except for AC1-3, AC5,AC8, and AC13. Moreover, genes for 7 of the identified proteins were detected from CY; compared with ST171, 3 of them(AM1, AM8 and AC11) were only found in virulent strains (CY). All of the proteins identified in this study remain not tobe reported in S. zooepidemicus. Some of the proteins serve a vital role in the immune system and reproduction of hostspecies according to available data, while the functions of the rest were seldom researched.