eChapters

Nearly 70 percent of the cultivated crops all over the world are cross-fertilized and depend on insects like honeybees for pollination. At present, several countries are making desperate efforts to achieve self–sufficiency in food production by physical expansion of the area under cultivation, production of better quality seeds and animals, bringing more waste lands under cultivation, use of fertilizers,pesticides and irrigation. However, in the past decade or so, food production has come to a point of stagnation for some cultivated crops. Emphasis in the future therefore, should be on full use of under used resources. In order to maximize horticultural production, pollinators can be used as an important resource or input as improved variety of seed, timely irrigation, doses of fertilizers and plant protection.

Apomixis was defined by Winkler as replacement of the normal sexual reproduction by asexual reproduction, without fertilization. This definition notably does not mention meiosis. Thus “normal asexual reproduction” of plants, such as propagation from cuttings or leaves, has never been considered apomixis, but replacement of the seed by a plantlet, or replacement of the flower by bulbils are types of apomixis. Apomixis deviates from sexual reproduction in several aspects: modification or complete omission of meiosis, formation of unreduced megaspores, parthenogenetic development of embryo, and autonomous, or pseudogamous, endosperm development (Ramulu et al., 1998). Apomixis produces embryos or seed progeny that are exact genetic replicas of the mother plant. The main advantage of apomixis over sexual reproduction is the possibility to select individual plants with superior characteristics and to propagate them clonally through seeds. Apomictically produced offsprings are genetically identical to the parent plant. In flowering plants, the term “apomixis” is commonly used in a restricted sense to mean agamospermy, i.e. asexual reproduction through seeds.

Apomixis is an asexual method of reproduction through the seed. Apomictic reproduction is widespread and found in over 300 species of plants in 30 families. Interest in apomixis as a reproductive mechanism has increased as its potential and role are being recognized in genome preservation, polyploid build up, propagation of derivatives of wide crosses, permanent fixation of hybrid vigour, evolution, speciation and plant breeding .

Winkler (1906) defined apomixis as “the substitution for sexual reproduction of another asexual reproductive process that does not involve nuclear or cellular fusion.” One of the chief barriers to an understanding of the apomictic phenomenon has been the highly complex terminology as well as the differences of opinion among specialists as to the correct usage of these terms, probably because the phenomenon by itself is complex and in many ways quite different from that of amphimixis. Convincing evidence for the presence of apomixis can be obtained by tracing the steps that are involved in embryonic development. It should be amply clear that as the prerequisite for apomixis, fertilization does not take place at all in any form. Thus there is no normal development of embryo from the egg cell. However, the embryo may develop from an unfertilized egg cell other than the egg cell within the embryo sac.

Apomixis is widely distributed among higher plants. More than 300 species belonging to 35 families are apomictic. It is most common in Gramineae, Compositae, Rosaceae and Rutaceae. Among the major cereals like maize, wheat and pearl millet have apomictic relatives.

APPENDIX – 1: Basic Information

Table 1: Spacing and plant population

1. Introduction

The cultivated apple (Malus × domestica Borkh.), is the most important fruit in temperate regions of the world. Apples were frequently used in different mythologies as symbols of immortality or reincarnation. One of the most popular stories attached to apple is that of Adam and Eve, who ate the forbidden fruit from the tree of good and evil which was in the center of the garden of Eden. The Latin word Malus has two meaning i.e. apple and evil, which has probably stemmed from this story from bible. In Greek mythology, mother earth or Gaia, presented a tree with golden apples to Zeus and his bride Hera on their wedding day. These golden apples were later indicated with many stories of love, bribery and temptation ranging from the abduction of Helen of Troy to the defeat and marriage of Atlanta. Goddess Pomona was deity of fruit trees in Rome. In many cultures, garden of paradise and pleasure is symbolized as the place with fruit-laden apple trees. Apple is popular because of its delicious taste and pleasant aroma.

Apple is the pomaceous fruit (Malus domestica) in the rose family (Rosaceae). It is one of the most widely cultivated tree fruits, and the most widely known of the many members of genus Malus that are used by humans.

The apple originated in South-West Asia which includes Asia Minor, the Caucasus, Soviet Central Asia, Himalayan India and Pakistan. It is grown extensively in the temperate region. The major apple growing countries are Australia, Argentina, Brazil, China, Canada, Denmark, Egypt, France, Gemany, USA, India, etc. In India states of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and mountanous region of Uttar Pradesh are the major apple producers.

Cultivars/Varieties: The apple varieties are divided into three groups based on their maturing periods. The early season varieties grown in the states of Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir and Uttranchal are: Tydeman’s Early(P), Irish Peach, Early Shanburry(P), Michael Molies, Benoni Fenny, Benoni Delicious, Schlomit Starkrimson, and Chaubattia Princess. The Mid season varieties are: American Mother, Red Delicious, Richared Razakwar, Starking Delicious, Vance Delicious, Jonathan(P), McIntosh(P), Top Red Lord Lam, Cox’s Orange Pippin(P), Cortland bourne(P), Red Chief, Red Gold(P), Golden Delicious(P), Oregon Spur, Queen,s Apple, Redspur, Rome Beauty, Scarlet Siberian. The late season varieties are: Golden Delicious(P), King’s Pippin, Rymer, Yellow Newton(P), American Apirouge, Buckingham(P), Winter Banana, Kerry Pippin, Granny Smith(P), Sunhari Chamure, Golden Delicious(P), Red Delicious, Ambri Baldwin, and Yellow Newton(P).

1). Scab
Diagnostic Symptoms
• Symptoms generally noticed on leaves and fruits.
• Affected leaves become twisted or puckered and have black, circular spots on their upper surface.
• On the under surface of leaves, the spots are velvety and may coalesce to cover the whole leaf surface. Severely affected leaves may turn yellow and drop.
• Scab can also infect flower stems and cause flowers to drop.
• Lesions later become sunken and brown and may have spores around their margins.
• Infected fruit become distorted and may crack, allowing entry of secondary organisms(Figure-1).
Etiology
Scientific Classification
Kingdom : Fungi
Division : Ascomycota

Delicious and crunchy apple fruit is one of the most popular fruit favoured by health conscious, fitness freaks who believe in “health is wealth”. It is one of the popular wonderful fruit that contains a long list of essential nutrients that in the true sense are indispensable for human health. The antioxidants in apple have many health promoting and disease prevention properties; thus justifying the adage “An apple a day keeps the doctor away”. Apples help in controlling heart diseases, weight loss and cholesterol levels. Apples do not have any cholesterol instead they have fibre which reduces cholesterol by preventing reabsorption and thus are low in calories. Unpeeled apples provide plenty of nutrients which are present just under the skin. Apples are a good source of minerals like potassium, calcium, magnesium and iron, vitamins of B-complex such as riboflavin and pyridoxine (vitamin B6), vitamin C, folic acid and beta carotene. Apart from this they also contain appreciable quantities of tartaric acid that gives tart flavour to them.

• Seeds stratification at 4-7°C for 60-90 days from December to February.
• Scions cannot be used for grafting at their active stage of growth.
• Meadow orcharding: 20,000-70,000 plants/ha (Super high density)
• Bitter pit of apple: Golden delicious, yellow (due to calcium) Newton.
• Internal browning: Newton
• Himachal Pradesh is known as the “Apple bowl of India”
• Flower colour: White to Pink
• Apple is the most widely grown temperate fruit in the world
• India rank 5th in apple production in the world
• Apple crop accounts for 55% of the total area and 75% of the total production of temperate fruits in the country.
• 25% to 33% of pollinating trees in India are recommended for regular cropping.
• San Jose scale was introduced in India from France in 1906.
• Apple cider-fermented wine is prepared from apples.

Genus : Malus  
Species : domestica (Borkh.)
Family : Rosaceae 
Chromosome No. : 2n = 34, 51, 68

Like many other fruit crops, apple too is a very old crop in cultivation. Theophratus as early as third century B.C. has indicated that the Greeks and Romans knew apple culture and among the temperate fruit crops, apple is the most ubiquitous of all fruits and is extensively grown all over the world. Huge genetic variability present has permitted the better adapted types to be selected for plantation under different agro climatic conditions.  Through continuous selection both from wild population and also from hybrid seedlings, varied types or varieties have been selected, some are suitable for cultivation in warm temperate regions and others for extreme cold conditions.  This has resulted/added to the gene pool of desired types of apples enormously. At present cultivars are available destined for specific purposes like dessert, cooking, juice, cider and for large number of other uses.

It is a serious disease of apple which not only reduces the quality and size of fruit but also cause premature fruit drop and defoliation. Fruit loses its marketability due to poor quality. It also reduces storage time and cause loss up to 70%.

Apple codling moth: Cydia (Carpocapsa) pomonella: Tortricidae 

This is an international pest and is now seen in Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. This is a fruit borer whose moth is silvery white with a dark band on the margin of the forewing and light brownish hind wings with a fringed margin. The moths hold their wings roof-like over the body while at rest.

Apple is a king of temperate fruit, symbol of health and premier fruit of the world. It is a deciduous temperate fruit tree and most widely grown in the world from time immemorial. In India, a large number of apple varieties were introduced in 1887 by Mr. Alexander Coutts, and his orchard is called Hillock Head in Mashobra near to Shimla. It was also introduced in Nilgoris and Bangalore, but it was destroyed by wooly aphid in 1887. At present a small cultivation is done in Nilgiris. Among the fruits, apple is having longest storage life. Apples are mostly consumed as fresh but a small part of the production is processed into juices, jellies, canned slices, wine and other products.

Origin and Distribution

An apple is originated in the Middle East/Central Asia more than 4000 years ago where its wild ancestor, Malus sieversii, is still found today. It is spreading across Europe to France; the fruit arrived in England during the time of Norman Conquest in 1066. The pioneer apple orchard in the North American continent was planted in Boston by Reverend William Blaxton in 1625. The Only North America native apples are called crab apples or common apples.

Captain R C Scot of the British army had introduced apples like Newton Pippin, King of Pippin and the Cox Orange Pippin to the Kullu valley in 1870. These apples were not popular because of their sour taste. The sweet apples were still being imported from Japan to meet the demand of Indian market. It was during a visit to America in 1915 that Samuel Stokes bought a few saplings and planted them at his Barobagh orchard in Thanedar and in the year 1926 the first apple trees bear fruit and the apples was sold and imports from Japan is stopped. The first few saplings from its, Golden Delicious of Kinnaur and Sweet Delicious of Shimla were became popular and Himachal Pradesh grew to become one of the largest producers of the fruit today. Therefore, the Himachal Pradesh is known as apple bowl of India.

1. INTRODUCTION

‘Fertigation’ is the technique of supplying dissolved fertilizer to crops through an irrigation system (Haynes, 1985). When efficient irrigation system combined with both nutrients and water, it can lead to obtain higher yield and preferable quality desired marketable produce.

Often, side-dressings of straight solid fertilizers are found to be the management constraints. Most of the growers have the experience of how much the applied fertilizer is either washed from the soil in run-off or leached below the root zone.

Continuous small applications of soluble nutrients have the benefits like labour, due to fertilizer being placed uniformly around the plant roots and allow savings/economy rapid uptake of nutrients by the plant.

Introduction

Genetic markers have assisted in genomic characterization of various crops species (Rafalski and Tingey, 1993). Most of the genetic marker systems rely upon DNA sequence polymorphisms (Staub et al., 1996). Each system has unique advantages and disadvantages based on cost, experimental objectives and type of information desired. Regardless of its inherent methodology, the effective use of any marker system for genetic analysis requires reliability and consistency.

The random amplified polymorphic DNA i.e. RAPD (Williams et al., 1990) or arbitrarily primed polymerase chain reaction (Welsh and McClelland, 1990) marker identifies DNA sequence polymorphisms. In this technique, segments of genomic DNA are amplified in a polymerase chain reaction i.e. PCR (Mullis et al., 1986) with random primers followed by agarose gel electrophoresis. This is simple, relatively inexpensive and is amenable to high throughput investigation. RAPD markers are usually dominant and polymorphisms are observed as the presence or the absence of DNA bands of a particular size. RAPDs are common molecular approaches employed in plant breeding, genotypic differentiation, gene linkage analysis, assigning evolutionary and taxonomic affinities and relatedness and DNA fingerprinting analysis (Lin et al., 1996).

ABSTRACT

The discovery of polymerase chain reaction method of amplification of DNA is an important milestone in molecular genetics and used for multiple purpose such as construction of linkage maps, marker saturation of specific genome regions, analysis of genetic diversity, molecular phylogeny and cultivar identifications (Williams et al; 1990, Demeke, Adams and Chibbar; 1992, Welsh and Maclelland; 1990;, Obara-Okeyo and Kako; 1998, Sawhoon Lin et al; 1998 and Grunger et al; 1998.). 15 species of three morphologically distinct groups of Orchids belonging to the subfamily Epidendroideae and tribe Dendroebieae and Cymbideae were studied using random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) technique. Genetic variability and relation between these 3 genera and 15 species were estimated based on band sharing and cluster analysis. A total of 227 distinct major RAPD bands of which 97% were polymorphic were generated from 15 arbitrary primers. The number of bands generated per primer ranged from 3 (Primer A-10) to 22 (Primer K-10 and N-17) with a mean of 14.8 bands per primer. Out of 227 bands generated 222 bands (97.8%) where polymorphic while only 5 bands were monomorphic. The primer resolving power was found to range between 2.00 (prime A-10) and 13.38 (primer k-10) when all the species were studied were taken into account. The molecular analysis grouped all the species into 5 groups. The polymorphic patterns generated by RAPD profiles showed different degrees of genetic relationship among the species studied and the RAPD marker were found to be an useful tool for detecting genetic variation within the species of three important genera of Orchids.

1. Introduction

2. Human Genome Project

3. Development of Bioinformatics

3.1. Indian scenario

4. Plant Genome Model

5. Components of Plant Genome Database

5.1. Stock centre databases

5.2. Genome mapping database

5.3. DNA sequences

6. Agricultural Research Service and National Research Initiative

6.1. Objectives of plant genome programme

6.2. GIBN Trans – pacific digital library experiment plant genome databases

7. Plant Genome Databases

7.1. Vegetable genome databases

7.1.1 Mendel-Plant Gene Nomenclature Database

7.2. Others

7.2.1. Bean Genes – Phaseolus / Vigna sp. Database

7.2.2. Solgenes Database

7.2.3. Soybase

7.3. Other data bases

7.3.1. PGDB (Pathway genome data base)

7.3.2. Demeter’s genome

8. Tools of Bioinformatics

9. New Directions in Genome Database at Stanford

10. Navigating the World Wide Web

11. Virtual Genome Centre (VGC)

11.1. Programmes at the VGC

12. Impact of Gene Chips and Micro Arrays

13. Applications and Impacts

14. Bottlenecks

15. Future Thrust

Computer played a distinctive role in the growth of most advanced, precise and highly sensitive instruments especially in medical and analytical instrumentation technology. Due to the development of different kinds of software the instrumentation analysis has become easy, rapid and result oriented. Auto sampling, development of new methods for detection analysis and the validity of new developed method have been possible with no trouble. Once the standardization of method is over and saved, it can be applied at any time to integrate the unknown samples and their data calculation. Thus, it avoids repetition in calculation and the end result is time saving technique due to the development of computer-organized system in analysis.

The results produced are more reliable and reproducible through various computer based instruments e.g. scanning machines, blood analyzer, gas chromatography (GC), amino acid analyzer (AAA), atomic absorption spectrophotometer (AAS) and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) etc.

HPLC is a technology or a system that works on the basis of software. There have been many definitions of computer shielded HPLC, such as high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), high-pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC), high-speed liquid chromatography (HSLC), high efficiency liquid chromatography (HELC), and simply liquid chromatography (LC).

1. Introduction

Global population is expected to reach 9.7 billion by 2050 (UN report, 2019) and food requirement will betwofold of the current levels to feed the growing population. Asia and the Pacific regionaccounts for> 70% of the global population but has only 30% of the world’s arable land (FAO, 2021). An increase in yield of these regions over the years has largely been due to excessive and indiscriminate use of inputs like irrigation, seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, agrochemicals etc. and at considerable expense of its natural resources. Most of the pesticide recommendations are also region specific, which are on a few random observations of pest density. Because of low quality of agrochemicals often due to adulteration and increased pest resistance, indiscriminate application is now common especially in high valued crops.

The apricot, Prunus armeniaca, L. is a species of Prunus, classified with the plum in the subgenus Prunus. Apricot is believed to have been originated in North-east China and later spread to several parts of the world. The important apricot producing countries are China, Turkey, Italy, Spain, Greece, USA, Morocco, France, Romania, Iraq, Bulgaria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, India and Australia. In India it is cultivated in Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and North East Himalayan region.

Cultivars/Varieties: Hemskerk, Moor park, Kaisha, New Large Early, New Castle, Royal, Raksona, Shiply Early, St. Ambroise, Wenatchee, Chaubattia Alankar, Chaubattia Madhu, Chaubattia Kesri.

Uses

It is used in many ways, such as, in the preparation of jam, nectar, beverages, puree, leather, etc. The karnel is a source of cooking oil. Leaves are used as fodder. Oil cake is used as cattle feed. Dried apricot is an important commercial product.