The HMF or 5-hydroxymethylfurural is a crucial platform chemical classified as a ''drop-in biofuel.'' HMF synthesis procedures have experienced notable advancements in recent years, including the shift from homogeneous to heterogeneous catalysts, the substitution of aqueous solutions with organic phases, and the adoption of biphasic systems to mitigate limitations caused by side reactions, among other innovations. Nonetheless, achieving a balance among selectivity, cost, energy consumption, and environmental impact in the production of HMF from economical glucose-derived substrates presents a formidable challenge. Various strategies have been developed over the past decade to address these issues. This review provides a current overview of recent advancements in solvent types and heterogeneous catalysts, including zeolites, metal oxides, carbonaceous and silica-based materials, heteropolyacids, and polymer-based systems. In addition, the reaction mechanisms of established solid catalysts employed to enhance HMF production are detailed.

Industrial applications of lignin, which have economic and environmental advantages, have gained immense popularity in recent years. However, to effectively route lignin towards material applications and address the issues at the end of the life cycle of traditional plastics, integrating circularity into lignin extraction processes is imperative. In this study, nanolignin-based hydrogels (NLBHs) made from rice husk, an agro-waste precursor, were synthesized, characterized, and tested for arsenic (As) removal from in vitro and ex-situ water samples. Primary characterization of the nanolignin variants using fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and photon correlation spectroscopy (PCS) revealed the characteristic lignin aromatic skeleton in the nanoszied samples, while the N2 sorption/desorption studies confirmed a mesoporous NLBH structure. Subsequent one- factor-at-a-time (OFAT) assessments of the NLBHs demonstrated their exceptional in vitro As adsorption efficiency (>= 80 %), yielding the best variant for optimizing sorption parameters using a four-factor RSM (Response Surface Methodology) design and backpropagation ANNs (Artificial Neural Networks). Further analysis of the adsorption process using linear kinetics and non-linear isotherms uncovered a dominant multilayer chemisorption mechanism, while recyclability assessments and multi-contaminant studies confirmed the reusable nature (similar to 10 desorption/resorption cycles) and high sorption efficiency (>= 82 %) of the NLBH in ex situ settings. A facile cost-factor analysis further demonstrated that these materials could be synthesized at a fraction of the cost of conventional adsorbents, thus indicating that agro-waste-derived nanolignins can effectively contribute to the development of environment-friendly, circular, bio-based materials with excellent sorption properties while minimizing the harmful effects resulting from the buildup of agricultural wastes.

In recent years, third-generation sequencing (TGS) technologies have transformed genomics and transcriptomics research, providing novel opportunities for significant discoveries. The long-read sequencing platforms, with their unique advantages over next-generation sequencing (NGS), including a definitive protocol, reduced operational time, and real-time sequencing, possess the potential to transform plant genomics. TGS optimizes and enhances the efficiency of data analysis by removing the necessity for time-consuming assembly tools. The current review examines the development and application of bioinformatics tools for data analysis and annotation, driven by the rapid advancement of TGS platforms like Oxford Nanopore Technologies and Pacific Biosciences. Transcriptome analysis utilizing TGS has been extensively employed to elucidate complex plant transcriptomes and genomes, particularly those characterized by high frequencies of duplicated genomes and repetitive sequences. As a result, current methodologies that allow for generating transcriptomes and comprehensive whole-genome sequences of complex plant genomes employing tailored hybrid sequencing techniques that integrate NGS and TGS technologies have been emphasized herein. This paper, thus, articulates a vision for a future in which TGS effectively addresses the challenges faced in plant research, offering a comprehensive understanding of its advantages, applications, limitations, and promising prospects.

The current age, representing the highly industrialized, urbanized, and mechanized societies, has pushed the Earth’s environment to its limits of sustenance. These technological advancements are held responsible for global warming and climate change, the effects of which can be seen in the rising frequency of catastrophic floods, droughts, cyclonic storms as well as melting glaciers, and rising sea levels. There have also been significant concerns about the ecological imbalances caused by such events, where environmental pollution and degradation are at the center stage. This has led to innovations in anthropogenic activities and technologies for environmental restoration/clean-up, which include physical, chemical, and biological approaches. Among the existing technologies, bioremediation holds promise for the future as it has been proven to be ecologically friendly, sustainable, and entails low-cost technologies. Bioremediation alone, however, has limitations in the context of the variety of environmental contaminants it can address and also the levels to which it can effectively remediate. The solution to this problem has arrived in the form of nanobioremediation, whereby nanotechnologies and nanomaterials have been integrated with bioremediation approaches to achieve enhanced remediation efficacies and solutions for removal/sequestration of a wide variety of environmental contaminants through a sustainable, eco-friendly, and economically viable approach. Here, efforts are made to discuss the integration of biomolecules, microbes, and enzymatic processes with nanotechnology to address the present challenges in environmental remediation and restoration. This chapter explores the techniques associated with nanobioremediation by means of biologically fabricated nanoparticles, microorganism-assisted nanoparticles, and enzyme-based nanomaterials in recent times. It shall also provide an insight into the future perspective and challenges relating to the application of these technologies.

An integrated treatment coupling alkali, steam explosion and ammonia/chlorine-free bleaching with sequential mild acid pretreatment were performed to isolate and characterize cellulose from banana agrowastes followed by optimized enzymatic hydrolysis to glucose. The cellulose yield, compositional, microstructural, and morphological analysis initially obtained from three post-harvest banana agrowastes (peel, pseudostem, and peduncle) were surveyed. Isolation parameters for banana peduncle agrowastes, the most efficient precursor, were reconfigured for acid hydrolysis by applying an orthogonal L9 array of Taguchi design. Effects of solution-to-pulp ratio, acid concentration, temperature, and reaction time on physicochemical parameters were assessed resulting in ~81% cellulose recovery. Subsequently, cellulase driven enzymatic conversion to glucose was modelled using response surface methodology (RSM), where the mutual influences of incubation time, enzyme concentration, substrate concentration, and surfactant concentration were investigated. Artificial Neural Network (ANN) modelling further improved upon RSM optimizations ensuing ~97% optimized glucose yield, verified experimentally.

This work embodies the development of a real time loop mediated isothermal amplification (RealAmp) assay for the rapid detection of the cryptic tea phytopathogen, Exobasidium vexans, the causal organism of blister blight disease. Due to the widespread popularity of tea as a beverage and the associated agro-economy, the rapid detection and management of the fast-spreading blister blight disease have been a longstanding necessity. Loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) primers were designed targeting the E. vexans ITS rDNA region and the reaction temperature was optimized at 62 °C with a 60 min reaction time. Amplification of the E. vexans isolates in the initial LAMP reactions was confirmed by both agarose gel electrophoresis and SYBR Green I dye based colour change visualization. The specificity of the LAMP primers for E. vexans was validated by negative testing of seven different phytopathogenic test fungi using LAMP and RealAmp assay. The positive findings in RealAmp assay for E. vexans strain were corroborated via detecting fluorescence signals in real-time. Further, the LAMP assays performed with gDNA isolated from infected tea leaves revealed positive amplification for the presence of E. vexans. The results demonstrate that this rapid and precise RealAmp assay has the potential to be applied for field-based detection of E. vexans in real-time.

Penicillium citrinum is a naturally occurring filamentous fungus with immense potential for biomass-based diesel production because they are prolific producers of cellulose-degrading enzymes and also accumulate significant amount of lipids. In this study, four media components, namely, carbon source, nitrogen (organic and inorganic) source and metal salts, and three fermentation parameters viz. Incubation time, temperature and pH were first screened for their effect on the biomass and lipid production by P. citrinum PKB20 using 'one variable at a time' (OVAT) approach. OVAT based experiments revealed that glucose (X-G), yeast extract (X-Y), ammonium sulphate (X-A) and magnesium ion (X-M) had the greatest impact on biomass yield and lipid accumulation when grown under batch cultivation mode at pH 7, temperature 30 degrees C and incubation time of 6 days. A central composite design based response surface methodology (RSM) was then adopted to model and optimize the ideal concentrations of the media constituents for maximum production of biomass and lipid from oleaginous fungus Penicillium citrinum PKB20.The optimization condition was found to be 10% of X-G, 0.75 g/L of X-Y, 0.38 g/L of X-A and 0.06 g/L of XM and under optimum condition, the biomass and lipid production was 7.9 g/L and 1.73 g/L respectively. The study thus presents the optimum concentrations of key media components and culture conditions for maximum biomass and lipid production by Penicillium citrinum PKB20 under the studied cultivation and harvesting conditions.

Tea is one of the most popular beverages consumed across the world and is also considered a major cash crop in countries with a moderately hot and humid climate. Tea is produced from the leaves of woody, perennial, and monoculture crop tea plants. The tea leaves being the source of production the foliar diseases which may be caused by a variety of bacteria, fungi, and other pests have serious impacts on production. The blister blight disease is one such serious foliar tea disease caused by the obligate biotrophic fungus Exobasidium vexans. E. vexans, belonging to the phylum basidiomycete primarily infects the young succulent harvestable tea leaves and results in ~40% yield crop loss. It reportedly alters the critical biochemical characteristics of tea such as catechin, flavonoid, phenol, as well as the aroma in severely affected plants. The disease is managed, so far, by administering high doses of copper-based chemical fungicides. Although alternate approaches such as the use of biocontrol agents, biotic and abiotic elicitors for inducing systemic acquired resistance, and transgenic resistant varieties have been tested, they are far from being adopted worldwide. As the research on blister blight disease is chiefly focussed towards the evaluation of defense responses in tea plants, during infection very little is yet known about the pathogenesis and the factors contributing to the disease. The purpose of this chapter is to explore blister blight disease and to highlight the current challenges involved in understanding the pathogen and pathogenic mechanism that could significantly contribute to better disease management.

The development of a novel nanobiosorbent derived from waste molasses for the adsorptive removal of arsenic (As) has been attempted in this study. Waste molasses were chemically ameliorated through a solvothermal route for the incorporation of iron oxide, thereby producing iron oxide incorporated carbonaceous nanomaterial (IOCN). Synthesis of IOCN was confirmed through transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and atomic emission spectroscopy (AES) analysis. The surface area and porous behavior of IOCN were elucidated by Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) assessments. The experimental conditions for adsorption were first modeled using response surface methodology (RSM) based on the central composite design (CCD), considering the parameters: adsorbate dosage, adsorbent dosage, pH, and contact time. RSM optimizations were improved upon using a three-layer feed-forward multilayer perceptron (MLP) based Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model. Optimization through ANN model resulted in the increase of the maximal As adsorption efficiency to ~ 96% for IOCN. The IOCN isotherm plots show the best fit for the Sips isotherm, and the reaction kinetics follows the pseudo-second-order model, indicating the chemisorption mechanism for As adsorption. Evidence for direct coordination of As to the surface of adsorbents was further confirmed by FTIR spectroscopic studies before and after As adsorption. The high adsorption efficiencies and the low-cost facile synthesis of the IOCN nanosorbent from agro-industrial waste indicate their potential for commercial applications.

At present, the resistance to antibacterial substances being formed in microorganisms opens up new areas of search for alternative compounds with similar properties. In scientific research in recent years, the antimicrobial properties of platinum compounds and pyridinium derivatives have been actively studied. The purpose of this study was to study effect against Escherichia coli of aqueous solutions of 1-allyl-2- aminopyridinium bromide and two hexachloroplatinate complexes in three experiments. As a result of the carried out research, a reliable antibacterial effect of one of the platinum compounds was revealed in relation to Escherichia coli.

In this study, microcrystalline cellulose (MCC) was isolated from Saccharum spontaneum by integrating alkaline delignification, chlorine-free bleaching, and acid hydrolysis treatments, through an environment friendly and sustainable method. To minimize acid concentrations, the acid hydrolysis conditions were optimized using Taguchi orthogonal L9 design that evaluated the influences of reaction time, temperature, acid concentration and solution to pulp ratio on the physical and chemical characteristics of MCC. The cellulose source at its different stages of processing was submitted to various analytical techniques for morphological and physiochemical investigations. The highest MCC yield optimized was 83%. This process is favorable due to the use of very low (5% H2SO4) acid concentration, low corrosivity, effluent reduction, and cost-effectiveness. Detailed analyses showed that the isolated MCC has good crystallinity and thermal stability and hence expected as a high-value precursor for the production of polymer biocomposites for diverse applications.

The rapid industrialization and urbanization of habitable landmasses have substantially altered terrestrial and aquatic environments for human benefit. However, anthropological practices associated with industrial establishments such as open cast mining have increased the dependency on heavy metal-based agrochemicals as well as the unwarranted release of industrial effluents into neighboring water bodies have significantly contributed to the global increase in environmental pollutants. An estimated two billion people have limited access to clean potable water (Geneva: World Health Organization; 2012). Threats of groundwater pollution arise from a variety of sources such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), organic wastewater compounds (OWCs), chlorinated organics, perfluorosurfactants, and the presence of toxic heavy metals such as arsenic (As), chromium (Cr), cadmium (Cd), lead (Pb), zinc (Zn), mercury (Hg), etc., at elevated levels impose a serious concern to human health. In recent years, nanomaterials such as nanoscale zero-valent iron, nanoporous titanium oxide (TiO2), magnetite (Fe3O4) nanospheres, single-walled and multi-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNT/MWNT), etc., have been increasingly investigated to address these environmental issues. The ability to engineer the surface functional groups of these nanomaterials so as to target the pollutant species, their enhanced aspect ratios at the nanodimensions, compatibility with existing purification methodologies, and their potential to augment the efficiencies of existing processes such as precipitation, coagulation, photocatalytic degradation, adsorption, membrane filtration, etc., are a few mentionable attributes to these nanomaterials. A bibliographic review of the literature on the current research of nanomaterials for use in the remediation of soils and groundwater and their advantages with respect to the traditional systems are presented in this chapter.

Ammonia (NH3) is an industrially important chemical for its use in manufacturing fertilizers, carbon-free fuel and synthesis of essential biological building blocks and as energy carrier. The most widely used industrial process NH3 production, the Haber-Bosch process, has several bottlenecks such as high operational costs and high energy consumption and is a severe detriment for environment due to its large carbon footprint. In recent decades, electrocatalysis of N-2 to produce NH3 has emerged as a sustainable alternative and provides an efficient means for the production of NH3 from N-2 under ambient conditions. Till date, various kinds of electrocatalyst have been developed for N-2 reduction which covers a wide range of materials that includes noble metals, transition metals, single-atom catalyst and various carbon-based metal-free composites. Also, to increase the catalytic potential, different operational strategies have been developed that generate electrocatalysts with low overpotential. Molecular dynamics simulation-based studies have enabled the development of new generation electrocatalysts and have been investigated for their thermodynamics and mechanism in nitrogen reduction reaction (NRR). The combination of the theoretical and experimental provides a promising perspective to develop efficient electrocatalyst with increased surface active site, selectivity and durability in NRR.

Oleaginous yeasts can accumulate intracellular lipid bodies or triacylglycerides (TAGs) under nutrient limiting conditions. TAGs derived from those yeast strains are considered as an alternative to conventional plant-based oils for biodiesel production. In this study, we attempt to isolate and characterize yeast strains from selected traditional fermented foods of Manipur and Mizoram, India, and study their oleaginous attributes for biodiesel production. Fourteen potential oleaginous yeasts were isolated from fermented food samples of Manipur and Mizoram, India. The isolates were identified by 5.8S internal transcribed spacer (ITS) rRNA gene sequencing. Intracellular TAG accumulation by yeast cells were confirmed by Nile red fluorescence microscopy and spectrometry technique. The most promising isolates were evaluated for lipid accumulation having different initial carbon to nitrogen (C/N) ratios and also the full kinetic studies (depicting the glucose consumption, biomass, and lipid production) using optimum C/N ratio were estimated. Fatty acid methyl esters (FAME) profile of the transesterified lipids were analyzed by GC-MS. The identified yeast isolates belonged to seven different genera viz. Rhodotorula, Pichia, Candida, Saturnispora, Wickerhamomyces, Zygoascus, and Saccharomyces. Under nitrogen-limiting conditions, maximum biomass concentration of 5.66 ± 0.03 g/L and 4.713 ± 0.03 g/L was produced by Wickerhamomyces anomalus FK09 and Pichia kudriavzevii FK02, respectively. The highest lipid concentration (g lipid/L fermentation broth) of 0.58 g/L was attained by Rhodotorula mucilaginosa R2, followed by Wickerhamomyces anomalus FK09 (0.51 g/L), and Zygoascus hellenicus FC10 (0.41 g/L). Rhodotorula mucilaginosa R2 exhibited the maximum lipid content (% lipid/g dry cell weight) of (21.63 ± 0.1%) after 96 h of growth. The C/N ratio of 40 and 20 was found to be optimum for R. mucilaginosa R2 and W. anomalus FK09 with a lipid content of 22.21 ± 0.4% and 12.83 ± 0.08% respectively. Newly isolated yeast strains were obtained from traditional fermented food samples of Manipur and Mizoram, India. FAME analysis of the transesterified lipid extracts suggested the potential use of yeast-derived oil as an alternative to vegetable oil for biodiesel production.