Alternaria alternata (tobacco pathotype) is a necrotrophic fungus causing severe losses in Nicotiana species by infection of mature leaves. Similar to what has been observed in cultivated tobacco, N. tabacum, young leaves of wild tobacco, N. attenuata, were more resistant to A. alternata than mature leaves, and this was correlated with stronger blue fluorescence induced after infection. However...

Tobacco leaves are large and have sticky exudates that retain the radon decay products once they deposit on the leaves. The study of Po in tobacco is required, because of the cumulative alpha-radiation dose delivered to humans from inhaled Po in cigarette smoke. Pb is the other element of interest since it is the Po precursor in the radioactive decay chain. In the present study, the concentrati...

In this paper, a new model to grade cured tobacco leaves using symbolic data is proposed. Color features such as average and standard deviation of hue of tobacco leaves are extracted using the Munsell color system. The extracted features of each grade are aggregated and represented in the form of inter-valued type data and stored in the knowledgebase. For a given test sample of a cured tobacco ...

Ozone (O3), a major photochemical oxidant, induces leaf injury concomitant with salicylic acid (SA) synthesis. In pathogen-infected leaves, SA is synthesized via two pathways, involving phenylalanine or isochorismate. SA biosynthesis under O3 fumigation is not well understood. When we applied 14C-labeled benzoic acid (a precursor of SA in the pathway via phenylalanine) to O3-exposed tobacco lea...

The aim of the present work was to determine the influence of different CaCl(2) dosages on foliar biomass and quality of tobacco plants (Nicotiana tabacum L. var. Tennesse 86). Plants were grown under controlled conditions and submitted to regular fertilization with macro- and micronutrients. The CaCl(2) was applied to the nutrient solution at 1.25 mM (T1), 2.5 mM (T2), and 5 mM (T3). The resul...

Genetic modification of secondary metabolic pathways to produce desirable natural products is an attractive approach in plant biotechnology. In our study, we attempted to produce a typical soybean isoflavone genistein, a well-known health-promoting metabolite, in non-legume plants via genetic engineering. Both overexpression and antisense suppression strategies were used to manipulate the expre...