Development of rapid, efficient and cost effective screening technique for testing arecanut against incitant of fruit rot disease.

To accelerate identification of disease resistant arecanut germplasm or hybrids against , it is very much imperative to develop bioassays which could differentiate resistant and susceptible cultivars efficiently. Here, a cost effective and rapid technique, called the "Detached Leaf Assay", was developed to identify resistant germplasm at the seedling stage itself. Zoospore production in highly virulent (P19) was standardized by incubating under a 12 hours light and dark regime.

Evaluation of unmanned aerial vehicle for effective spraying application in coconut plantations.

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) pesticide application in recent years owing to its importance such as time saving, reduction in human drudgery and also reduction in pesticides application rate. UAV has a great potential to address the problem involved in manual chemicals spraying in tall crops like coconut plantation where at present operation performed by manual climbing involves lots of drudgery and life risk. The current study aimed to understand the most influencing spraying parameters, such as spray height and spray time of the UAV sprayer on droplet characteristics such as spray droplet size, spray coverage and spray deposition at different layers (spindle, middle and bottom) of coconut tree canopy.

Complete genome sequence and phylogenetic relationships of tobacco streak virus causing groundnut stem necrosis disease in India.

Tobacco streak virus (TSV, genus family ) is known to cause stem necrosis disease (SND) in groundnut () since 2000 in Southern India. The TSV isolate infecting groundnut so far has not been characterized based on the complete genome sequence. In this study, TSV was isolated from a naturally infecting groundnut plant in Kadiri, the hot-spot of the SND in southern India.