Long-Term Soil Drought Limits Starch Accumulation by Altering Sucrose Transport and Starch Synthesis in Sweet Potato Tuberous Root.

In this study, the influences of long-term soil drought with three levels [soil-relative water content () (75 ± 5)%, as the control; (55 ± 5)%, mild drought; (45 ± 5)%, severe drought] were investigated on sucrose-starch metabolism in sweet potato tuberous roots (TRs) by pot experiment. Compared to the control, drought stress increased soluble sugar and sucrose content by 4-60% and 9-75%, respectively, but reduced starch accumulation by 30-66% through decreasing the starch accumulate rate in TRs. In the drought-treated TRs, the inhibition of sucrose decomposition was attributed to the reduced activities of acid invertase (AI) and alkaline invertase (AKI) and the expression, rather than sucrose synthase (SuSy), consequently leading to the increased sucrose content in TRs.

Potassium deficiency causes more nitrate nitrogen to be stored in leaves for low-K sensitive sweet potato genotypes.

In order to explore the effect of potassium (K) deficiency on nitrogen (N) metabolism in sweet potato ( L.), a hydroponic experiment was conducted with two genotypes (Xushu 32, low-K-tolerant; Ningzishu 1, low-K-sensitive) under two K treatments (-K, <0.03 mM of K; +K, 5 mM of K) in the greenhouse of Jiangsu Normal University.

Controllable Microemulsion Synthesis of Hybrid TiO-SiO Hollow Spheres and Au-Doped Hollow Spheres with Enhanced Photocatalytic Activity.

Hollow structures in TiO materials can enhance the photocatalytic properties by reducing the diffusion length and improving the accessibility of active sites for the reactants. However, existing approaches for preparing hollow TiO materials have two drawbacks that restrict their engineering applicability: first, a heavy reliance on templates to form a hollow structure, which makes the preparation laborious, complicated, and costly; second, difficult-to-achieve high crystallization while maintaining the small grain size in calcinated TiO, which is crucial for enhancing photocatalytic activity. Herein, a simple, effective method is proposed that not only enables the preparation of hybrid TiO-SiO hollow spheres without the template fabrication and removal process via microemulsion technology but also achieves both high crystallization and a small grain size in calcinated TiO at once through the calcination of amorphous TiO with organosilane at a high temperature of 850 °C.