Browsing by Author "Sonal Kumari"

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Cellulose-based phosphorylated bamboo with slow urea release and lower carbon footprints improves rainfed rice crop productivity in field trials
(Elsevier B.V., 2025) Rohit Rai; Rahul Ranjan; Sonal Kumari; Nirmal De; Prodyut Dhar
With unprecedented global climate changes, rice crop cultivation under rainfed conditions encounters alternate wetting and drying cycles with water and nutrient stress, which leads to poor yield, quality, and productivity. A modified cellulose-based, slow urea-releasing and water-retaining system from bamboo is developed for rainfed rice crops, to overcome such challenges to emerging rice crops and improve soil health for subsequent crop cycles. Bamboo was delignified to expose the cellulose and subsequent phosphorylation (DPB), followed by strategic urea infiltration and melting to deposit it into the microporous matrix. The melted DPB urea (MDU) presents a zone of influence of 52.5 cm3/cm3 MDU, with water retention of 72 h for supporting plant growth during water stress upto ~6 days. MDU also displays a sustained release of 45–55 % urea for ~11 days in black, red, and alluvial soils. The application of MDU in the field study of rainfed rice crops showed improved plant height (16.66 %), chlorophyll content (32 %), grain yield (230 kg/ha), nitrogen (1.60 %), and phosphate content (0.089 %) of rice grains with the presence of ureolytic microbes (Sporosarcina) for improved soil quality. Cellulose-based MDU is biodegradable (98.1 %) in soil and generates relatively lower carbon footprints during production (~70.7 % lower GWP) than non-degradable acrylamide. Cellulose from renewable forest resources like bamboo, has been modified strategically using an eco-friendly approach to enhance the rainfed rice crop yield and soil conditions creating a closed-loop circular bioeconomy with low-carbon footprints for sustainable agriculture. © 2025 Elsevier B.V.
Effect of stage-specific and multi-stage drought on grain nutrient quality in rice
(Springer Science and Business Media B.V., 2023) Sahana Basu; Shashi Shekhar; Alok Kumar; Surbhi Kumari; Nitu Kumari; Sonal Kumari; Santosh Kumar; Ram Prasad; Gautam Kumar
Drought is a multidimensional stress that affects the grain nutritional quality of high yielding rice genotypes. The present study evaluated the impacts of stage-specific (seedling, vegetative, and reproductive stages) and cumulative (multi-stage) drought on ionome, starch, and protein contents in grains of two rice genotypes of eastern Indo-Gangetic plain, viz. Sahbhagi Dhan and IR64 with contrasting drought tolerance. The study showed drought to negatively affect the physiological and nutritional traits of rice grains. Following the study, stage-specific and multi-stage drought caused significant reduction in grain size, test weight, starch, amylose, amylopectin, and total soluble protein contents of rice grains. Drought during different developmental stages of rice caused significant variations in micro- (Cu, Fe, Mn, Na, Zn) and macro-nutrient (P, K, Ca, Mg) contents in the grains. Stage-specific and cumulative drought exposure of the rice genotypes also governed the ionomes in grains resulting in specific ionomic networks. Hierarchical cluster analysis showed two discrete clusters for elements as well as different drought treatments in the studied rice genotypes, which supported the results obtained from the principal component analysis, displaying five clusters based on stage-specific and multi-stage drought treatments. Variation in drought treatments and elements in different rice genotypes also altered the ionomic interactions represented by differential ionomic networks. In this study, Sahbhagi Dhan maintained the morphological and nutritional qualities of grains across the drought treatments and therefore, can be used as a suitable donor in breeding for stage-specific and cumulative drought tolerance with superior grain quality for eastern Indo-Gangetic plain. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V.