Showing papers by "Umer Rashid published in 2011"
TL;DR: In this article, the optimum conditions for the transesterification of Moringa oleifera oil were explored using response surface methodology (RSM) with central composite rotatable design (CCRD).
147 citations
TL;DR: It was found that transgenic plants having AtNHX1 gene are more resistant to high concentration of salt and water deprivation than the wild type plants and could be cultivated in salt and drought-affected soils.
Abstract: Salinity and drought are main threat to agriculture productivity, to avoid further losses it is necessary to improve the genetic material of crops against these stresses In this present study, AtNHX1, a vacuolar type Na+/H+ antiporter gene driven by 35S promoter was introduced into groundnut using Agrobacterium tumefaciens transformation system. The stable integration of the AtNHX1 gene was confirmed by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and southern blot analysis. It was found that transgenic plants having AtNHX1 gene are more resistant to high concentration of salt and water deprivation than the wild type plants. Salt and proline level in the leaves of the transgenic plants were also much higher than that of wild type plants. The results showed that overexpression of AtNHX1 gene not only improved salt tolerance but also drought tolerance in transgenic groundnut. Our results suggest that these plants could be cultivated in salt and drought-affected soils.
92 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a response surface methodology was used to obtain the quadratic polynomial equation for predicting transesterification of muskmelon seed oil using RSM.
61 citations
TL;DR: To enhance bacterial wilt resistance in tomato plants and simplify the protocol of Agrobacterium tumefaciens mediated gene transfer, parameters affecting transformation efficiency in tomato have been optimized.
Abstract: To enhance bacterial wilt resistance in tomato plants and simplify the protocol of Agrobacterium tum- efaciens mediated gene transfer, parameters affecting transformation efficiency in tomato have been optimized. A. tumefaciens strain EHA101, harboring a recombinant binary expression vector pTCL5 containing the Xa21 gene under the control of the CaMV 35S promoter was used for transformation. Five cultivars of tomato (Rio Grande, Roma, Pusa Ruby Pant Bahr and Avinash) were tested for transformation. Transformation efficiency was highly dependent on preculture of the explants with acetosyrin- gone, acetosyringone in co-cultivation media, shoot regeneration medium and pre-selection after co-cultivation without selective agent. One week of pre-selection fol- lowing selection along with 400 lM acetosyringone resulted in 92.3% transient GUS expression efficiency in Rio Grande followed by 90.3% in Avinash. The presence and integration of the Xa21 gene in putative transgenic plants was confirmed by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and Southern blot analyses with 4.5-42.12% PCR-positive shoots were obtained for Xa21 and hygromycin genes, respectively. Transgenic plants of the all lines showed resistance to bacterial wilt. T1 plants (resulting from self-
58 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the effects of temperature, pressure, ratio of JOME:TMP and catalyst amount were studied in optimization experiment, using Taguchi L9 experimental layout, and the optimum reaction conditions were identified to be 483 K, 25 kPa; 1.0% w/w catalyst and JOME-TMP molar ratio of 4:1.
41 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the physicochemical properties of the essential oil derived from the seeds of coriander (Coriandrum sativum) cultivated in Pakistan were analyzed using GC-FID and GC-MS.
Abstract: This experiment describes the physiochemical composition of the essential oil derived from the seeds of coriander (Coriandrum sativum) cultivated in Pakistan. Hydrodistilled essential oil content from coriander seeds was found to be 0.15%. The physicochemical properties namely density (25°C), refractive index (25°C), acid value, ester value, and optical rotation (25°C) determined for the essential oil were found to be 0.8310, 1.4592, 4.0, 23.7, and +11.5 g/cm3, respectively. A total of 48 chemical constituents representing 90% of the essential oil tested were identified using GC-FID and GC-MS. Linalool with contribution of 69.60% was found to be the principal constituent. Other important components identified were: geranyl acetate (4.99%), γ-terpinene (4.17%), α-pinene (1.63%), anethol (1.15%) andp-cymene (1.12%). The analyzed essential oil mainly comprised of oxygenated monoterpene hydrocarbons (80.83%), followed by monoterpene hydrocarbons (8.00%), sesquiterpene hydrocarbons (0.47%) and oxygenated sesquiterpene hydrocarbons (0.35%). Overall, the physicochemical attributes and chemical profile of the tested essential oil from Pakistan were reasonably comparable with those investigated for coriander seed essential oils from other regions of the world suggesting its potential for functional foods and cosmetics applications.
Key words: Hydrodistillation, coriander seed, essential oil, physicochemical attributes, GC-MS, linalool, γ-terpinene, oxygenated monoterpenes.
40 citations
01 Jan 2011
TL;DR: In this article, the physicochemical characteristics of the extracted oils were as follows: iodine value, 111.6-114.9; refractive index (40°C), 1.4620-1.4640; density (24°C, 0.61-0.65); color (1in. cell), 3.40-7.00 R + 34.00-70.00 Y; acid value, 3.49-4.11 mg kg -1, respectively.
Abstract: The seeds from two varieties namely Sabz Pari and Punjab-8 of Okra (Hibiscus esculentus), grown under similar environment, exhibited oil content 11.72 and 13.42%, respectively. Protein, fiber, moisture and ash contents were found to be 20.00, 29.60, 7.26 and 5.18 and 23.68, 27.41, 8.35 and 6.23, respectively. The physicochemical characteristics of the extracted oils were as follows: iodine value, 111.6-114.9; refractive index (40°C), 1.4620-1.4640; density (24°C), 0.9040.908 gcm -3 , saponification value, 180.3-185.8 (mg of KOH g -1 of oil); unsaponifiable matter, 0.61-0.65%; color (1-in. cell), 3.40-7.00 R + 34.00-70.00 Y; acid value, 3.49-4.67 (mg of KOH g 1 of oil); peroxide value, 7.29-8.47 meq kg -1 . Tocopherols (α, γ and δ) contents of the oils accounted for 653.0-696.5, 2.13-3.33 and 1.01-1.11 mg kg -1 , respectively. The major fatty acids of the tested oils were: linoleic acid (29.90-31.70%), palmitic acid (29.50-31.20%), oleic acid (26.6928.19%) and stearic acid (4.90-6.10%). A small amount of cylcopropaneoctanoic acid with contribution up to 2.0% was also established. Most of the studied parameters of Sabz Pari and Punjab-8 H.esculentus seed oils were quite comparable with those of typical Hibiscus seed oils reported in the literature.
22 citations
01 Aug 2011
TL;DR: Yang et al. as mentioned in this paper used thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) to study the kinetics of empty fruit bunch (EFB) and palm shell (PS) by considering different temperature region for first order kinetic reaction.
Abstract: Malaysia is the largest producer of palm oil and contributes 43% of worldwide production (Shuit et al., 2009). Beside palm oil, palm oil industry generated 169.72 million metric tons solid wastes which contribute 85.5% of total biomass waste produced in the country (Khan et al., 2010). This huge amount of wastes can be converted into valuable chemical feed stocks and fuels due to environmental problems associated with conventional fossil fuels. It is well known that lignocellulosic biomass mainly consists of hemicellulose, cellulose and lignin. The usual proportions (wt%) vary as 40-50% cellulose, 20-60% hemicellulose and 1025% lignin (Yang et al., 2007). The thermal decomposition of these individuals is important since they influence the basics of thermochemical conversion processes such as pyrolysis, combustion and gasification. Decomposition of these components is intensively studied in the literature. Demirbas et al. (2001) observed the ease of lignocellulosic biomass components decomposition as hemicellulose > cellulose >>> lignin. Based on different reasoning, Yang et al. (2007) proposed different decomposition regions of 220-300 °C, 300340 °C and >340 °C for hemicellulose, cellulose and lignin, respectively. Lignin is the last to decompose due to its heavy cross linked structure (Guo & Lua, 2001). Several techniques are available to study the kinetics of biomass decomposition. Among these, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) is the most popular and simplest technique (Luangkiattikhun et al., 2008), based on the observation of sample mass loss against time or temperature at a specific heating rate. TGA provides high precision (Va rhegyi et al., 2009), fast rate data collection and high repeatability (Yang et al., 2004) under well defined kinetic control region. Very few attempts have been carried out to study the kinetics of empty fruit bunch (EFB) and palm shell (PS) using TGA. Guo & Lua (2001) presented the effect of sample particle size and heating rate on pyrolysis process and kinetic parameters for PS. They concluded a first order reaction mechanism for the decomposition of PS at different heating rates. They also suggested higher heating rates for faster and easy thermal decomposition of PS. Yang et al. (2004) studied activation energy for decompositions of hemicellulose and cellulose in EFB and PS by considering different temperature region for first order kinetic reaction. They evaluated average activation energy and pre-exponential factor from single-step decompositions of hemicellulose and cellulose. Luangkiattikhun et al. (2008) considered the
12 citations