Birla Institute of Technology and Science

About: Birla Institute of Technology and Science is a education organization based out in Pilāni, Rajasthan, India. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Computer science & Population. The organization has 8897 authors who have published 13947 publications receiving 170008 citations.

Grape Disease Detection Network Based on Multi-Task Learning and Attention Features

Abstract: The disease-free growth of a plant is highly influential for both environment and human life. However, there are numerous plant diseases such as viruses, fungus, and micro-organisms that affect the growth and agricultural production of a plant. Grape esca, black-rot, and isariopsis are multi-symptomatic soil-borne diseases. Often, these diseases may cause leaves drop or sometimes even vanishes the plant/plant vicinity. Hence, early detection and prevention becomes necessary and must be treated on time for better grape growth and productivity. The state-of-the-art either involve classical computer vision techniques such as edge detection/segmentation or regression-based object detection applied over UAV images. In addition, the treatment is not viable until detected leaves are classified for actual disease/symptoms. This results in increased time and cost consumption. Therefore, in this paper, a grape leaf disease detection network (GLDDN) is proposed that utilizes dual attention mechanisms for feature evaluation, detection, and classification. At evaluation stage, the experimentation performed over benchmark dataset confirms that disease detection network could be fairly befitting than the existing methods since it recognizes as well as detects the infected/diseased regions. With the proposed disease detection mechanism, we achieved an overall accuracy of 99.93% accuracy for esca, black-rot and isariopsis detection.

Two rice plasma membrane intrinsic proteins, OsPIP2;4 and OsPIP2;7, are involved in transport and providing tolerance to boron toxicity

Abstract: Boron (B) toxicity is responsible for low cereal crop production in a number of regions worldwide. In this report, we characterized two rice genes, OsPIP2;4 and OsPIP2;7, for their involvement in B permeability and tolerance. Transcript analysis demonstrated that the expression of OsPIP2;4 and OsPIP2;7 were downregulated in shoots and strongly upregulated in rice roots by high B treatment. Expression of both OsPIP2;4 and OsPIP2;7 in yeast HD9 strain lacking Fps1, ACR3, and Ycf1 resulted in an increased B sensitivity. Furthermore, yeast HD9 strain expressing OsPIP2;4 and OsPIP2;7 accumulated significantly higher B as compared to empty vector control, which suggests their involvement in B transport. Overexpression of OsPIP2;4 and OsPIP2;7 in Arabidopsis imparted higher tolerance under B toxicity. Arabidopsis lines overexpressing OsPIP2;4 and OsPIP2;7 showed significantly higher biomass production and greater root length, however there was no difference in B accumulation in long term uptake assay. Short-term uptake assay using tracer B (¹⁰B) in shoots and roots demonstrated increased ¹⁰B accumulation in Arabidopsis lines expressing OsPIP2;4 and OsPIP2;7, compare to wild type control plants. Efflux assay of B in the roots showed that ¹⁰B was effluxed from the Arabidopsis transgenic plants overexpressing OsPIP2;4 or OsPIP2;7 during the initial 1-h of assay. These data indicate that OsPIP2;4 and OsPIP2;7 are involved in mediating B transport in rice and provide tolerance via efflux of excess B from roots and shoot tissues. These genes will be highly useful in developing B tolerant crops for enhanced yield in the areas affected by high B toxicity.

Tunable Superlattice in Graphene To Control the Number of Dirac Points

Abstract: Superlattice in graphene generates extra Dirac points in the band structure and their number depends on the superlattice potential strength. Here, we have created a lateral superlattice in a graphene device with a tunable barrier height using a combination of two gates. In this Letter, we demonstrate the use of lateral superlattice to modify the band structure of graphene leading to the emergence of new Dirac cones. This controlled modification of the band structure persists up to 100 K.