The aim of this study is to compare the tolerance mechanisms of two industrial tomato varieties (X5671R and 5MX12956) under drought stress. 14 days-old tomato seedlings were subjected to 7 days-long drought stress by withholding irrigation. The effects of stress were determined by enzymatic and non-enzymatic parameters. The physiological damages were evaluated via lipid peroxidation ratio, total protein content, relative water content, chlorophyll content and proline accumulation. Enzymatic responses were determined by biochemical analysis and electrophoresis of SOD, APX, POX and CAT enzymes. Relative water contents of X5671R and 5MX12956 varieties at 7th day of drought were decreased to 8.4 and 12.2%, respectively. Applied drought decreased all photosynthetic pigments of X5671R and 5MX12956 varieties during the treatment period significantly comparing to the Day 0 as the control. Total protein content, lipid peroxidation and proline accumulation presented increased values in both varieties in accordance with the increasing stress intensity. According to lipid peroxidation analysis, 5MX12956 tomato variety was found more drought sensitive than X5671R variety. Antioxidative enzyme activities showed increases in both varieties as a response to drought stress, although CAT and APX activities presented decrease on the 7th day of applied stress. 7 days long drought stress differentially altered POX, APX and SOD isozyme patterns. Same POX bands were observed in both varieties with different band intensities. However, main isozyme pattern differences were obtained for SOD and APX. APX1, Fe-SOD and Cu/Zn-SOD2 isozyme bands should be evaluated to define their main role in the tolerance mechanism of both tomato varieties.

Coronavirus disease 2019 or COVID‐19 caused by novel coronavirus/severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‐CoV‐2 or 2019‐nCoV) is an ongoing pandemic that has emerging global effects and requires rapid and reliable diagnostic testing. Quantitative reverse transcription‐polymerase chain reaction (q‐RT‐PCR) is the gold standard method for SARS‐CoV‐2 detections. On the other hand, new approaches remedy the diagnosis difficulties gradually. Reverse transcription loop‐mediated isothermal amplification (RT‐LAMP) as one of these novel approaches may also contribute to faster and cheaper field‐based testing. The present study was designed to evaluate this rapid screening diagnostic test that can give results in 30–45 min and to compare the effectiveness of LAMP to the q‐RT‐PCR. The 30 randomly chosen patient samples were generated by nasopharyngeal swabs with a portion of the SARS‐CoV‐2 nucleic sequence. The sample of quantification cycle (Cq) values was tested using RT‐LAMP as well as by conventional q‐RT‐PCR. The patient samples were tested with four different kits (SENSObiz COVID‐19 [SARS‐CoV‐2] LAMP Assay, the QIAseq DIRECT SARS‐CoV‐2 kit, Biospeedy SARS‐CoV‐2 Variant Plus kit, and CoVirion‐CV19‐2 SARS‐CoV‐2 OneStep RT‐PCR kit) and two different PCR devices (GDS Rotor‐Gene Q Thermocycler and Inovia Technologies GenX series). Based on 30 patient samples, the positive/negative ratio (P/N) was 30/0 as Biospeedy and Covirion (positivity 100%), 28/2 as Qiagen kit (positivity 93.3%) for the samples studied on the Inovia device while the same samples on the Rotor‐Gene device were 30/0 as Biospeedy and Covirion (positivity 100%), 29/1 as Qiagen kit at the first day (96.7%). On the fifth day, the samples were studied in the Inovia device and the respective results were obtained: 27/3 as Biospeedy (positivity 90%), 16/14 as Qiagen (positivity 53.3%), 28/2 as Covirion kit (positivity 93.3%). When these samples were studied in the Rotor‐Gene device, it was 29/1 in Biospeedy and Covirion (positivity 96.7%), 19/11 in the Qiagen kit (positivity 63.3%). When these samples were compared with the LAMP method it was found to be 19/11 (positivity 63.3%) on the first day and 18/12 (positivity 60%) on the fifth day. SARS‐CoV‐2 test studies will contribute to a proactive approach to the development of rapid diagnosis systems. The LAMP approach presents promising results to monitor exposed individuals and also improves screening efforts in potential ports of entry.

Soybean, which has many foods, feed, and industrial raw material products, has relatively limited genetic diversity due to the domestication practices which mainly focused on higher yield for many centuries. Besides, cleistogamy in soybean plant reduces genetic variations even further. Improving genetic variation in soybean is crucial for breeding applications to improve traits such as higher yield, early maturity, herbicide, and pest resistance, lodging and shattering resistance, seed quality and composition, abiotic stress tolerance and more. In the 21st century, there are numerous alternatives from conventional breeding to biotechnological approaches. Among these, mutation breeding is still a major method to produce new alleles and desired traits within the crop genomes. Physical and chemical mutagen protocols are still improving and mutation breeding proves its value to be fast, flexible, and viable in crop sciences. In the verge of revolutionary genome editing era, induced mutagenesis passed important cross-roads successfully with the help of emerging supportive NGS based-methods and non-destructive screening approaches that reduce the time-consuming labor-intensive selection practices of mutation breeding. Induced mutagenesis will retain its place in crop science in the next decades, especially for plants such as soybean for which cross breeding is limited or not applicable.

The number of approaches related to recombinant protein production in plants is increasing rapidly day by day. Plant-based expression offers a safe, cost-effective, scalable, and potentially limitless way to rapidly produce recombinant proteins. Plant systems, which have significant advantages over animal and yeast recombinant protein production systems, are particularly promising for the large-scale production of antibodies and therapeutic proteins. Molecular pharming with transgenic plant systems become prominent among other production systems with its low cost, absence of human or animal pathogen contaminants, and the ability to use post-translational modifications such as glycosylation. The ability to produce recombinant pharmaceutical proteins in plant seeds, plant cells and various plant tissues such as hairy roots and leaves, through the stable transformation of the nuclear genome or transient expression, allows for the establishment of different production strategies. In particular, the rapid production of candidate proteins by transient expression, which eliminates the need for lengthy transformation and regeneration procedures, has made plants an attractive bioreactor for the production of pharmaceutical components. This chapter aimsto exhibit the current plant biotechnology applications and transgenic strategies used for the production of recombinant antibodies, antigens, therapeutic proteins and enzymes, which are used especially in the treatment of various diseases.

Humankind interfered in the natural selection of plants in favor of traits such as yield, grain quality, productivity, and flavor principally at the expense of several biotic and abiotic stress tolerance capacities. Plants are subjected to the detrimental effects of the combination of these factors due to their stationary nature. Today, there are various breeding approaches from classical to transgenesis and even genome editing to tame plant genome for our purposes. Additionally, the significance of epigenetic regulation in response to biotic and abiotic stresses has been recognized in the last decade. Acquisition and preservation of stress memory for the progeny to allow them to adapt to similar conditions through methylation, histone modification, and chromatin structure alterations are the focus of attention. Enlightening the cross talk between these components of acquired transgenerational memory may aid to breed more efficient and environmentally friendly crops in current agricultural systems. Priming applications have been extensively studied to induce stress memory of the plant by external stimulus as a warning signal, which may ignite minor activations of stress-responsive gene expression and eventually turn into strong resistance. The present chapter will discuss the basis and the recent advances in plant epigenetic regulation with emphasis on chemical, biotic, and abiotic priming agents.