Many sewage waste treatment systems are aiming for complete pathogen removal which necessitates search for novel approaches that does not harm the environment. One such novel approach is exploring the possibilities of bacteriophages for pathogen removal. Hospital wastewater was collected from different locations of Tamil Nadu and used for the study. The total heterotroph and total coliform population ranged from 1.6 × 105 to 8.3 × 106 per mL and from 1.2 × 103 to 1.6 × 103/ 100 mL of sample respectively. Higher frequency of antibiotic resistant E. coli, Pseudomonas sp. Streptococcus sp and Bacillus spp were observed in all the places, which clearly indicated the extent of pollution. All the samples had specific phages against E. coli and none of the samples had phages against MTCC culture. E. coli specific phage was isolated and the population of phage required for effective killing of E. coli has been standardized as 3 × 104 pfu / mL of lysate. The inoculation resulted in 100% removal of pathogen from sewage water within 14 hours of incubation.

A study was carried out to evaluate the effect of elevated tropospheric ozone concentration on 15 rice cultivars. The cultivars were exposed to a weighted average ozone concentration of 51 ppb ±10% (10:00–17:00 h) for 30 days on its reproductive stage. On an average, elevated ozone significantly affects photosynthetic rate (−19.23%), stomatal conductance (−21.35%) and the contents of chlorophyll (−27.19%), malondialdehyde (+121.43%), proline (+98.38%), and ascorbic acid (−20.99%) over the control. Linear multiregression 3D model significantly fits the leaf traits related to leaf injury percentage which in turn affects all photosynthetic traits. The maximum R² = 0.85*** was observed between photosynthetic rate, chlorophyll content, and leaf injury percentage. Rice cultivars exhibited significant interspecies variation in physiological and biochemical traits under elevated ozone. Among the tested rice cultivars, the multivariate analysis confirmed the Rice CO51, Anna(R)4, CO47, PMK(R)3, and Rice TPS5 were ozone tolerant. For the first time in South India, the study on response of rice cultivars to elevated ozone was done, which might support the rice breeders for selecting suitable donor parents for future climate change scenarios.