Morphological characteristics and flavonoid accumulation of Echinacea purpurea cultivated at various salinity

Choirunnisa JP, Widiyastuti Y, Sakya AT, Yunus A. 2021. Morphological characteristics and flavonoid accumulation of Echinacea purpurea cultivated at various salinity. Biodiversitas 22: 3716-3721. Purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea (L.) Moench) is an introduced medicinal plant from North America. E. purpurea has high morphological characteristics on stems, leaves and flowers. This plant has not much cultivated as a raw material for traditional medicine in Indonesia due to not much information about flavonoid accumulation of E. purpurea in this country. The purpose of this research was to study morphological characteristics from three accessions of E. purpurea cultivated with various salinity and to select E. purpurea accessions that have high flavonoid accumulation. This study design using a factorial Completely Randomized Design (CRD). The first factor is 3 accessions of E. purpurea (E1; E2; E3). The second factor is 4 levels of CaCl2 (0 ppm; 2500 ppm; 5000 ppm; 10000 ppm). The study was conducted by observing the morphological characteristics of stems, leaves flowers, and herb extract and flavonoid accumulation were analyzed using SPSS. The results demonstrated that morphological characteristics are easy to observed on leaf shape and flower color. The highest herb extract with 10.043% and flavonoid accumulation with 0.510% were in accession 2 with the addition of CaCl2 concentration of 10000 ppm. This study concludes that there are morphological characteristics of E. purpurea cultivated at various salinity and the highest CaCl2 concentration can increase with significance to herb extract and flavonoid accumulation.

The Effect of Calcium Chloride on Drought Tolerance of Mulberry

Drought stress greatly affects the quality and yield of mulberry leaves, which eventually influences the production of silkworm cocoon. In this study, the effect of calcium chloride on drought tolerance of mulberry was investigated. Different concentrations of CaCl2 solutions were sprayed on the leaves of mulberry under drought condition, and the physiological and biochemical responses were measured. As a result, the spray of CaCl2 on leaves (CaCl2-spray-on-leaves) was proved to have gradual increases in measure parameters as compared to CaCl2-untreated case under the same drought condition; furthermore, 20mM CaCl2-treated group showed a significant increase (P<0.05), which indicates the optimal CaCl2 concentration for improving the drought tolerance of mulberry. This study demonstrated that CaCl2-spray-on-leaves can be an effective measure to ameliorate the drought tolerance of mulberry in the severe-drought areas.

DIFFUSION THROUGH SODIUM AND POLYMER ENHANCED BENTONITES EXPOSED TO DILUTE AND AGGRESSIVE SOLUTIONS

Chemical incompatibility between sodium bentonite (NaB) and aggressive waste solutions has led to the development of enhanced bentonites for geoenvironmental applications. Enhanced bentonites, such as bentonite-polyacrylic-acid composite (BPC), have been shown to maintain low enough values of hydraulic conductivity (e.g. < 10-10 m/s) for diffusion to be the dominant transport mechanism, even upon exposure to aggressive solutions. However, quantification of diffusion properties of enhanced bentonites has been limited. In this study, apparent diffusion coefficients (Da) for chloride were measured for NaB and polymer enhanced NaBs. Diffusion tests were performed using dilute (5 mM) to aggressive (100 mM) calcium chloride (CaCl2) solutions. In addition, scanning electron microscopy was performed to support interpretation of diffusion results. For CaCl2 solutions < 100 mM, Da values for BPC were lower (by approximately half an order of magnitude) than Da values for NaB. However, differences in Da due to polymer enhancement diminished as CaCl2 concentration increased. Predicted steady-state flux through a BPC geosynthetic clay liner (GCL) was dominated by diffusion and up to two orders of magnitude lower than flux through an NaB GCL. These results provide insight regarding diffusion in polymer enhanced bentonites and expected performance of containment barriers with enhanced-bentonite GCLs.

Microencapsulation of Gac (Momordica cochinchinensis Spreng.) fruit oil in Ca-Alginate bead produced through Jetcutter

The Gac (Momordica cochinchinensis Spreng.) fruit oil was microencapsulated in Ca-Alginate bead by Jetcutter equipment. Experiments showed that the effects of emulsion preparation and equipment parameters were significant on particle size, microencapsulation yield, loading capacity and solids recovery efficiency of the device. At alginate concentration of 2.5%, the bead had a spherical size of 1.07 - 1.18 mm when the fluid flow was 14 mL/min and the rotation of the cutting disc was 400 - 800 rpm. Samples stored for 2 h after homogenization showed better microencapsulation yield (83 - 84%) and bead size (1.07 mm) than those stored for 24 h after homogenization (79% and 1.18 mm). When the loading capacity increased from 20% to 40%, the mole ratio (CaCl2-alginate) in the bead was reduced from 1.55 to 0.86. This mole ratio data can be considered to control and adjust CaCl2 concentration during the continuous operation of the Jetcutter.

Influence of Calcium Binding on Conformations and Motions of Anionic Polyamino Acids. Effect of Side Chain Length

Investigation of the effect of CaCl2 salt on conformations of two anionic poly(amino acids) with different side chain lengths, poly-(α-l glutamic acid) (PGA) and poly-(α-l aspartic acid) (PASA), was performed by atomistic molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The simulations were performed using both unbiased MD and the Hamiltonian replica exchange (HRE) method. The results show that at low CaCl2 concentration adsorption of Ca2+ ions lead to a significant chain size reduction for both PGA and PASA. With the increase in concentration, the chains sizes partially recover due to electrostatic repulsion between the adsorbed Ca2+ ions. Here, the side chain length becomes important. Due to the longer side chain and its ability to distance the charged groups with adsorbed ions from both each other and the backbone, PGA remains longer in the collapsed state as the CaCl2 concentration is increased. The analysis of the distribution of the mineral ions suggests that both poly(amino acids) should induce the formation of mineral with the same structure of the crystal cell.

Microencapsulation of Crude Folic Acid Extract from Chayote (Sechium edule Jacq. Swartz) with Ionic Gelation Method

Chayote is a plant which grow and develop throughout the year, contains of 93 mcg/100g folic acid. The aim of this research was to determine the ratio of sodium alginate with pectin and CaCl2 concentration coating to produce microcapsules of crude folic acid extract. Four phases of study was done, namely the manufacture of folic acid extract, manufacture of microcapsules with ionic gelation, analysis of folic acid content in the microcapsules, and the analysis of folic acid after storage of one week. Folic acid extract was made by maceration using alcohol 70% at pH 6, preparation of the microcapsules was using sodium alginate with pectin and folic acid was analysed using HPLC. Folic acid extract showed antioxidant activity of 98,1% with folic acid of 0,16 mg/kg. Microencapsulation of folic acid extract results showed the highest antioxidant activity was formed in alginate ratio of 70% to 30% pectin and CaCl2 concentration of 0.1 M i.e. 62.77 mg/kg. Folic acid is an antioxidant, highest antioxidant value folic acid was analyzed, treatment was in alginate ratio of 70% to 30% pectin and CaCl2 concenration at 0.1 M i.e. 3.06 mg/kg, after one week at room temperature is became 2.39 mg/kg.