In the present study, pine needles waste was used as the cost- effective carbon source for hydrolytic enzymes production by a potential fungal strain Trichoderma sp. R4 for the further purification process. The culture filtrate was subsequently partially purified by ammonium sulfate precipitation at 40% saturation level of laccase, 40% CMCase, 60% FPase, 50% β-glucosidase and 70% xylanase with purification fold of 3.06 (laccase), 2.20 (cellulase) and 1.59 (xylanase) with 82.94, 62.43 and 63.24 % recovery yield respectively. Gel exclusion chromatography was done for the purification of hydrolytic enzymes with 5.36, 5.51 and 6.33 purification fold and 45.77, 61.33 and 60.23 % recovery yield for laccase, cellulase and xylanase respectively. The molecular mass of purified laccase (40.0 KDa), cellulase – CMCase (45.0 KDa), FPase (31.0 KDa), β-glucosidase (29.0 KDa) and xylanase (65.0 KDa) was obtained by using SDS-PAGE. The maximum enzymatic degradation of pine needles was obtained in purified fractions of enzymes of Trichoderma sp. R4 with a release of 76.75 mg/g reducing sugars.

Lifestyle diseases are very common in today’s scenario because of people’s unhealthy dietary patterns or routine activity which leads to the development of chronic diseases such as diabetes mellitus, heart diseases, obesity, chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases, different types of cancer etc. To assess the nutritional and health status, the experiment was conducted on a total of 40 respondents (21 male and 19 female) above 45 years in Pusa block through personal interviews with the help of a schedule containing a questionnaire related to their general information, occupation, health complications, anthropometric indices, biochemical or physiological details etc. Most of the respondents were government employees (45 %) followed by private (7.50%), unemployed (32.50%) and retired (15%) persons. There were more cases of diabetes mellitus (27.50% male and 17.50% female) followed by heart diseases (7.50% male and 10% female) and obesity (5% male and 7.50% female). The Body Mass Index (BMI) of both males (25.62 kg/m²) and females (26.07 kg/m²) was more than the reference standard. Moreover, 37.50 per cent subjects (15% male and 22.50% female) were found to be anaemic whereas 15 subjects have pre-prandial blood glucose levels between 125-200 mg/dl and 20 subjects have postprandial blood glucose level between 200-300 mg/dl. The systolic (130.77 mm of Hg) and diastolic (87.55 mm of Hg) blood pressure of 9 subjects was also more than the reference standard. Therefore, to cope up with lifestyle consequences and chronic medical health complications, diet modification and healthy routine patterns are necessary to be followed.

Castor is a non-edible industrial oilseed crop. Castor seeds are used for domestic, medicinal, and industrial purposes. Castor oil is used in machinery and particularly high-speed engines and airplanes. The present study has been undertaken to identify the best Non-Linear model and yield prediction model using machine learning techniques for castor oil seed crops in Tamil Nadu. 30 years data was collected from Season and crop Report of Tamil Nadu for Castor oil seed crop from 1990-2020. The best-fitted model was chosen based on model selection criteria like the highest coefficient of determination (R²), and with the least MAPE, RMSE, and MAE values. The four nonlinear models are fitted for the Area & Production of Castor oil seed crops. The results indicate that the Sinusoidal model is found to be the best fit for Area and Production since it has a high R² value (0.91) and low RMSE value. According to the yield prediction model for castor oil seed crop, the Machines Learning models such as the Random forest model, Logistic Regression model, and Support Vector classifier models are considered. The study indicates that the Random Forest model is found to be the best-fitted model based on model performance metrics and the Actual vs predicted graph also clearly indicate the coincidence between the actual and predicted yield. Using these fitted models one could be able to study the trend for the Area and Production of oilseed crops in Tamil Nadu.

The present study aimed to develop a nutraceutical powder containing Bifidobacterium longum and to assess its viability after spray drying.  The nutraceutical powder was prepared using B.longum and prebiotics like inulin and honey, malted Eleusine coracana and whey protein concentrate. The mixture was then incubated for 4 hours and spray dried. The optimum inlet and outlet temperature were regulated at 170^oC and 70^oC respectively after assessing the viability of Bifidobacterium and the moisture content of the spray dried powder. The viability of the B.longum  before and after spray drying were 9.80 ± 0.014 and 8.926 ± 0.017 respectively and the estimated moisture content was 4.85 ± 0.022. The study also assessed the physical and proximate composition of the nutraceutical powder. The survival of Bifidobacterium during spray drying was a challenge during the preparation of the nutraceutical mix and was overcome by adding 5 percent of the inoculum to maintain the probiotic count.