14^th Annual Conference on Crop Science and Agriculture November 29-30, 2018 Bali, Indonesia

Hendrika Fourie is a Researcher and Lecturer at the North-West University, South Africa. She has published more than 40 scientifi c articles in accredited, peerreviewed journals and serves as an Editorial Board Member. Her research is interdisciplinary, such as plant and animal biodiversity, botany, molecular biology and zoology are integrated in projects.

Nematode problems experienced by local grain producers escalated during the past decade. Reducing nematode-pest populations, particularly in maize-based cropping systems, is becoming increasingly diffi cult and pose a serious challenge. Despite the application of highly eff ective, registered nematicides, extremely high population densities of particularly rootknot nematodes have been recorded from roots/other below-ground plant parts of crops. No single nematode management strategy, not even application of the most eff ective chemical nematicide, is in many cases successful in reducing extremely high root-knot nematode population densities. Alternative and supplementary strategies have to be exploited and their application carefully planned to complement the responsible use of nematicides. Th is will assist producers to minimize quality and yield crop losses, and conserve soils. One such strategy that should be relied on in particular is the use of root-knot nematode resistant or poor-host cultivars, while the practice of traditional crop rotation has to be revisited. Removal of weeds also has to receive priority since many weed species maintain root-knot nematodes, particularly during warmer winters. Th ese and other practices are discussed for use in combination with the limited number of nematicides registered on grain crops in South Africa. Producers and related industries have to accept that nematode pests represent a defi nite production constraint and that these pests hamper the sustainable production of crops, and most importantly adversely aff ecting food security.

Iqbal Munir is working as the Director of the Institute of Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering, the University of Agriculture Peshawar, Pakistan and runs several projects on biofuel production using transgenic technology. He has expertise in enzymology and plant biotechnology. He has established the Biochemical and Molecular Division at the Institute of Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering.

Energy crises along with environmental concerns are driving researchers to develop viable alternative fuels from renewable resources. Th e use of Brassica juncea oil as an alternative fuel suff ers from problems such as high viscosity, low volatility and poor cold temperature properties. Th e seed of Euonymus alatus produces low viscosity oil having unusual Triacylglycerol (TAGs) called acetyl Triacylglycerol (acTAGs) where the sn-3 position is esterifi ed with acetate instead of a long chain fatty acid. The enzyme Euonymous alatus diacyl glycerol acetyl transfrase (EaDacT) present in these plants is an acetyl transferase that catalyzes the transfer of an acetyl group from acetyl-CoA to Diacylglycerol (DAG) to produce acTAG. In order to reduce the viscosity of Brassica juncea oil by synthesizing acTAG, we have developed an effi cient and simple agrobacterium mediated floral dip transformation method to generate transgenic Brassica juncea plants. A binary vector containing the EaDacT gene under the transcriptional control of a glycinin promoter and with a basta selection marker was transformed into Agrobacterium tumefaciens strain GV-3101 through electroporation. Basta is a herbicide which is used as a selection marker to allow us to conveniently screen very young transgenic plants from a large number of untransformed plants. Th e basta resistant putative transgenic plants were further confi rmed by PCR. Biochemical analyses of the transgenic B. juncea seed revealed modifi edfatty acids profi le having no acetyl TAGs. Alternative strategy is in process to silence genes encoding enzymes DGAT/PDAT along with overexpression of EaDAcT, that will hopefully produce acetyl TAGs.