Anatomical characterization of 18 commercially important varieties of Phoenix dactylifera L. by using microscopy

Pollen morphology of selected melliferous plants and its taxonomic implications using microscopy

This research aimed to explore the melliferous bee flora pollen from arid zones of District Attock, Islamabad Capital and Rawalpindi. Morpho-palynological features has provided key information for the classification and help to explain the taxonomy of several genera and species. Therefore, in this work, we examined the morphological characters of pollen potentially to be used for the species delimitation of bee flora. A total of 18 bee floral species, classified into 12 different families were collected, pressed, identified and then acetolyized to observe the grains under microscopy. Bee pollen can be described by small, medium to large sized morphotypes presenting five types of shapes, prolate spheroidal in (seven species), sub-prolate (six species), oblate spheroidal (three species), oblate and prolate (one species each) was examined. The observed polar and equatorial diameter were found maximum in Zea mays 73.5 μm and Pelargonium inquinans 66.75 μm respectively. Pollen of six different types was found namely: tricolporate, 3-zonocolporate, monoportae, tetracolporate, tetraporate and mononsulcate. Whereas highest value of colpi length was measured in Grewia tenax (24.55 μm). Exine surface nature of pollen was examined echinate psilate and scabrate. Exine thickness noted to be maximum in Verbena tenuisecta (8.40 μm) and minimum in Citrus macrocarpa (0.4 μm). Bee floral species considered difficult to identify based on other morphological traits were successfully distinguished using pollen quantitative and qualitative traits, confirming the importance of pollen morphology to diagnose characters to correctly identify honeybee flora.

Microscopic techniques for fabrication of polyethersulfone thin-film nanocomposite membranes intercalated with UiO-66-SO3 H for heavy metal ions removal from water

Environmental remediation of heavy metals from wastewater is becoming popular area in the field of membrane technology. Heavy metals are toxic in nature and have ability to bioaccumulate in water bodies. In current study, zirconium-based metal organic frameworks (MOFs), that is, UiO-66 and UiO-66-SO₃ H with a mean diameter of 200 nm were synthesized and intercalated into polyethersulfone (PES) substrate to fabricate thin-film nanocomposite (TFN) membranes via an interfacial polymerization (IP) method. TFN membranes exhibit higher selectivity and permeability as compared to thin-film composite (TFC) membranes for heavy metals, such as cadmium (Cd) and mercury (Hg). Zirconium-based MOFs are highly stable in water and due to smaller pore size enhanced hydrophilicity of TFN membranes. In addition, TFN membrane with functionalized MOF (UiO-66-SO₃ H) performed best as compared to TFC and TFN with UiO-66 MOF. The effect of loading of different weight percentages (wt%) of both MOFs for TFN membranes was also investigated. The TFN membranes with loading (0.2 wt%) of UiO-66-SO₃ H displayed highest permeability of 9.57 LMH/bar and notable rejections of 90% and 87.7% toward Cd and Hg, respectively. To our best understanding, it is the first study of intercalating functionalized UiO-66-SO₃ H in TFC membranes by IP and their application on heavy metals especially Cd and Hg.