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The biocontrol activity of two isolates of Candida membranifaciens against grey mold of apple fruit caused by Botrytis mali and their ability to induce biochemical defense responses in apple tissue were investigated. Apple fruit (Malus domestica) wounds were inoculated with 50 µl yeast suspension (1 × 10⁷ CFU/ml) of C. membranifaciens followed 4 h later by 20 µl of conidial suspension of B. mali (1 × 10⁵ conidia/ml). The apples were then incubated at 20 ºC for 8 days. Lesion diameter sizes were measured 4 and 8 days after pathogen inoculation. In addition to controlling grey mold, these two isolates of C. membranifaciens caused increases in peroxidase and β-1, 3-glucanase activities. These isolates also caused inhibition in catalase activity. The accumulation of phenolic compounds was increased in apple fruit treated with antagonists and inoculated with B. mali and reached its highest level 6 days after treatment. The ability of C. membranifaciens to affect H2O2-metobolizing enzymes and increase levels of β-1, 3-glucanase activity and phenolic compounds may be some of mechanisms responsible for its biocontrol activity.  

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In this study, the effect of carbon and nitrogen sources, on production of yeast biomass was determined as well as the efficacy of various formulations of Candida membranifaciens to decrease blue mold on apple. The media containing sugar cane molasses as carbon sources caused more yeast growth than the media supplemented with permeate powder. Yeast extract as nitrogen source produced higher biomass than urea and Corn steep liquor (CSL). The best growth was obtained in medium that composed of sugar cane molasses, yeast extract and CSL. Viability of C. membranifaciens differed in various carriers significantly (p < 0.01). The number of viable cells in Kaolin and Talc-based formulations was gradually reduced whereas the viability in wheat bran based formulations increased in 4 months and then gradually declined. In general, the formulations stored at 4 °C had longer shelf life than those stored at 24 °C. The antagonistic efficacy of prepared formulations of C. membranifaciens was evaluated against Penicillium expansum on apple at storage conditions. There were no significant differences among Talc-based, Kaolin-based and Wheat bran-based formulations of C. membranifaciens in reduction of blue mold.

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Trichoderma harzianum (T39), T.virens (DAR74290), T.viride (MO), T. harzianum (M) and TrichderminB a commercial formulation of T. harzianum(Bi) were evaluated as potential biological agents for the control of charcoal stem rot in melon caused by Macrophomina phaseolina. Cell-free metabolites of T. harzianum(M), T. harzianum (T39) and T. virens (DAR 74290) inhibited growth of M. phaseolina completely in vitro and appeared to be fungicidal. T. viride (MO) inhibited fungal growth from 34.9% to 71%. T. harzianum (T39), T. harzianum (M), T. virens (DAR 74290), T. viride(MO) and T. harzianum (Bi) were tested for their ability to protect melon plants from disease caused by M. phaseolina in a glasshouse experiment. The percentage of stand plants with the antagonist alone or in combination with the pathogen was significantly (p<0.05) greater than in plants inoculated with the pathogen alone. The percentages for the stand plants in treatments were as follows: T. harzianum (T39), T. harzianum (M), T. virens (DAR 74290), M. phaseolina, M. phaseolina + T. virens (DAR 74290), M. phaseolina + T. harzianum (T39) and M. phaseolina + T. harzianum (M),at 95, 100, 97.5, 15, 64.25, 75.25 and 47.55 percent respectively. The percentage for the stand plant in the commercial Trichodermin B + M. phaseolina treatment (96.7%) was greater than for M. phaseolina alone (46.7%) and demonstrated the best result in the control of charcoal stem rot in melon.

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This study aimed to evaluate the antagonistic activity of some fungal and bacterial isolates against Botrytis cinerea, the causal agent of tomato gray mold disease. For this purpose, out of six fungal isolates obtained from the gray mold symptoms on tomato and melon, isolates B1 and B2 were selected based on the pathogenicity test result for the in vitro and in vivo experiments. These isolates were identified as Botrytis cinerea based on morphological and molecular information (ITS sequence). In dual culture test of two bacterial and six antagonistic fungal isolates, Trichoderma harzianum T1 and Bacillus subtilis B43 with up to 60% and 71.54% of inhibition levels, respectively, were the most efficient treatments to limit fungal growth. In volatile compounds tests, isolates T1 and B43 inhibited pathogen mycelia growth up to 95.98 and 100%, respectively. The results of the secondary metabolites test showed that B. subtilis B43 inhibited pathogen mycelium growth by 98%. In vivo experiments showed that the isolates T1 and B43 controlled gray mold of tomato effectively, and the average inhibition rates were more than 60%. None of the antagonistic isolates significantly affected the height, fresh and dry weight of whole parts of the plants compared to healthy control.

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Fungal endophytes are defined as microorganisms with the ability to colonize plants asymptomatically throughout or at least a significant part of their life cycle, thereby establishing a plant-fungal association. In the present study, 44 plant samples, including healthy and symptomless fruit, leaf and branch samples, were collected from Eucalyptus trees located in Tehran, Qom, Alborz, Esfahan, and Mazandaran provinces to isolate and identify the endophytic fungi. Among 170 fungal isolates from collected plant samples, two species were new based on morphological and molecular phylogeny of the ITS rDNA for the Funga of Iran, including Phaeophleospora eucalypticola and Pseudosydowia eucalypti. Furthermore, both species are reported for the first time as endophytic fungi of eucalyptus trees in the world.

 

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This article studies semantic development of pronominal clitics in adnominal possessive constructions of New Persian (NP), i.e. 10th to 20th centuries. Although the structure of Persian possessive constructions has received attention in the previous literature, their semantic development is poorly noted. Since clitical possessors in adnominal constructions are not observed before NP, the investigation of their development will be beneficiary to understand semantic development of possession. A historical corpus of 500,000 words from prose texts of this period is investigated from which 1952 examples including clitical possessors are extracted. According to Heine (1977), Nikiforidou (1991), Koptjevskaja Tamm (2002), and Lehmann (2002), 21 meaning relations for possessive constructions with clitical possessors are introduced and the frequencies of each relation in the corpus and per century are represented. The diachronic investigation shows that the meaning relations are not distributed equally in various centuries but demonstrate a transfer from more concrete to more abstract relations. The body part and kinship relations are the most frequent which together with ownership are introduced as basic meanings of possessive constructions. Based on the semantic extension map of genitive structures introduced by Nikiforidou (1991), a map of semantic development of the above mentioned constructions is depicted with modifications. Moreover, the study shows that the third person singular and then first singular pronominal clitics have the most frequent usage in the corpus. In addition to contributing to understanding of semantic development of possession, the findings also represent linguistic criteria for stylistic analysis and dating of NP manuscripts.
1. Introduction
This article studies semantic development of pronominal clitics (PCs) as possessors of pertensive constructions in New Persian (NP). The structure of the adnominal possessive constructions in this language is pertensive, not genitive, since it is the head of the construction, the possessee, that is either marked by an ezafeh particle followed by a nominal or pronominal possessor, or marked by a clitical possessor. Since clitical possessors in adnominal constructions are not observed before NP, the investigation of their development during NP will be beneficiary to understand semantic development of possession.

2. Literature Review
In the previous literature, there are many studies trying to categorize different meaning relations represented by possessive constructions. However, there have been disagreements on which possessive relations depict basic meaning of possession and how different meanings are related to or derived from each other. Some consider ownership as basic meaning but others show that whole-part and/or kinship are more basic. Nikiforidou (1991) discusses that various meanings are derived based on metaphoric mapping and by studying European languages introduces a map of semantic extention for genitive structures which will be an starting point in our analysis. 

3. Methodology
Since the study is diachronic, the data are of written type and only the prose texts of NP period, 10th to 20th centuries, are studied. From each century, three manuscripts with different authors are selected. The corpus consists of about 500000 words, including 15000 words per manuscript, from which 1952 adnominal possessive constructions including clitical possessors are extracted. Their semantic relations are represented based on the descriptions in Heine (1977), Nikiforidou (1991), Koptjevskaja-Tamm (2002) and Lehmann (2002). The frequencies of the semantic relations per century in addition to their growth are demonstrated and a semantic map of their development is depicted based on the semantic extension map of genitive structures introduced by Nikiforidou (1991), but with modifications.

4. Results
The analyses show that the most frequent relations encoded by the possessive PCs in the whole corpus and per century are body-part and kinship relations, with 60% of the sample in total. The ownership relation includes only 5% of the data. All semantic relations show increase of usage through centuries and some are rare or recent. Figure (1) demonstrates frequencies of different semantic relations in total.

Figure 1.
Frequency of semantic relations in possessive constructions with clitical possessor
 

Moreover, a transfer from more concrete to more abstract concepts to be included in possessive relations is detected. This is more observable for the whole-part relation where the more abstract concepts of partitivity or quantification are not used sooner than 15th century (Fig 2).

Figure 2
Varieties of semantic relations with frequencies in whole-part constructions

This issue is also supported with the data showing that the 3sg PC has the most frequent usage, 70%, in the corpus and covers the most variety of the semantic relations. Figure 3 depicts frequencies of different person and number freatures of the PCs.
 

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Change in the concrete temperature causes the expansion of the concrete to become tensile stress. The risk of concrete cracking decreases with decreasing coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) under temperature changes. In this research, in order to investigate the effect of mineral admixtures on the coefficient of thermal expansion, concrete and cement paste samples containing silica fume, metakaolin and slag with a constant ratio of water to cement materials and the amount of cement materials have been made, and compressive strength, total porosity, Pore size distribution and coefficient of thermal expansion of the samples have been examined. The results indicated that CTE of reference concrete had a descending trend up to 60 days, and diminished by 12%, after which it remained constant. On the other hand, in the slag-containing concrete, after 60 days, the descending trend started and declined by 10% up to 120 days. For the concrete containing silica and metakaolin, at the very early ages, it had 14% less CTE as compared to reference concrete, while with the ageing of the sample, its CTE dropped by around 8%. Across all concretes, reduction of CTE was associated with lowered total porosity. Utilize the experimental data, a model for predicting the coefficient of thermal expansion of concrete at different ages is presented using concrete thermal expansion coefficient at 7-day age. In the following, the relationship between CTE and compressive strength, total porosity and the average diameter of pores has been investigated, which has the highest correlation between the coefficient of thermal expansion and the diameter of pores.