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The list of forty one subgenera of the genus Andrena from Iran is given. The list provided here is based on a detailed study of all available published data. Four subgenera and five species are recorded for the first time from Iran, including Andrena (Cnemidandrena) fuscipes (Kirby, 1802), Andrena (Lepidandrena) curvungula (Thomson, 1870), Andrena (Lepidandrena) pandellei (Pérez, 1895), Andrena (Parandrena) sericata (Imhoff, 1868) and Andrena (Platygalandrena) tecta (Radoszkowski, 1876). Ecological notes on the newly recorded species are briefly discussed.

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Race-specific resistance of wheat to yellow rust caused by Puccinia striiformis f. sp. tritici has been reported as short-lived. Partial resistance, a kind of quantitative resistance, has been reported to be more stable. Partial resistance in terms of slow rusting parameters including final rust severity (FRS), apparent infection rate (r), relative area under disease progress curve (rAUDPC), and coefficient of infection (CI) was evaluated in a set of twenty six wheat genotypes along with susceptible control during 2010-2011 cropping year. This study was conducted in field plots at Ardabil Agricultural Research Station (Iran) under natural infection conditions with twice artificial inoculation. Artificial inoculation was carried out by yellow rust inoculum having virulence against Yr2, Yr6, Yr7, Yr9, Yr22, Yr23, Yr24, Yr25, Yr26, Yr27, YrA, and YrSU. Seedling reaction was also evaluated in greenhouse by using race 66E0A+, Yr27+. Results of mean comparison for resistance parameters showed that, lines C-89-4, C-89-17 and C-89-16 along with susceptible had the highest values of FRS, CI, r and rAUDPC, therefore were selected as moderately susceptible or susceptible lines. The lines C-89-7, C-89-8, C-89-9, C-89-10, C-89-13, C-89-14 and C-89-20 had susceptible reactions at seedling stage and low level infection at adult plant stage. Accordingly these lines with low level of different parameters supposed to be having gene/s for varying degrees of partial resistance or high temperature adult plant resistance (HTAP) that can be used for future manipulation in wheat improvement program after confirmatory studies. The remaining lines (except for C-89-2) were immune or had low level of infection. Thus, these were selected as resistant lines. In this study correlation coefficient between different parameters of slow rusting was highly significant. Based on the results, the reaction of the studied genotypes to stripe rust varied from sensitive to immune.

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Little is known about the levels and physiological role of endogenous abscisic acid (ABA) during after-ripening and germination. Genetic variants for ABA content were investigated to account for the role of ABA in the persistence of seed dormancy. In this study, genotypic variation in ABA contents at Zadok’s Growth Stage 92 (ZGS 92), temporal changes in ABA during two physiological stages (after-ripening and water uptake), and responsiveness of wheat seed to applied ABA at different concentrations, of two tetraploid and two hexaploid wheat genotypes were examined during 1996 and 97. A combined analysis of variance indicated no significant differences in ABA among genotypes at ZGS 92. During the early stages of germination, endogenous ABA in the caryopses of the four wheat genotypes was analyzed. The results showed a transient increase in ABA content (up to 4 hours) occurring first during imbibition, followed by a decline up to 12 hours and an increase thereafter. ABA declined in all genotypes during seven weeks of after-ripening (dry storage). The four genotypes had reductions in ABA up to 4 weeks of after-ripening. An increase in ABA was observed during the fourth and fifth weeks of after- ripening with a decline after seven weeks. ABA had a little effect on germination index at the lower temperature (10 °C). Our results suggested that wheat grains are able to synthesize ABA during imbibition. However, no significant differences between dormant and non-dormant genotypes were detected. A decrease in ABA during after-ripening could have a role in loss of seed dormancy.

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Pseudoparasitus talebii Nemati, Malekshah-koohi & Afshari n. sp. is described and illustrated based on female specimens collected from soil in Golestan province, Gorgan region, Iran. The definition of Pseudoparasitus oudemans is revised and new definition is presented.    

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Proper solubilization after precipitation and keeping the purified proteins in solution during the whole separation process are very critical to achieve accurate and high resolution patterns in two-dimensional gel electrophoresis (2-DE). Chaotropes and detergents are embedded in the sample and rehydration buffers in order to prevent hydrophobic interactions between the hydrophobic protein domains and avoid loss of proteins due to aggregation and precipitation. Unfortunately, detergents used for IEF must bear no net electrical charge and only week nonionic and zwitterionic detergents may be used in this process. Because of the low solubility of proteins at or very close to their isoelectric point, it seems that choice of chaotropes and detergents can dramatically affect on2D separations, especially in the case of very hydrophobic proteomes. Considering the physico-chemical heterogeneity of tear film protein content, it is deemed that solubilization can play an important role in 2D tear proteome analysis. So herein, we investigated the effect of some various detergents and chaotropes on the solubility of tear proteome during the sample preparation and IEF process. The results illustrated a very poor performance of non-ionic detergents (Triton­X-100 and Tween­80). Zwitterionic detergents (CHAPS and SB­3-10) had a better solubilization power and provided more reliable 2D maps. Last of all a great improvement in spot number and 2D resolution is achieved using a combination of urea/Thiourea in rehydration buffer and application of SDS in the sample buffer with a modified protocol, which ensures complete removal of anionic detergent during the first step of IEF and its replacement with the zwitterionic CHAPS.  

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Biological and demographic parameters of the mealybug ladybird, Cryptolaemus montrouzieri (Mulsant) were evaluated on citrus mealybug, Planococcus citri (Risso) and obscure mealybug, Pseudococcus viburni (Signoret) under 24 ± 2 ºC, 80 ± 5% relative humidity and a photoperiod of 16:8 (L: D) h. The mealybugs had a significant effect on developmental time and reproductive and demographic parameters of the ladybird. Life span (egg to adult death) was obtained 220.85 ± 5.78 and 119.44 ± 2.1 days when fed on Pl. citri and Ps. viburni, respectively. However, mean number of eggs per female (fecundity) and mean percent of egg hatching were significantly higher on Ps. viburni than on Pl. citri. In addition, values of intrinsic rate of increase (r_m), finite rate of increase (λ) andnet reproductive rate (R₀) were significantly higher on Ps. viburni than on Pl. citri.The values of intrinsic rate of increase were estimated 0.081and 0.094 day^-1 on Pl. citri and Ps. viburni, respectively. Results of this study suggested that the obscure mealybug is a more suitable prey than the citrus mealybug as the ladybird displayed shorter developmental time, and higher fecundity and growth rate when fed with obscure mealybug.  

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Tenothrips hispanicus (Bagnall) was collected from Fars province, south of Iran. This is the first report of the species from Iran. Characterization of the species, comparison with its close species, T. frici (Uzel) as well as their illustrations are provided.

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Yellow (stripe) rust caused by Puccinia striiformis f. sp. tritici is an important disease that threatens wheat production where the weather conditions are congenial and susceptible cultivars are present. Host resistance is the most economical and environmentally safe control method to manage wheat yellow rust; and slow rusting resistance, a kind of quantitative resistance, has been reported to have more durability. We planned an experiment aimed to evaluate resistance durability to yellow rust in some wheat cultivars. This study was conducted in field plots under natural infection conditions against race(s) populations of stripe rust believed to have virulence against Yr2, Yr6, Yr7, Yr8, Yr9, Yr10, Yr17, Yr18, Yr21, Yr22, Yr23, Yr24, Yr25, Yr26, Yr27, Yr31, Yr32, YrA and YrSU resistance genes. Slow rusting parameters, including final rust severity (FRS), apparent infection rate (r), relative area under disease progress curve (rAUDPC), and coefficient of infection (CI) were evaluated in a set of 50 wheat genotypes along with susceptible control during a seven-year study from 2008 to 2014. Seedling reaction was also evaluated under field conditions. Based on evaluated resistance parameters, the cultivars (entries: 34, 40-50) as well as susceptible check with the highest values of FRS, CI, r and rAUDPC, were considered as susceptible cultivars. Eight cultivars (entries: 1-7and 9) were resistant at the seedling and adult plant stages. Thirteen cultivars (entries: 13, 15, 16, 17, 20, 21, 24, 28, 29, 32, 33, 35, 37) showed resistance reaction at the seedling, but susceptible to moderate reactions at the adult plant stage. Sixteen cultivars (entries: 8 10, 11, 12, 14, 18, 19, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 30, 31, 38, 39) were susceptible at the seedling stage, and had moderately resistant to moderately susceptible reactions at the adult plant stage. Accordingly, these later cultivars with low level of slow rusting parameters were supposed to have gene(s) for varying degrees of slow rusting resistance or high temperature adult plant (HTAP) resistance. The remaining cultivars may have low level of slow rusting resistance that need further study to elucidate their nature of resistance. Cluster analysis of wheat cultivars revealed four major groups/clusters, based on slow rusting resistance parameters and seedling infection types.

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Total Factor Productivity (TFP) is a measure for assessing the productivity of a firm or organization. The level of productivity score of a firm shows that how the firm succeeds in optimizing the usage of sources and producing more outputs by certain level of inputs. Nowadays the productivity growth has a crucially important role in economics and firms competition. The industrial countries increase their outcomes not necessarily through more inputs but, by making growth in productivity. Some of the duties of executive organizations of Iran which is explained in the 4th program of development is to determine the productivity growth rate of the related products, organizing the programs, making some solutions for increasing the productivity such as that of GDP growth to be at least 31.3% and average growth of labor, capital and TFP to be at least 3.5%, 1%, 2.5% respectively. For achieving these targets, firstly, the productivity score should be calculated for every organization during previous periods of their activities. Then the effective factors of productivity growth should be determined and forecasted for the next period, to increase the productivity at least by 2.5%. In this paper we present a method based on productivity growth indexes and generalize inverse DEA. Using the proposed method, the productivity score of previous periods are calculated. Then the value of input and output changes for the next period is determined. This method is applied for a case study at National Iranian Oil Company

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The 1RS chromosome segment derived from Petkus rye carries genes for resistance to three wheat rust diseases, namely Lr26 for resistance to leaf rust (caused by Puccinia triticina), Yr9 for resistance to stripe rust (P.striiformis f. sp. tritici) and Sr31 for resistance to stem rust (P. graminis f. sp. tritici). Since Sec-1 is tightly linked with the three rust resis-tance genes electrophoresis it is a useful method to identify and confirm the presence of three rust resistance genes in current wheat populations. SDS-PAGE was used to examine eight Iranian wheat cultivars for resistance to three rusts. The eight Iranian wheat culti-vars examined were Alvand, Darab 2, Tajan, Nicknejad, Mahdavi, Zarrin, Alamoot and Atrak. The SDS-PAGE results showed that cultivars Mahdavi and Atrak have Sec-1 bands and are therefore likely to carry the 1BL.1RS translocation and the linked genes Yr9, Lr26 and Sr31.

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Background: Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) is the most common chronic inflammatory erosive joint disease with the worldwide distribution of approximately 0.5-1%. Molecular methods can be very sensitive in the early stage diagnosis of the disease and therefore prevention the late complications and disabilities. Etiology of RA, an autoimmune disease, is not exactly known but immunologic and genetic factors seem to play important roles in the pathogenesis of the disease. Genetic factors such as Human Leukocyte Antigens (HLA) are responsible for many autoimmune diseases; therefore we decided to look for a correlation between RA and the presence of specific HLA-DQB1 alleles as a possible genetic markers. Methods: The genomic DNAs from the whole blood samples of 25 patients with RA and 86 normal individuals (Control group) were extracted by salting out method. The genomic DNA was amplified by PCR-SSP technique. HLA-Typing was done by this method after optimizing the PCR reaction for each allele. In this procedure seven serological subclasses of HLA-DQB1 can be detected. Results: Comparing the results between the patients and the controls suggests a significant increase in the frequency of HLA-DQ5 (*0501-*0504) and HLA-DQ8 (*0302, *0305) alleles in the patient group. The P-values were respectively 0.033 and 0.007 (P<0.05)(DQ5 and DQ8 positive individuals in patients were respectively 56% and 24% compared with 31.4% and 5.8% in healthy people). The relative risk for these alleles was evaluated higher than 1. Conclusions: The results suggest that DQ5 and DQ8 are the dominant HLA-DQB1 alleles that are associated with the susceptibility to RA. These alleles are probably important in increasing the risk of developing RA disease in Northeastern Iran and we can use them as molecular markers for diagnosis of RA.

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The stripe (Yellow) rust in wheat is one of the most important plant diseases in Iran. Since 1993 several epidemics have occurred in Iran causing the breakdown of widely util-ized sources of resistance in wheat cultivars. Twenty-seven pathotypes were identified during 2003 and 2004 in greenhouse tests. Pathotypes 6E6A+, 6E22A+, 6E130A+, 6E134A+, 6E142A+, 6E158A+, 134E130A+ and 134E142A+ were more common during the course of this study. Virulence on plant/s with gene/s Yr2, Yr6, Yr7, Yr8, Yr9, Yr24, Yr25, YrSD, YrSP, Yr3N, Yr2+, Yr6+, Yr9+, Yr7+, Yr32+ and YrA was detected under greenhouse conditions. The majority of isolates with a high frequency (more than 88%) showed virulence on plant/s with Yr2, Yr6, Yr7, Yr9, YrA and Yr24 genes. No virulence was detected on plant/s with Yr1, Yr3V, Yr4, Yr5, Yr10 and YrSU genes. In a greenhouse test, frequency of virulence to wheat genotypes with the Yr32+, YrSP and YrSD gene was less than 7%; frequency of virulence to all other wheat genotypes was between 19 and 100%. During three years of field study, virulence on wheat genotypes Heines Kolben (with genes Yr2 and Yr6), Kalyansona (Yr2), Lee (Yr7), Avocet R (YrA), Federation*4/Kavkaz (Yr9) and TP1295 (Yr25) was common. No virulence was observed on plants with Yr1, Yr3V, Yr3N, Yr4, Yr5, Yr8, Yr10, Yr18, Yr24, Yr32+, YrSP, YrSD and YrSU genes in the trap nurseries. The coefficient of infection (C. I.) of the adult plant resistance gene, Yr18, was between 16-64 with moderate susceptibility and is going to be used in the breeding program in combination with other resistant sources.

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The seasonal abundance patterns of the cotton aphid, Aphis gossypii Glover, in cotton fields at Gorgan in northern Iran were studied during two growing seasons of 2002 and 2003. The spatial distribution of different developmental stages and morphs of the aphid was described by fitting data to Poisson (random) and negative binomial (aggregated) dis-tributions, and calculating the dispersion indices. A sequential sampling plan was also de-veloped using the fixed-precision method of Green for estimating the density of the adult, nymph and total population. The first aphid colonies appeared on plants during late June and early July and peaked in early September when cotton plants were at the boll matu-ration and opening stages. Aphid populations, especially nymphs and apterous females, were aggregated during most of the growing season and negative binomial models fit data sets better than the Poisson series. The percentage fit for alate morphs showed a slight tendency to the Poisson distribution. With respect to sampling cost or required sample size, the developed fixed-precision sequential sampling plans showed an acceptable per-formance for estimating aphid density at the precision level of D= 0.25. The optimum sample size was flexible and depended upon the aphid density and desired level of preci-sion, and generally ranged from 10 to 513 and 62 to 3,206 at the precision levels of 0.25 and 0.10, respectively. The sequential sampling plans developed could be recommended to estimate the aphid density in integrated pest management programs.

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The CD80 protein, a member of the super-family of immunoglobulin, is a transmembrane protein expressed on the surface of the antigen-presenting cells (APC). This protein has two receptors on the surface of T cells (CTLA-4 and CD28), due to the binding of this protein to these receptors, the inhibitory and stimulatory pathway in the T cells begin, respectively. Naturally, CD80 proteins tend to have more binding affinity to CTLA-4 than CD28, and this is a factor in the extinction of T cells in the immune system in order to prevent autoimmunity. The aim of the present study is to create a variant of the CD80 protein that has an increased binding affinity to CD28 to bind to this receptor more strongly and induce more simulate pathways than the wild type of this protein (primary CD80 protein) in T cells. To identify this variant, first, the ancestral sequence was mutated by R software at positions 31 and 92 with amino acids that play an important role in the formation of hydrogen bonds. The R software output sequences were modeled with the SWISS-MODEL server. Then, each output model was docked with the HADDOCK server, and finally, the electrostatic and van der Waals energies between the receptors and the ligands were calculated. Among all the built-in models, the mutated K31Y, R92F has the best electrostatic and van der Waals energies and has the ability to have a much better connection to its CD28 receptor compared to the ancestral type of CD80.

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In this study, the effectiveness of 4 killed VNN vaccines along with three types of adjuvants was evaluated by both immersion and injection methods. About 540 fish weighing 7-10 g of ozone (Acipenser stellatus Pallas 1771) were considered. Vaccination was performed in two stages one month apart, and one month after the second recurrence, exposure to the acute live virus was performed. During this period, the mortality rate of immersion and injection groups was 12.9% and 19.8%, respectively, compared to 100% mortality in the control group. Blood sampling was performed to assess immune factors (superoxide dismutase, lysozyme) in four stages before the first vaccination in the adaptation period, after the first vaccination, after the second vaccination one month and after exposure to live virus Acute was performed to identify changes before and after exposure to the virus. The results of the present study showed that immunization vaccination in the vaccinated group with the vaccine containing IMS 1312 SEPPIC adjuvant significantly higher levels of superoxide dismutase 1745 IU / MI (p<0.05) and lysozyme 40.6 (p<0.05). Compared to other groups, which proves its better efficacy compared to other vaccines. Therefore, a vaccine killed with 75% IMS 1312 SEPPIC adjuvant can be recommended for vaccination against VNN.

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Total Factor Productivity (TFP) index is the rate of transformation of total input into total output and Total Factor Productivity Growth (TFPG) is used to analyze productivity performance in multiple time periodso, Also, TFPG index is one of the major sources of economic development, thus understanding the factors affecting productivity is very important. The main purpose of productivity measurement during multiple periods is to identify areas of improvement in activities as well as to aid strategic decision making or continuous improvement. Therefore, information about effective factors on productivity changes is useful. This paper presents a general view to the productivity growth indexes and their qualities. Then, a new method for evaluating the productivity growth is proposed. This method will be constructing by the combination of DEA and Tornqvist productivity index to measure TFPG and its decompositions. This paper also evaluates productivity growth and finds out the factors affecting productivity which are critical for the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) on the years 1977-2000. The obtained results showed that growth in efficiency is dominant source of change in productivity at NIOC.