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اسم ِ استفہامیہ : کم؟(کتنا)

اسم ِ استفہامیہ :کم؟(کتنا)

ارشارِ ربانی ہے:

"كَمْ أَهْلَكْنَا مِنْ قَبْلِهِمْ مِنْ قَرْنٍ فَنَادَوْا وَلَاتَ حِينَ مَنَاصٍ"۔ [[1]]

" کتنی ہی امتوں کو ہم (عذاب سے) ہلاک کر چکے ہیں سو انہوں نے (ہلاکت کے وقت) بڑی ہائے پکار کی اور وہ وقت خلاصی کا نہ تھا"۔

یعنی ان کو معلوم رہنا چاہیے کہ اسی غرور وتکبر کی بدولت انبیاء اللہ سے مقابلہ ٹھان کر بہت سی جماعتیں پہلے تباہ و برباد ہو چکی ہیں وہ لوگ بھی مدتوں پیغمبروں سے لڑتے رہے۔ پھر جب برا وقت آ پڑا اور عذاب الٰہی نے چاروں طرف سے گھیر لیا تو گھبرا کر شور مچانے اور خدا کو پکارنے لگے۔ مگر اس وقت فریاد کرنے سے کیا بنتا۔ خلاصی کا موقع گزر چکا تھا، اور وقت نہیں رہا تھا کہ ان کے شوروبکاء کی طرف توجہ کی جائے۔



[[1]]         القرآن ، ۳۲: ۲۸۔

Second Wave of COVID-19 in Pakistan: Our Responsibilities and Challenges as A Nation

The Corona virus (SARS-CoV2) pandemic initiated in late December 2019 in Wuhan city of Hubei, China, which has rapidly progressedinvolving more than 215 countries of the world. It was caused by novel SARS-COV2 coronavirus with Huanan seafood wholesale market as the possible point of origin. In past two decades, coronaviruses epidemic of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-COV) had 37% mortality rate and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-COV) had 10% affecting more than 10,000 population together. World Health Organization (WHO) declared it as the sixth Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) on January 30, 2020 and later on March 11, 2020, the WHO labeledit as a pandemic. The first case of COVID-19 from Pakistan was reported on 26th February, 2020 and has affected over 354,000 people with a mortality of over 7000 patients. Many countries of the world have seen second wave of this pandemic. Government ofPakistan has also declared a second waveon October 28, 2020, after the rise in cases from 500 to 750 per day. Now it has crossed 2000 cases. The data released by the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) shows that the current percent positivity rate is close to 3 compared to the previous figure of lesser than 2 making it a bigger challenge than first wave in Pakistan. The patients now presenting in hospitals are all in critical condition. Lack of a specific vaccine or antiviral drug and non-compliance to the standard preventive measures is the major reason of initiation of a second wave of this viral infection in Pakistan. Being a nation we need to be responsible. Our country may go into economic crisis & our health facilities may choke. We have to understand how to live with this virus till the availability of vaccine or Curative antiviral drug. TheGovernment of Pakistan is creating awareness in the public for the second wave as the situation of pandemic is getting worse. Smart lock downs are being implementedbut people are not following preventive measures that are leading to infection spread at a very alarming speed. At the moment preventive measures are the only way to stop the spread of disease. Preventive measures should be adopted to contain this deadly disease. Wearing masks, using hand sanitizers, washing hands with soap for 20 sec, keeping social distance of 6 feet are mandatory preventive strategies. Social, political, business, recreationaland religious gatherings, should be avoided. Educational institutesshould follow strict standard operating procedures. Most of the people in Pakistan are not considering this disease as a matter of serious concern due to unawareness, poverty, beliefs and lack of resources. People should ignore such disbeliefs and should start considering it as a great health concern. They should follow the preventive measures in true sense.

Prevalence, Etiology and Management of Blackleg and Soft Rot of Potato

Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) is the most important vegetable crop of the world, including Pakistan, ranking number one among all vegetables both in production and consumption. Although bacterial diseases (such as blackleg and soft rot) cause substantial damage to potato crop in Khyber Pukhtunkhwa, yet no significant research has been done so far on any aspect of these diseases. We conducted extensive surveys (2007-2009) to document the status of these diseases in our province and found that disease severity and incidence, at different locations, ranged from 2-40 % and 5-75 %, respectively. The frequency of the three causal organisms was found to be 47.61% for Erwinia carotovora subsp. atroseptica (Eca), 45.23% for E. carotovora subsp. carotovora (Ecc), and 7.14% for E. chrysanthemi (Ech). As there is some debate about the role of tuber-borne, soil-borne, and diseased plant-debris-borne primary inoculum of Eca in causing primary infections, we studied these sources of inocula. The results indicated that the pathogen population in inoculated tubers kept increasing during the entire duration (80 days) of the study whereas that in diseased plant debris declined very slowly. No bacteria could be detected in artificially inoculated soil after two months. Therefore, it was concluded that the infected tubers are the best source of inoculum followed by diseased plant debris. Because studying pathogen population helps in the control of the disease it causes, therefore, we were interested in finding diversity among the isolates of the pathogens causing potato blackleg and soft rot. The intra-specific diversity among the isolates of Ecc, and Ech is well known but that among the isolates of Eca is debatable. For this reason, we used randomnly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) to amplify DNA from 20 Eca isolates using 2 selected random primers. The data (bands) generated were used to perform cluster analysis using the un-weighted pair-group method with arithmetical average (UPGMA) of Genetyx software, version 7.0 and the viiresulting 4 main clusters were presented as dendrogram. We were also interested in knowing if the genotypic differences among the Eca isolates would be correlated to some phenotypic character; so, we used potato stem rot assay to divide the 20 Eca isolates among 4 aggressiveness groups. Our data suggested that although the isolates genetically differed from each other by as much as 40%, these differences were not tightly correlated to the pathogenic differences found among them. Because blackleg and soft rot of potato is a hard-to-control disease, we were interested in an integrated management of the disease. The components of the integrated management that we studied included: (i) use of different plant extracts as seed tuber treatment to kill the contaminating blackleg and soft rot bacteria, (ii) use of balanced nutrition to enhance the competitiveness of the plant host against the pathogen, and (iii) finding resistance, if any, against blackleg and soft rot of potatoes among the popular commercial potato cultivars available to local farmers. Among the different aqueous extracts used, neem extract was found to be the best which decreased the disease incidence and disease severity by 71.18% and 56.86%, respectively as compared to the control. Neem extract also increased yield per plant by 344.44% as compared to that of control. The results of the host fertilization studies concluded that the fertilizer combination of N 3 P 1 K 3 (262/252/262 kg.ha -1 ) which is slightly higher than the normally practiced dose (247/247/247 kg.ha -1 ) was the best in bringing the disease to a minimum and subsequently increasing the yield. In case of varietal screening, based upon our overall results, no variety was found to be resistant against blackleg and soft rot of potatoes. However, field performance of variety Kuroda was comparatively better than other varieties whereas variety Desiree seemed to be the most susceptible.
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