Beauty Leaf Tree (Calophyllum inophyllum L.) — its biogeographic variability for salinity tolerance and kernel oil content as determined by FTIR/FTNIR technologies

In the present day, fossil fuels and petroleum are depleting at an alarming rate due to over-dependency on them for energy generation. Hence there is a great need for an alternate renewable source of energy, and biofuel can be a good alternative. Thus, looking into the huge global demand for biofuel, there is potential scope for the use of the seeds of Calophyllum inophyllum (Beauty Leaf Tree; BLT) for biofuel production. Since C. inophyllum thrives in coastal or saline condition and it is a high biodiesel yielding species, the proposed study has great significance. Since the production of biofuel from fertile land is not advisable due to food vs fuel competition, marginal soils are best suited for biofuel production. In this connection, BLT is considered a good candidate. However, its stress tolerance and physiological responses are not known at present. The proposed research will focus on elucidating the variability in morphology, growth rates, oil content and the mechanism of salt tolerance in C. inophyllum. It will also examine the suitability of modern novel technologies like Near Infrared (NIR) and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy in assessing stress tolerance in plants, thereby allowing us to identify salt?tolerant genotypes in a very efficient, convenient and non-destructive way. The study will be adopting different experimental approaches, involving observations in the glasshouse, laboratory and field conditions to address the research questions and objectives.

The main dataset folder in the shared data storage named "beauty-leaf-tree" has three sub-folders: "COC", "Experiments" and "Thesis".
1. The folder "COC" contains important documents related to Confirmation of Candidature in word, pdf or xlsx format which includes clean and corrected version of section A, response to reviewers, COC budget and COC approval letter.
2. The folder "Experiments" contains all the data that have been collected and analysed in the research project. The folder is further divided experiment-wise/chapter-wise which contains all the data (raw data, analysed data, graphs, figures, photos) of the respective experiment. The data may be found stored in the following Microsoft Office formats: xlsx, unsb, CSV, RTF, TXT, JPG, PNG, pdf, docx and video recordings.
3. The folder "Thesis" contains all the versions of the thesis i.e., old versions, supervisor's reviewed versions, the proofread version and the final submitted version in word or pdf format. The sub-folder "THESIS SUBMISSION" contains the final version of the thesis- both before and after examiners' reviews in word and pdf formats.

当前，人类因能源生产过度依赖化石燃料与石油，导致其正以惊人速度枯竭。因此，开发替代型可再生能源的需求极为迫切，而生物燃料正是极具潜力的替代方案。鉴于全球对生物燃料的庞大需求，红厚壳（Calophyllum inophyllum，又名美丽叶树，BLT）的种子具备用于生物燃料生产的潜在应用前景。红厚壳可在沿海或盐碱环境中存活，且是高生物柴油产率物种，因此本研究具有重要意义。由于利用耕地生产生物燃料会引发“粮食与燃料争地”的矛盾，边际土壤是生物燃料生产的最佳用地，而红厚壳正是适配该场景的优良候选物种。不过目前学界对其胁迫耐受性与生理响应机制尚不明确。本研究旨在阐明红厚壳的形态、生长速率、含油量变异及其耐盐机制，同时评估近红外（Near Infrared, NIR）与傅里叶变换红外（Fourier transform infrared, FTIR）光谱等新型现代技术在植物胁迫耐受性评估中的适用性，从而实现高效、便捷且无损地筛选耐盐基因型。本研究将采用多种实验方法，涵盖温室、实验室与野外条件下的观测，以解决研究问题并达成研究目标。

共享数据存储中名为"beauty-leaf-tree"的主数据集文件夹包含三个子文件夹："COC"、"Experiments"与"Thesis"。
1. "COC"文件夹内存储了与候选资格确认（Confirmation of Candidature, COC）相关的重要文档，格式涵盖Word、PDF或XLSX，包括经整理校正的A部分文稿、审稿意见回复、COC预算表及COC批准函。
2. "Experiments"文件夹收纳了本研究项目中所有采集并分析得到的数据。该文件夹按实验/章节划分子目录，存储对应实验的全部数据（原始数据、分析后数据、图表、图形、照片）。数据存储格式包括Microsoft Office系列格式：XLSX、unsb、CSV、RTF、TXT、JPG、PNG、PDF、DOCX，以及视频录像文件。
3. "Thesis"文件夹包含学位论文的所有版本，即初稿、导师评审版、校对版及最终提交版，格式为Word或PDF。其子文件夹"THESIS SUBMISSION"存储了学位论文的最终版本，包含审稿专家评审前后的Word及PDF格式文件。