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.