Choice Modeling for the Commercial Cultivation of Underutilized Aromatic Plants for Producing Mosquito Repellents: Targeting Rural Sector Income Generation.

Tropical countries face considerable economic losses due to mosquito-borne diseases which can be effectively combatted using plant-based mosquito repellents. Therefore, using a questionnaire survey, we selected the 25 top-ranked common but underutilized aromatic plants with mosquito repellent ability in Sri Lanka to investigate the rural sector's willingness to cultivate and supply them. Cinnamomum verum, Citrus aurantiifolia, Citrus sinensis, Citrus reticulata, Aegle marmelos, and Ocimum tenuiflorum were the common species thus identified. The willingness to cultivate and supply aromatic plants with mosquito repellent ability varied between 88% and 60%. The Chi-squared test indicated a significant association between gender and willingness to cultivate and supply these plants. Men had a higher willingness (82%). Persons formally educated up to elementary school level had the highest willingness (85%). The willingness from households with many non-income-generating members was 100%. The random forest model developed in this study identifies farmers' willingness to cultivate and supply aromatic plants with mosquito repellent properties. It was trained using an upsampling strategy. Our findings aid in understanding the scenarios involved with introducing, cultivating, and supplying aromatic plants.

The complete chloroplast genome of Walla Patta, Gyrinops walla (Thymelaeaceae), an agarwood-producing tree species from Sri Lanka.

Gyrinops walla is an important agarwood-producing tree and threatened species from Sri Lanka. Herein, we assembled and characterized the complete chloroplast (cp) genome of G. walla as a genomic resource for conservation purposes. The 175,130 bp long genome is comprised of 87,376 bp large single-copy (LSC) and 3316 bp small single-copy (SSC) regions, which are separated by two inverted repeat (IR) region, each with a size of 42,291 bp. A total of 140 genes were predicted for the cp genome, which includes 94 protein-coding, 38 tRNA, and eight rRNA genes. Phylogenetic analysis showed that G. walla is fully resolved in a sister position to Aquilaria in the family Thymelaeaceae. The data provided will be useful for study on the molecular phylogenetics and evolution of Thymelaeaceae in the future.