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This mini‐review presents an overview of recent trends for 3D printed sensors and biosensors (with a focus on Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) based technology), along with their posttreatment surfaces to improve electrochemical applications. The protocols described in the literature and advances in this field were covered, bringing a critical discussion about the achievements and limitations to improve the electrical properties of conducting filaments, as well as their electroanalytical performance. In addition, the pros and cons of the processes used in surface posttreatment to improve the performance of electrodes constructed by FDM are presented, comparing the time consumed during chemical and electrochemical treatments or combining the two to improve the characteristics of the sensors. Finally, the discussion about the real necessity of surface treatments of electrodes constructed by FDM technology, the techniques used for this, and some ecological protocols are discussed (surface posttreatments with and without reagents) or whether the simple optimization of printing parameters could also significantly improve the electrochemical performance of sensors built with such technologies.

Extracts from plants have been one of the main sources of antioxidants, namely polyphenols. The associated drawbacks, such as instability against environmental factors, low bioavailability, and loss of activity, must be considered during microencapsulation for a better application. Electrohydrodynamic processes have been investigated as promising tools to fabricate crucial vectors to minimize these limitations. The developed microstructures present high potential to encapsulate active compounds and for controlling their release. The fabricated electrospun/electrosprayed structures present different benefits when compared with structures developed by other techniques; they present a high surface-area-to-volume ratio as well as porosity, great materials handling, and scalable production—among other advantages—which make them able to be widely applied in different fields, namely in the food industry. This review presents a summary of the electrohydrodynamic processes, main studies, and their application.

The food industry has been expanding, and new vectors to entrap vitamins have been constantly investigated, aiming at versatile systems with good physico-chemical characteristics, low-cost production, high stability and the efficient release of active ingredients. The vitamin B9 (folic acid or folate) is essential for the healthy functioning of a variety of physiological processes in humans and is beneficial in preventing a range of disorders. In this study, two approaches were developed to encapsulate vitamin B9. Zein and the combination of modified starch with two plasticizers were the selected encapsulating agents to produce microstructures via the electrospinning technique. The objective was to improve the stability and the B9 antioxidant capacity in the final formulations. The work strategy was to avoid limitations such as low bioavailability, stability and thermosensitivity. The microstructures were fabricated and the morphology and shape were assessed by scanning electron microscopy. The B9 release profiles of modified starch and zein microstructures were analyzed in simulated gastric fluid at 37 °C, and in deionized water and ethanol at room temperature. The B9 encapsulation efficiency and the stability of the systems were also studied. The ABTS assay was assessed and the antioxidant activity of the produced microstructures was evaluated. The physico-chemical characterization of loaded B9 in the microstructures was achieved. High encapsulation efficiency values were achieved for the 1% B9 loaded in 12% w/w modified starch film; 5% B9 vitamin encapsulated by the 15% w/w modified starch with 4% w/w tween 80; and 4% w/w glycerol film with heterogeneous microstructures, 5% w/w zein compact film and 10% w/w zein film. In conclusion, the combinations of 7 wt.% of modified starch with 4 wt.% tween 80 and 4 wt.% glycerol; 15 wt.% of modified starch with 4 wt.% tween 80 and 4 wt.% glycerol; and 12 wt.% modified starch and 5 wt.% zein can be used as delivery structures in order to enhance the vitamin B9 antioxidant activity in the food and nutraceutical fields.

The development of a portable analytical procedure is described for rapid sequential detection and quantification of the explosives 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT) and cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine (RDX) in forensic samples using a graphite sheet (GS). A single GS platform works as a collector of explosive residues and detector after its assembly into a 3D-printed cell. The detection strategy is based on cyclic square-wave stripping voltammetry. The cathodic scan from + 0.1 to −1.0 V with accumulation at 0.0 V enables the TNT detection (three reduction peaks), and the anodic scan from + 0.2 to + 1.55 V with accumulation at −0.9 V provides the RDX detection (two oxidation processes). Low detection limit values (0.1 µmol L −1 for TNT and 2.4 µmol L −1 for RDX) and wide linear ranges (from 1 to 150 µmol L −1 for TNT and from 20 to 300 µmol L −1 for RDX) were obtained. The sensor did not respond to pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN), which was evaluated as a potential interferent, because plastic explosives contain mixtures of TNT, RDX, and PETN. The GS electrode was also evaluated as a collector of TNT and RDX residues spread on different surfaces to simulate forensic scenarios. After swiping over different surfaces (metal, granite, wood, cloths, hands, money bills, and cellphone), the GS electrode was assembled in the 3D-printed cell ready to measure both explosives by the proposed method. In all cases, the presence of TNT and RDX was confirmed, attesting the reliability of the proposed device to act as collector and sensor. Graphical abstract

Polyploidy has important ecological effects, including ploidy-mediated effects on morphology, breeding system and ecological tolerances. However, there is still little comprehensive research available to test its adaptive significance and its role in driving distributional patterns. This work aimed to assess the contribution of genome duplications to ecological divergence using an experimental approach with the diploid-tetraploid Jasione maritima polyploid complex. We explored if individuals with different ploidy differ in their tolerance to water deficit and if this may contribute to explaining the distribution patterns along a latitudinal gradient in the northwest Iberian Peninsula. For that, we used three cytogenetic entities: diploids and established tetraploids collected in natural populations along a latitudinal gradient, and neotetraploids synthesized from diploid populations after treatments with colchicine. Thirty plants from each of the nine populations were grown under controlled conditions with half randomly assigned to the water deficit treatment, and half used as control. We determined experimental plants’ response by measuring fitness-related parameters, such as above and belowground biomass, plant water status, photosynthetic efficiency and pigments, membrane stability, antioxidant capacity and sugars content. Our data shows that biomass, chlorophyll content, photochemical quenching (qP) and non-photochemical quenching (NPQ) in neotetraploids and established tetraploids were significantly higher than in diploids and that these differences could be attributed to genome duplications. In response to the water deficit, diploids seem to use a strategy of avoidance, whereas tetraploids seem to employ the strategy of tolerance to overcome water deficit stress, which appears equally efficient. Additionally, we did not observe a response pattern along the latitudinal gradient of the distributional range of the J. maritima complex. The results indicate that the response to water deficit is population dependent. Further studies are necessary to understand the role of ploidy in explaining the distribution patterns of the J. maritima complex.

Pollination is a crucial ecosystem service for maintaining plant communities and food production. 75% of the main crops depend on or benefit from pollination services provided by animal pollinators. However, when these services are insufficient and/or inefficient, crops experience pollen limitation with, often, lower associated yield, which may translate into economic losses. We constructed a global dataset that gathers studies with pollination experiments, aiming to provide pollen limitation values of animal-pollinated crops worldwide. Pollination experiments included hand pollen supplementation treatments, where plants were subjected to pollen supplementation of outcross pollen, and natural pollination treatments. The PolLimCrop dataset comprises 294 studies and 1169 unique pollen supplementation experiments with values of pollen limitation for 108 crops, spanning 50 years and 62 countries.

Habitat loss is currently a major threat to biodiversity, affecting species interactions, such as plant–pollinator interactions. This is particularly important in self-incompatible plants relying on pollinators to reproduce and sustain their populations. Here, we evaluated how habitat loss affects the pollination system, plant individual–pollinator species interaction network, and plant reproductive fitness of the self-incompatible Jasione maritima var. sabularia, a threatened taxon from dune systems. This plant is a pollinator generalist, visited by 108 species from distinct taxonomic groups. Results suggest that increasing habitat loss led to a significant decline in pollinator richness, increased pollen limitation, and a decrease in reproductive fitness of J. maritima var. sabularia. Visitation rate per individual did not significantly change with available area, indicating that the quality of pollen differed across populations. The topology of the network between J. maritima var. sabularia individuals and its pollinator species did not change, which may be attributed to the stability in the core of pollinator species. This suggests that the lower fitness of plants with increasing habitat degradation may be explained not only by the lower richness of peripheral pollinators but also by the genetic structure of the plant populations, as there is a possible higher transference of less quality pollen by pollinators, ultimately compromising the persistence of plant populations. Our study highlights the need of future studies to integrate the fine details provided by individual-level networks, which will increase our understanding of the pattern of species interactions and its consequences for the fitness of threatened plant populations.

Premise Newly formed polyploids face significant obstacles to persistence and population establishment because of fitness costs of intercytotype mating. Selfing provides the opportunity to escape mate limitation, enabling production of new individuals and increasing the likelihood of fixation of new polyploid lineages. Still, association between self‐compatibility and polyploidy is not always clear. We compared self‐incompatibility and inbreeding depression in neotetraploids and their diploid progenitor to explore the direct effects of whole genome duplications on self‐incompatibility and the implications of ploidy‐driven changes for polyploid establishment. Methods Outcross and self‐pollinations were performed in diploids and synthetic neotetraploids of Jasione maritima var. maritima, and reproductive success was measured through fruit and seed production and seed germination. Self‐ and outcross offspring were grown under controlled conditions, and plant performance was measured through several fitness parameters. Results Neotetraploids showed an overall lower performance than diploids. Reproductive success was negatively affected by selfing in both cytotypes. However, greater variation in the expression of self‐incompatibility was observed in neotetraploids; additionally, developmental and physiological parameters were not affected by selfing on neotetraploids, with an overall similar fitness of outcrossed and selfed individuals, resulting in lower inbreeding depression indexes. Conclusions Neotetraploids might have benefited from selfing at initial stages after their formation. Genome duplications resulted in leaky self‐incompatibility, enabling the production of offspring under minority cytotype disadvantage with similar fitness as outcrossed offspring. Our results support theoretical assumptions that selfing might be important for neopolyploid establishment, although changes in self‐incompatibility might not be abrupt.

Water-soluble vitamins are essential micronutrients in diets and crucial to biochemical functions in human body physiology. These vitamins are essential for healthy diets and have a preventive role against diseases. However, their limitations associated with high sensitivity against external conditions (temperature, light, pH, moisture, oxygen) can lead to degradation during processing and storage. In this context, microencapsulation may overcome these conditions, protecting a biomolecule’s bioavailability, stability, and effectiveness of delivery. This technique has been used to produce delivery systems based on polymeric agents that surround the active compounds. The present review focuses on the most relevant topics of water-soluble vitamin encapsulation using promising methods to produce delivery vehicles—electrohydrodynamic (electrospinning and electrospraying) and spray-drying techniques. An overview of the suitable structures produced by these processes is provided. The review introduces the general principles of the methods, advantages, disadvantages, and involved parameters. A brief list of the used physicochemical techniques for the systems’ characterization is discussed in this review. Electrospinning and spray-drying techniques are the focus of this investigation in order to guarantee vitamins’ bioaccessibility and bioavailability. Recent studies and the main encapsulating agents used for these micronutrients in both processes applied to functional food and nutraceutical areas are highlighted in this review.

Background The transition to self-fertilization has occurred repeatedly across diverse plant groups, and the evolutionary consequences of selfing typically suggest that a shift toward outcrossing is unlikely. However, we propose that polyploidization could drive changes in reproductive strategies by influencing traits associated with pollination. We explored various traits linked to the mating system across different ploidy levels within the polyploid Erysimum incanum species complex, which is generally considered a predominantly selfing species. Results Our results revealed significant variation in self-fertilization success across different ploidies and we also found significant differences among populations within the same ploidy level. Inbreeding depression is absent in diploids, it was present in hexaploids, while tetraploids exhibited intermediate values. Additionally, polyploids showed traits more commonly associated with outcrossing rather than self-fertilization. Finally, the high values of heterozygosity found in polyploid populations were contrary to our expectations due to the selfing evolutionary history of this species. Conclusions These findings suggest that polyploidy may facilitate the emergence of alternative reproductive strategies, driving diversification in mating systems within this selfing species complex. This phenomenon, not previously observed in the wild, opens new perspectives on the evolution of plant mating systems.