https://www.ajol.info/index.php/br <p>The “Journal of Biological Research and Biotechnology (Bio-Research)” is a peer-reviewed, multidisciplinary, international, scientific Open Access Journal that provides publication of articles on biological sciences and biotechnology. The journal established in 2003, is published by the faculty of Biological Sciences, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria. The Journal welcomes submission of manuscripts in the form of original and reviews articles, brief and case reports, special communications and editorials, that meet the general criteria of significance and scientific excellence. Papers will be published online approximately one-to-two weeks after acceptance.</p> <p>Publication of articles in the Journal of Biological Research and Biotechnology (Bio-Research) involves several parties, each of which performs an essential role in achieving the aims and objectives of the journal. Thus, all players (author, the journal editor, the peer-reviewer, and the publisher) are expected to meet and uphold standard norms of ethical behaviour from submission to the publication stage, depending on the area of involvement.</p> <p><strong>OPEN ACCESS STATEMENT</strong></p> <p>All articles published by <em>Bio-Research</em> journal are made immediately available worldwide under an open access license. This means:</p> <ul> <li>Everyone has free and unlimited access to the full-text of all articles published in Bio-Research journal;</li> <li>Everyone is free to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose.</li> <li>Open access publication is supported by the authors' institutes or research funding agencies by payment of a comparatively low Article Processing Charge (APC) for accepted articles.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Permissions</strong></p> <p>No special permission is required to reuse all or part of article published by Bio-Research, including figures and tables. For articles published under an open access Creative Common CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license, any part of the article may be reused without permission provided that the original article is clearly cited. Reuse of an article does not imply endorsement by the authors or Bio-Research.</p> Faculty of Biological Sciences, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria en-US Bio-Research 1596-7409 <p><strong>OPEN ACCESS STATEMENT</strong></p> <p>All articles published by Bio-Research journal are made immediately available worldwide under an open access license. This means:</p> <ul> <li>Everyone has free and unlimited access to the full-text of all articles published in Bio-Research journal;</li> <li>Everyone is free to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose.</li> <li>Open access publication is supported by the authors' institutes or research funding agencies by payment of a comparatively low Article Processing Charge (APC) for accepted articles.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Permissions</strong></p> <p>No special permission is required to reuse all or part of article published by Bio-Research, including figures and tables. For articles published under an open access Creative Common CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license, any part of the article may be reused without permission provided that the original article is clearly cited. Reuse of an article does not imply endorsement by the authors or Bio-Research.</p> <p><br />Notices<br />You do not have to comply with the license for elements of the material in the public domain or where your use is permitted by an applicable exception or limitation.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong><em>JOURNAL OF BIOLOGICAL RESEARCH AND BIOTECHNOLOGY (BIO-RESEARCH)- </em></strong><strong>Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement </strong></p> <p>The Journal of Bio-Research and Biotechnology (Bio-Research) follows the COPE Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors. Authors, reviewers, and editors are expected to follow the best practice guidelines on ethical behavior. The following is a selection of the key points.</p> <p><strong>Duties of Editors </strong></p> <p><strong>Fair play and editorial independence </strong></p> <p>Editors and Editorial Board members evaluate submitted manuscripts exclusively on the basis of their academic merit (importance, originality, study’s validity, clarity) and their relevance to the journal’s scope, without regard to the authors’ race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnic origin, citizenship, religious belief, political philosophy, or institutional affiliation. Decisions to edit and publish are not determined by the policies of governments or any other agencies outside of the journal itself. The Editor-in-Chief and members of the Editorial Board have full authority over the entire editorial content of the journal and the timing of publication of that content if accepted.</p> <p><strong>Confidentiality </strong></p> <p>Editors and editorial staff will not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate.</p> <p><strong>Disclosure and conflicts of interest </strong></p> <p>Editors and Editorial Board members will not use unpublished information disclosed in a submitted manuscript for their own research purposes without the authors’ explicit written consent. Privileged information or ideas obtained by editors as a result of handling the manuscript must be kept confidential and not used for their personal advantage. Editors and peer reviewers will recuse themselves from considering manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from collaborative, competitive or other formal or informal relationships with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers; instead, they will ask another member of the Editorial Review Board to handle the manuscript.</p> <p><strong>Publication decisions </strong></p> <p>The editors ensure that all submitted manuscripts being considered for publication undergo initial review by the Editorial Board and peer review by at least two reviewers who have expertise in the field. The Editor in Chief is responsible for deciding which of the manuscripts submitted to the journal will be published, based on the validation of the work in question, its importance to researchers and readers, the reviewers’ comments, and such legal requirements as are currently in force regarding libel, copyright infringement, and plagiarism. The Editor in Chief may confer with the Editorial Board, other editors, or reviewers in making this important decision.</p> <p><strong>Involvement and cooperation in investigations </strong></p> <p>Editors (in conjunction with the publisher) will take responsive measures when ethical concerns are raised with regard to a submitted manuscript or published paper. Every reported act of unethical publishing behavior will be looked into, even if it is discovered years after publication. If an ethical concern is well-founded, a correction, retraction, expression of concern, or other note as may be relevant will be published in the journal.</p> <p><strong>Duties of Reviewers </strong></p> <p><strong>Contribution to editorial decisions </strong></p> <p>Peer reviewers assist editors in making editorial decisions and, through editorial communications with authors, may assist authors in improving their manuscripts.</p> <p><strong>Promptness</strong></p> <p>Any invited reviewer who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should immediately notify the editors and decline the invitation to review so that alternative reviewers can be contacted to review the manuscript<strong>. </strong></p> <p><strong>Confidentiality</strong></p> <p>Any manuscripts received for review are confidential documents and must be treated as such; they must not be shown to or discussed with others except if authorized by the Editor in Chief (who would only do so under exceptional and specific circumstances). This applies also to invited reviewers who decline the review invitation.</p> <p><strong>Standards of objectivity </strong></p> <p>Reviews should be conducted objectively and observations formulated clearly with supporting arguments so that authors can use them for improving the manuscript. Personal criticism of the authors is inappropriate and will not be tolerated by the editorial board.</p> <p><strong>Acknowledgment of sources</strong></p> <p>Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors. Any statement that is an observation, derivation, or argument that has been reported in previous publications should be accompanied by the relevant citation. A reviewer should also notify the editors of any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other manuscript (published or unpublished) of which they have personal knowledge.</p> <p><strong>Disclosure and conflicts of interest</strong></p> <p>Any invited reviewer who has conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the manuscript and the work described therein should immediately notify the editors to declare his or her conflicts of interest and decline the invitation to review so that alternative reviewers can be contacted. Unpublished material disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in a reviewer’s own research without the express written consent of the authors. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for the reviewer’s personal advantage. This applies also to invited reviewers who decline the review invitation<strong>. </strong></p> <p><strong>Duties of Authors</strong></p> <p><strong>Reporting standards </strong></p> <p>Authors of original research should present an accurate account of the work performed and the results, followed by an objective discussion of the significance of the work. The manuscript should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Review articles should be accurate, objective, and comprehensive, while editorial opinion or perspective pieces should be clearly identified as such. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and are unacceptable.</p> <p><strong>Data access and retention </strong></p> <p>Authors may be asked to provide the raw data of their study together with the manuscript for editorial review and should be prepared to make the data publicly available if practicable. In any event, authors should ensure accessibility of such data to other competent professionals for at least 10 years after publication (preferably via an institutional or subject-based data repository or other data center), provided that the confidentiality of the participants can be protected and legal rights concerning proprietary data do not preclude their release to third parties.</p> <p><strong>Originality and plagiarism </strong></p> <p>Authors should ensure that they have written and submit only entirely original works and if they have used the work and/or words of others, that this has been appropriately cited. Publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the work reported in the manuscript should also be cited. Plagiarism takes many forms, from "passing off" another's paper as the author's own, to copying or paraphrasing substantial parts of another's paper (without attribution), to claiming results from research conducted by others. Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable by the Journal of Biological Research and Biotechnology.</p> <p><strong>Multiple, duplicate, redundant, or concurrent submission/publication </strong></p> <p>Papers that describe essentially the same research should not be published in more than one journal or primary publication. Therefore, authors should not submit for consideration a manuscript that has already been published in another journal. Submission of a manuscript concurrently to more than one journal is unethical publishing behavior and unacceptable. The publication of some kinds of articles in more than one journal is sometimes justifiable, provided that certain conditions are met and relevance to the subscribing community is apparent. The authors and editors of the journals concerned must agree to the secondary publication, which must reflect the same data and interpretation of the primary document. The primary reference must be cited in the secondary publication.</p> <p> <strong>Authorship of the manuscript </strong></p> <p>Only persons who meet the following authorship criteria should be listed as authors in the manuscript as they must be able to take public responsibility for the content: (1) made significant contributions to the conception, design, execution, data acquisition, or analysis/interpretation of the study; (2) drafted the manuscript or revised it critically for important intellectual content; and (3) have seen and approved the final version of the paper and agreed to its submission for publication. All persons who made substantial contributions to the work reported in the manuscript (such as technical help, writing and editing assistance, general support) but who do not meet the criteria for authorship must not be listed as an author, but should be acknowledged in the Acknowledgments section after their written permission to be named has been obtained. The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate coauthors (according to the above definition) and no inappropriate coauthors are included in the author list and verify that all coauthors have seen and approved the final version of the manuscript and agreed to its submission for publication.</p> <p><strong>Disclosure and conflicts of interest</strong></p> <p>Authors should—at the earliest stage possible (generally by submitting a disclosure form at the time of submission and including a statement in the manuscript)—disclose any conflicts of interest that might be construed to influence the results or their interpretation in the manuscript. Examples of potential conflicts of interest that should be disclosed include financial ones such as honoraria, educational grants or other funding, participation in speakers’ bureaus, membership, employment, consultancies, or other equity interest, and paid expert testimony or patent-licensing arrangements, as well as nonfinancial ones such as personal or professional relationships, affiliations, knowledge, or beliefs in the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. All sources of financial support for the work should be disclosed (including the grant number or other reference number if any). <strong>Acknowledgement of sources</strong></p> <p>Authors should ensure that they have properly acknowledged the work of others and should also cite publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work. Information obtained privately (from conversation, correspondence, or discussion with third parties) must not be used or reported without explicit, written permission from the source. Authors should not use information obtained in the course of providing confidential services, such as refereeing manuscripts or grant applications, unless they have obtained the explicit written permission of the author(s) of the work involved in these services.</p> <p><strong>Peer review</strong></p> <p>Authors are obliged to participate in the peer review process and cooperate fully by responding promptly to editors’ requests for raw data, clarifications, proof of ethics approval, and copyright permissions. In the case of a first decision of "minor or major revisions required," authors should respond to the reviewers’ comments systematically, point by point, and in a timely manner, revising and resubmitting their manuscript to the journal by the deadline given.</p> <p><strong>Fundamental errors in published works</strong></p> <p>When authors discover significant errors or inaccuracies in their own published work, it is their obligation to promptly notify the journal’s editors or publisher and cooperate with them either to correct the paper in the form of an erratum or to retract the paper. If the editors or publisher learns from a third party that a published work contains a significant error or inaccuracy, then it is the authors’ obligation to promptly correct or retract the paper or provide evidence to the journal editors of the correctness of the paper.</p> <p><strong>Duties of the Publisher</strong></p> <p><strong>Handling of unethical publishing behavior</strong></p> <p>In cases of alleged or proven fraudulent publication or plagiarism, the publisher, in close collaboration with the editors, will take all appropriate measures to clarify the situation and to amend the article in question. This includes the prompt publication of an erratum, clarification or, in the most severe case, the retraction of the affected work. The publisher, together with the editors, shall take reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of papers when misconduct has occurred and, under no circumstances, encourage such misconduct or knowingly allow such misconduct to take place.</p> <p><strong>Access to journal content</strong></p> <p>The publisher is committed to the permanent availability and preservation of scholarly research and ensures accessibility by partnering with other organizations. It may also maintain its own digital archive.</p> https://www.ajol.info/index.php/br/article/view/293285 <p>&nbsp;<span class="fontstyle0">The application of potent bacteria and fungi as bio-fertilizer can improve the soil nitrogen status leading<br>to enhanced soil well-being and agricultural production. Bacteria and fungi were isolated from soil<br>samples collected around 20 randomly selected cassava plants obtained from Bells University farm,<br>Ota. The isolates were screened for phosphate solubilization activity, indole acetic acid (IAA) production<br>and heavy metal tolerance using standard methods. Isolates were identified based on morphological<br>and sequencing of the amplified 16S rRNA and ITS genes for bacteria and fungi respectively. PCR<br>amplification of the </span><span class="fontstyle2">nif </span><span class="fontstyle0">gene was done using two primers. Results of the molecular identification showed<br>that the bacterial and fungal isolates were </span><span class="fontstyle2">Pseudomonas resinovorans </span><span class="fontstyle0">NOU6 (PP506413), </span><span class="fontstyle2">Klebsiella<br>variicola </span><span class="fontstyle0">NOU5 (PP506412), </span><span class="fontstyle2">Kosakonia radicincitans </span><span class="fontstyle0">NOU1 (PP493938) and </span><span class="fontstyle2">Aspergillus assiutensis<br></span><span class="fontstyle0">NOU2 (PP493939), </span><span class="fontstyle2">Aspergillus brunneoviolaceus </span><span class="fontstyle0">NOU3 (PP493940) and </span><span class="fontstyle2">Aspergillus tubingensis<br></span><span class="fontstyle0">NOU4 (PP493941) respectively. Indole acetic acid produced by bacterial and fungal isolates ranged<br>from 121-147 µg/ml and 14-33 µg/ml respectively. The three fungal isolates solubilized phosphate with<br>solubilization index (SI) ranging from 4.25 – 6.25. Results of the heavy metal tolerance test showed<br>that all bacteria isolates were sensitive to mercury while they showed tolerance to tin, cobalt, chromium<br>and iron though at varying degrees. Only </span><span class="fontstyle2">Kosakonia radicincitans </span><span class="fontstyle0">strain NOU1 (C5) habours the </span><span class="fontstyle2">nif<br></span><span class="fontstyle0">gene that codes for nitrogenase enzyme. This research offers insights into the possible use of these<br>microorganisms as bio-fertilizers for crop improvement and also underscores the importance of using<br>molecular techniques to target bacteria strains that possess the potentials to fix atmospheric nitrogen.</span>&nbsp;</p> Ndako Precious Jessica Obi Chioma Christiana Umanu Goddey Anozie Patience Chinenye Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 2025-04-14 2025-04-14 23 1 2563 2579 https://www.ajol.info/index.php/br/article/view/293803 <p>The objective of this study was to determine the influence of agricultural by-products on the dynamics of phytoplankton functional groups’ abundance on a rice-fish farm. To this end, experiments were conducted in rice-fish ponds by introducing three categories of agricultural by-products: maize bran (RSM), rice bran (RSR), mixed agricultural by-products (RPC) and a control with no exogenous feed (RC). Data were collected monthly between May 2019 and November 2020 during the Pre-Grow-out and Grow-out phases of <em>Oreochromis niloticus. </em>Phytoplankton were sampled by water filtration using a 20 µm mesh plankton net. Algal cells were identified and counted. The Reynolds Functional Groups (RFG) classification was used to form the Phytoplankton assemblages with the dominant microalgae. Physicochemical parameters likely to influence algal proliferation were measured using a HQ40D multi-parameter and nutrient salts were determined using spectrometric methods. It was found that the phytoplankton flora of the rice-fish ponds was composed of 235 algal taxa, with a higher diversity of Chlorophyta and Euglenophyta. The specific richness of phytoplankton was virtually identical from one feeding treatment to the next. The phytoplankton in these ponds were grouped into 08 functional groups. The group J, represented by species of the genus <em>Coelastrum, Lacunastrum, Desmodesmus</em> and <em>Scenedesmus</em>, and group W2, represented by species of the genus <em>Trachelomonas</em> and <em>Euglena</em>, were the most abundant in all rice-ponds and in all months. The relative density of these functional groups increased monthly and significantly during each rearing phase with the RPC treatment compared with the other treatments. The proliferation of taxa in these functional groups was positively correlated with the concentration of nutrient salts, pH and dissolved oxygen content of the water in the rice-fish ponds. These results show that the J and W2 phytoplankton assemblages are effective indicators for monitoring organic pollution of rice-fish pond water.</p> Atto Delphin Kouadio Estelle Séverine Konan Noël Groga Kouakou Séraphin Konan Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 2025-04-19 2025-04-19 23 1 2580 2596