Arindam Sikdar

Canada is globally recognized as a multicultural and developed nation, yet its foundations lie in the colonial displacement of Indigenous peoples, a history that continues to shape contemporary institutional structures. This study investigates cultural conflict and systemic inequities within Canadian academic institutions, focusing on doctoral scholarship selection processes at national, provincial, university, and foundation levels. Using five years of publicly available NSERC‑CGRSD data from four Canadian universities, the analysis identifies recurring patterns of underrepresentation affecting Brown South Asian Hindu Canadian citizens. Evidence gathered in this research, along with student reports, indicates that this demographic, along with other racialized groups, consistently experiences as marginalized citizens in academic evaluation contexts. These patterns appear to manifest in scholarship and funding decisions where Canadian research contributions may be undervalued, while applicants perceived as white are viewed as receiving disproportionate advantages. Such disparities suggest that historical colonial power structures may continue to influence access to academic opportunities, raising concerns about fairness, transparency, and institutional accountability. Although Canada has recently expanded protections related to religious rights, questions remain regarding the extent to which these policies will be meaningfully implemented within academia and research organizations. Addressing these inequities is essential to ensuring that all qualified domestic scholars, including Brown South Asian Hindu Canadian citizens, receive equitable access to doctoral scholarship opportunities and are not subjected to systematic conflict within academic evaluation systems.

Lingonberry (Vaccinium vitis-idaea L.) is an important and valuable horticultural crop due to its high antioxidant properties. Plant tissue culture is an advanced propagation system employed in horticultural crops. However, the progeny derived using this technique may not be true-to-type. In order to obtain the maximum return of any agricultural enterprise, uniformity of planting materials is necessary, which sometimes is not achieved due to genetic and epigenetic instabilities under in vitro culture. Therefore, we analyzed morphological traits and genetic and epigenetic variations under tissue-culture and greenhouse conditions in lingonberry using molecular markers. Leaf length and leaf width under greenhouse conditions and shoot number per explant, shoot height and shoot vigor under in vitro conditions were higher in hybrid H1 compared to the cultivar Erntedank. Clonal fidelity study using one expressed sequence tag (EST)—polymerase chain reaction (PCR), five EST—simple sequence repeat (SSR) and six genomic (G)—SSR markers revealed monomorphic bands in micropropagated shoots and plants in lingonberry hybrid H1 and cultivar Erntedank conforming genetic integrity. Epigenetic variation was studied by quantifying cytosine methylation using a methylation-sensitive amplification polymorphism (MSAP) technique. DNA methylation ranged from 32% in greenhouse-grown hybrid H1 to 44% in cultivar Erntedank under a tissue culture system. Although total methylation was higher in in vitro grown shoots, fully methylated bands were observed more in the greenhouse-grown plants. On the contrary, hemimethylated DNA bands were more prominent in tissue culture conditions as compared to the greenhouse-grown plants. The study conclude that lingonberry maintains its genetic integrity but undergoes variable epigenetic changes during in vitro and ex vitro conditions.

Epigenetic variation plays a role in developmental gene regulation and responses to the environment. An efficient interaction of zeatin-induced cytosine methylation and secondary compounds has been displayed for the first time in tissue-culture shoots/plants of lingonberry (Vaccinium vitis-idaea L.) cultivar Erntedank in vitro (NC1, in a liquid medium; NC2, on a semi-solid medium), ex vitro (NC3, node culture-derived plants; LC1, leaf culture-derived plants) and its cutting-propagated (ED) plants. Through methylation-sensitive amplification polymorphism (MSAP) assay, we observed highest methylated sites in leaf regenerants (LC1) from all primer combinations (108 bands), along with the highest secondary metabolites. The four types of tissue culture-derived shoots/plants (NC1, NC2, NC3, LC1) showed higher methylation bands than cutting propagated donor plants (ED) that exhibited 79 bands of methylation, which is comparatively low. Our study showed more methylation in micropropagated shoots/plants than those derived from ED plants. On the contrary, we observed higher secondary metabolites in ED plants but comparatively less in micropropagated shoots (NC1, NC2) and plants (NC3, LC1).

Phytomedicine has often been used as “alternative therapy,” which in our opinion is unfortunate as it prevents its main actions being systematically studied, side effects explored, and toxicity tested, like all single-compound-based medicine. Our group is interested in finding which traditional or modern phytomedicines actually work and which are simply “working” through placebo, standardizing phytomedicine preparations, studying their toxicity, and finding active molecules in plants for modification and chemical synthesis as single compounds. Although fluctuation in efficacy due to seasonal and geographical variations in phytomedicine remains a concern, if well regulated, even plant extracts without isolated compounds can serve medicinal needs where single-compound options are currently not great. A potential concern with such phytomedicine is frequent mixing of ingredients in commercial formulations without test of synergism. Our study on the use of 2 traditional plants for Parkinson disease shows a clear lack of synergism, and to study nonsynergism better, we developed a new visualization approach. In this commentary, using our study on Parkinson disease as an example, we make a case for better evaluation of phytomedicines, especially testing for synergistic interactions. We also critique our own exploration of oxidative stress and few behavioral parameters alone to lay grounds for what we and hopefully others can do in future to extract more information from their phytomedicine studies. We hope this commentary acts as a good warning for anyone mixing 2 phytomedicines without testing.