A desirable tester that elicits greater genetic difference in Striga resistance among test crosses in a breeding program has not been reported. Therefore, this study was conducted to characterize 30 Striga resistant yellow endosperm maize inbred lines and three testers with varying resistance levels to Striga using DArTseq SNP markers and agronomic...
We consider the problem of an impenetrable Kirchhoff rod in self-contact. The contact is assumed to be frictionless and of point-contact type. The self-contacted rod is modeled as a set of contact-free segments each having unknown length and connected in series with each other through frictionless hard-contact condition. The Landau-Lifshitz approac...
Published in Frontiers in Plant Science
Optimization of a breeding program for increased genetic gain requires quality assurance (QA) and quality control (QC) at key phases of the breeding process. One vital phase in a breeding program that requires QC and QA is the choice of parents and successful hybridizations to combine parental attributes and create variations. The objective of this...
Banana (including plantain; Musa spp.) is an important vegetatively propagated food staple grown as a semi-perennial crop in fields and backyard gardens in Tanzania. Banana bunchy top disease (BBTD), caused by the banana bunchy top virus (BBTV, genus Babuvirus), is the most economically important viral disease of banana, infection of which results ...
The African endemic hover fly Meromacroides meromacriformis (Bezzi, 1915) (Syrphidae, Eristalinae) was described more than a century ago and its monotypic status established in 1927, but subsequent collections and publications are rare. Only the male has been described and nothing is known about its biology. We re-describe the male, including geogr...
Published in PloS one
The moth pest fall armyworm, Spodoptera frugiperda (J.E. Smith) (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) is now present throughout much of the Eastern Hemisphere where it poses a significant economic threat to a number of crops. Native to the Western Hemisphere, fall armyworm is one of the primary pests of corn in the Americas and periodically causes significant e...
Published in Cancer discovery
Pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (PanNET) comprise two molecular subtypes, relatively benign islet tumors (IT) and invasive, metastasis-like primary (MLP) tumors. Until now, the origin of aggressive MLP tumors has been obscure. Herein, using multi-omics approaches, we revealed that MLP tumors arise from IT via dedifferentiation following a reverse ...
Published in Molecular ecology resources
Bioinformatic analysis of eDNA metabarcoding data is a crucial step toward rigorously assessing biodiversity. Many programs are now available for each step of the required analyses, but their relative abilities at providing fast and accurate species lists have seldom been evaluated. We used simulated mock communities and real fish eDNA metabarcodin...
Spittlebugs (Hemiptera: Cercopidae) are the major production limitation for Brachiaria grasses (Urochloa spp.) in the tropical America. Incorporate host-plant resistance to new hybrids is the most cost-effective and sustainable solution to overcome the great losses caused by this key pest. Identifying regions in Urochloa genome associated with resi...
In cultivated tetraploid potato (Solanum tuberosum), reduction to diploidy (dihaploidy) allows for hybridization to diploids and introgression breeding and may facilitate the production of inbreds. Pollination with haploid inducers (HIs) yields maternal dihaploids, as well as triploid and tetraploid hybrids. Dihaploids may result from parthenogenes...
