Grain size is one of the most important factors determining grain yield in rice breeding. In previous studies, we constructed high-density maps for two quantitative trait loci (QTL) for grain weight,
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Grain weight (GW) is one of the most important targets for grain yield in rice breeding. In previous studies, two quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for grain weight,
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Perennial poor fruit-set and variability in tree yield are among major problems of cashew nut production. Thus, development of improved stable genotypes would be a sustainable strategy to address this perpetual problem in order to boost income and livelihood of many smallholder farmers of this important commodity crop. Here, we have applied additive main effect and multiplicative interaction (AMMI) and genotype, genotype by environment (GGE) biplot analysis to a 3-year multi-locational trial data on nine yield component characters of cashew to evaluate phenotypic stability across diverse environments. Variance analysis showed significant variability in the cashew genotypes and strong influence of genotype by environment (GxE) on tree yield as none of the genotypes was stable for any of the yield components across locations. GxE data showed that a substantial portion of the variation was explained by the genotype (highly heritable), accounting for between 10% and 87% of the variation, while the environment accounted for between 0.7% and 37%. Data showed significant higher values of interaction (GxE) than the respective values for environment, and were mostly captured and could be explained by the first principal component axis (IPCA 1) for all the yield component characters. There was an inverse relationship between stability and yield as the best three yielding genotypes (KT_26, IW_222 and IW_31) were found to be the most unstable. Among the yield component tested, hermaphrodite flowers per panicle, nuts per panicle, nuts per tree, nut weight, and tree fruiting efficiency were identified to be critical components for nut yield. Although there was wide variation between the three environments evaluated, the data effectively identified two mega-environments (ME), and two superior genotypes (IW_222 and KT_26) suitable for these two mega-environments. The GxE complex exposes the short-comings of broad recommendations of common agronomic-husbandry technologies across diverse cashew ecologies as each mega-environment would require specific adaptable technologies for optimal plant output. Above all, the data presented here underscore the importance of multi-locational evaluation of genotypes for varietal development in cashew.
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Cysteine protease is one of the well-studied proteolytic enzymes in plants. This class of protease has been implicated in various physiological aspects of developmental stages in plants including seed germination, senescence, and disease immunity. A handful of studies assign plants cysteine protease in different molecular battlefield under a few selected pathosystems, and initially extricate complex molecular mechanism of resistance. Interestingly, the same type of proteases released by pathogens have been demonstrated to play a crucial role in establishing disease infection in plants. Most of which target resistance proteins resulting either in an access to the hosts biochemical loot or cascades of signals for defense. As means of enabling and disabling host immunity, this class of protease is subject to diversifying selection, which is an intriguing outcome under natural host pathosystem. This paper summarizes the key roles of cysteine proteases in a few selected plant pathosystems.
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Rapeseeds have many health benefits because its oil is rich in polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fatty acids, tocopherols and phytosterols. The
objective
of this research was to examine a possible genetic variation of oil, fatty acids, tocopherols and phytosterols in eight rapeseed varieties and the effect of locations on expression of those chemical compounds. In this study, effects of variety x location interaction for palmitic, stearic, oleic, linoleic, linolenic, eicogenic and erucic contents were found to be significant while that of oil content was not. For oil content, variation between the two locations was much higher than all other factors. Variation among varieties was the major source of variation in most fatty acids. Variation between two locations was much less for tocopherols and phytosterols than that for oil and fatty acids. Instead, variation in residual effect was much higher in tocopherols and phytosterols demanding more number of replication to achieve same level of statistical precision as oil and fatty acids. Correlation analyses confirmed that some of the chemical compounds can be a target for indirect selection.
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