Sripada Udupa

Micronutrient deficiency affects half of the world’s population, mostly in developing countries. Severe health issues such as anemia and inadequate growth in children below five years of age and pregnant women have been linked to mineral deficiencies...

Ascochyta blight (AB), caused by the fungal pathogen Ascochyta rabiei, is a devastating foliar disease of chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.). The genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS)-based approach was deployed for mapping QTLs associated with AB resistance in...

The development of phosphorus-efficient crop cultivars boosts productivity while lowering eutrophication in the environment. It is feasible to improve the efficiency of phosphorus (P) absorption in lentils by enhancing phosphorus absorption through...

Ascochyta blight (Didymella rabiei) is an economically important disease of chickpea in Morocco and other parts of the world. Knowledge about pathogen diversity and their aggressiveness in the Moroccan D. rabiei population can help breeders to...

The cultivated barley ranks fourth cereal crop in the world. The demand for higher-yielding, nutritious, and better-adapted crop varieties has increased the need to exploit genebanks diversity. Thus, assessing the genetic diversity of barley is...

The tomato leaf miner, Tuta absoluta (Meyrick) (Lepidoptera: Gelechiidae), is a devastating pest worldwide affecting tomato production. Entomopathogenic nematodes (EPNs) are well known for their potential as biocontrol agents to control the emergence...

Biological nitrogen fixation requires a large amount of phosphorus (P). However, most of
the soils are P-deficient and the extensive use of P- chemical fertilizers constitute a serious threat
to the environment. In this context, two field experiments...

A total of 14 Rhizobium strains were isolated from lentil accessions grown at the ICARDA
experimental research station at Marchouch in Morocco and used for molecular characterization
and symbiotic efficiency assessment. Individual phylogenetic...

Representative, broad and diverse collections are a primary resource to dissect genetic diversity and meet pre-breeding and breeding goals through the identification of beneficial alleles for target traits. From 2,500 tetraploid wheat accessions...

Lentil is a staple in many diets around the world and growing in popularity as a quick‐cooking, nutritious, plant‐based source of protein in the human diet. Lentil varieties are usually grown close to where they were bred. Future climate change...

Marker assisted selection (MAS) is ‘smart breeding’ or fast track plant breeding technol-ogy. It is one tool utilized in breeding companies and research institutes for fast devel-opment of improved varieties, giving possibility to select desirable...

In this study, we characterized 30 date palm trees of Khalas cultivar from the GCC countries, along with seven male trees from Qatar, using 14 microsatellite loci. The results showed that the microsatellites [(GA)n] in the date palm cultivar Khalas...

“Stay-green” crop phenotypes have been shown to impact drought tolerance and nutritional content of several crops. We aimed to genetically describe and functionally dissect the particular stay-green phenomenon found in chickpeas with a green...

Intercropping has been proposed as a useful strategy for reducing external inputs in cereal-based cropping systems, while maintaining adequate crop yield. Intercropping of wheat and subclover, implemented as living mulch, is recommended, but there is...

The Mediterranean region has a rich history of domestication and cultivation of lentil (Lens culinaris Medik.). Landraces have been grown and repeatedly selected by local farmers under different agro-environments. Characterization of molecular...

Glutenin is a major protein fraction contributing to the functional properties of gluten and dough. The glutenin constitutes 30–40% of the protein in wheat flour and about half of that in gluten. It is essential to identify correct glutenin alleles...

Assessment of genetic diversity is an essential component in germplasm characterization and utilization. Molecular markers serve as a valuable tool to assess the genetic variation and germplasm identification, which play a key role for faba (Vicia...

A chickpea simple sequence repeat (SSR) marker reference kit has been developed based on the
genotyping of the global chickpea composite collection (3,000 accessions) with 35 SSR markers.
The kit consists of three pools of chickpea accessions along...

Broomrape represents one of the most intractable parasitic weed problems for faba bean in Mediterranean region. It causes enormous yield losses, and few control measures are effective. Recently, a novel strategy based on parasite-induced expression...

Selecting desired agronomic traits may lead to a loss of genetic diversity in crop species. A molecular investigation was conducted to determine how well a set of olive (Olea europaea L.) accessions sampled in Moroccan traditional orchards...

Sulla is an important forage legume in the northern parts of Morocco and has a significant role in minimizing soil erosion. Sulla consists of two species Hedysarum coronarium L. and H. flexuosum L and both are well adapted to marginal areas where...

Date Palm is a major environmental and economic factor in arid climates in many countries around the world. Microsatellite markers have been proven to be very powerful in plant genome analysis because they are locus-specific, codominant, highly...

Sinorhizobium meliloti and S. medicae are symbiotic nitrogen fixing bacteria in root nodules of forage legume alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.). In Morocco, alfalfa is usually grown in marginal soils of arid and semi-arid regions frequently affected by...

Background
Drought is the major constraint to increase yield in chickpea (Cicer arietinum). Improving drought tolerance is therefore of outmost importance for breeding. However, the complexity of the trait allowed only marginal progress. A solution...

Background: Plant genetic resources (PGR) are the basic raw materials for future genetic progress and an insurance against unforeseen threats to agricultural production. An extensive characterization of PGR provides an opportunity to dissect...

Development of a reliable in vitro regeneration protocol is necessary to facilitate genetic transformation of faba bean. However, leaching of phenolics from the explants of most genotypes of faba bean to the culture medium causes browning, and...

Genetic variability among 122 Rhynchosporium secalis isolates collected from barley in three regions of Tunisia was investigated using host differentials, amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP), and microsatellite markers. The isolates were...

Ascochyta blight is an economically important disease of chickpea caused by the fungus Ascochyta rabiei. The fungus shows considerable variation for pathogenicity in nature. However, studies on the genetics of pathotype-specific resistance are not...

Microsatellites, very short tandemly repeated DNA sequences, are being extensively used in evolutionary genetics and molecular breeding of crop plants, because of their high degree of allelic variability, which is presumably caused by a high rate of...