Zakaria Kehel

Sustainable barley production will require access to diverse ex-situ conserved collections to develop varieties with high yields and capable of overcoming the challenges imposed by major abiotic and biotic stresses. This study aimed at searching...

Barley production worldwide is limited by several abiotic and biotic stresses and breeding of highly productive and adapted varieties is key to overcome these challenges. Leaf scald, caused by Rhynchosporium commune is a major disease of barley that...

Wheat quality parameters are complex traits predominantly influenced by the genetic background of varieties. A total of 802 spring bread wheat breeding lines were tested at Marchouch station, Morocco in 2018 aimed at mining invaluable QTNs for grain...

Drought is the principal abiotic stress which affect grain yield and quality of wheat at the global level, more particularly in West and South Asia, North Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa. To identify marker-trait associations (MTA) and putative genes...

Hybrid wheat breeding is one of the most promising technologies for further sustainable
yield increases. However, the cleistogamous nature of wheat displays a major bottleneck for a successful
hybrid breeding program. Thus, an optimized breeding...

Drought and high temperature are the major abiotic stresses for wheat production. The present study investigated the effect of drought and chronic heat stress on physiological parameters of durum wheat lines derived from interspecific crosses and...

During the 1970s, Tunisian durum wheat landraces were replaced progressively by modern cultivars. These landraces are nowadays maintained by smallholder farmers in some ecological niches and are threatened gradually by extinction resulting in the...

Broomrape weeds (Orobanche spp.) are root holoparasitic plants that cause serious damage to a range of legume crops in the Mediterranean and sub‐Saharan African regions. Grain yield of cultivated species of grass pea (Lathyrus sativus L.) is almost...

The productivity of durum wheat is affected by drought or/and high temperatures, challenges to be amplified by climate change. Pre‐breeding using wild relatives can supply useful traits for durum wheat improvement to adapt to major abiotic and biotic...

Barley is a crop of global significance with multiple uses (feed, food and beverages), but its productivity worldwide is limited by several abiotic and biotic stresses. Crop wild relatives, exclusively, Hordeum vulgare ssp. spontaneum and H. bulbosum...

Abiotic stress, especially drought and heat, affects cereal yields and wheat production worldwide, more particularly in West and South Asia, North Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa. The present study was carried out on 229 spring bread wheat (Triticum...

Durum wheat (Triticum turgidum L. var durum) is among the most important crops in the world. High and stable grain yield in diverse environments is the major objective in durum breeding programs. This trait is linked to the quantitative trait loci...

Wheat breeding has significantly contributed
to enhancing yield potential and stability.
However, one of the most promising technologies for
further sustainable yield increases, hybrid wheat, is
still limited due to lack of well-established heterotic...

Over the past 70 years, the world has witnessed extraordinary growth in crop productivity, enabled by a suite of technological advances, including higher yielding crop varieties, improved farm management, synthetic agrochemicals, and agricultural...

Undomesticated wild species, crop wild relatives, and landraces represent sources of variation for wheat improvement to address challenges from climate change and the growing human population. Here, we study 56,342 domesticated hexaploid, 18,946...

The conservation and effective use of crop genetic diversity are crucial to overcome challenges related to human nutrition and agricultural sustainability. Farmers’ traditional varieties (“landraces”) are major sources of genetic variation. The...

Durum wheat is an important crop for the human diet and its consumption is gaining popularity. In order to ensure that durum wheat production maintains the pace with the increase in demand, it is necessary to raise productivity by approximately 1.5%...

Seed traits of bread wheat, including the seed size that is considered to be associated with early vigor of the crop and end-use quality, are valuable to farmers and breeders. In this study, a collection of 789 bread wheat landraces, held in-trust at...

Vapor pressure deficit (VPD) is one of the critical variables that drives evapotranspiration, and is of fundamental importance in crop physiology and modeling in the face of climate change. Unfortunately, direct records of atmospheric moisture are...

Tan spot (TS) and Septoria nodorum blotch (SNB) induced by Pyrenophora tritici-repentis and Parastagonospora nodorum, respectively, cause significant yield losses and adversely affect grain quality. The objectives of this study were to decipher the...

Tunisia, being part of the secondary center of diversity for durum wheat, has rich unexploited landraces that are being continuously lost and replaced by high yielding modern cultivars. This study aimed to investigate the genetic diversity and...

Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is the most important cereal crop in Tunisia, nonetheless production is highly affected by drought and diseases mainly Septoria tritici blotch (STB) caused by Zymoseptoria tritici (Roberge ex Desm.) Quaedvl. & Crous...

The present paper studied the performance of the stable isotope signatures of carbon (δ13C), nitrogen (δ15N) and oxygen (δ18O) in plants when used to assess early vigour and grain yield (GY) in durum wheat growing under mild and moderate...

Comparative performance of the stable isotope signatures of carbon, nitrogen and oxygen in assessing early vigour and grain yield in durum wheat – CORRIGENDUM