Filippo Bassi

Crop wild relatives (CWRs) represent a fundamental cornerstone for enhancing agrobiodiversity, fostering sustainable agriculture, and bolstering overall food and nutrition security. These invaluable genetic resources where never pampered by the help...

The global production of durum wheat (Triticum durum Desf.) is hindered by a constant rise in the frequency of severe heat stress events. To identify heat-tolerant germplasm, three different germplasm panels (“discovery,” “investigation,” and...

Rusts of the genus Puccinia are wheat pathogens. Stem (black; Sr), leaf (brown; Lr), and stripe (yellow; Yr) rust, caused by Puccinia graminis f. sp. tritici (Pgt), Puccinia triticina (Pt), and Puccinia striiformis f. sp. tritici (Pst), can occur...

Terminal drought is one of the most common and devastating climatic stress factors affecting durum wheat (Triticum durum Desf.) production worldwide. The wild relatives of this crop are deemed a vast potential source of useful alleles to adapt to...

Durum wheat is a staple food of the Mediterranean Basin, mostly cultivated under rainfed conditions. As such, the crop is often exposed to moisture stress. Therefore, the identification of genetic factors controlling the capacity of genotypes to...

Morocco, in North Africa, is a country vastly exposed to the whims of climate change,with frequent moisture and heat stresses occurring throughout the season. Hence,developing climate-resilient, high-yielding, and nutritious cultivars of durum wheat...

At the turn of 2000 many authors envisioned future plant breeding. Twenty years
after, which of those authors’ visions became reality or not, and which ones may
become so in the years to come. After two decades of debates, climate change is
a...

The abrupt increase of temperatures during and after the flowering period of wheat is defined as terminal heat stress, and it causes severe reductions in productivity. One hundred two durum wheat lines were evaluated against this stress for three...

Durum wheat (Triticum durum Desf.) breeding programs face many challenges surrounding the development of stable varieties with high quality and yield. Therefore, researchers and breeders are focused on deciphering the genetic architecture of biotic...

Tan spot, caused by the necrotrophic fungal pathogen Pyrenophora tritici-repentis (Ptr), is an important disease of durum and common wheat worldwide. Compared to common wheat, less is known about the genetics and molecular basis of tan spot...

Plant genetic resources have contributed to the identification and characterization of key loci and genes for important agronomic traits such as flowering time, plant height, root and shoot growth and resistance to abiotic stresses. Key loci for pre...

Fusarium culmorum is one of the most important causal agents of root rot of wheat. In this study, 10 F. culmorum isolates were collected from farms located in five agro-ecological regions of Morocco. These were used to challenge 20 durum wheat...

Crop wild relatives (CWR) are a good source of useful alleles for climate change adaptation.
Here, 19 durum wheat, 24 barley, and 24 lentil elites incorporating CWR in their pedigrees were yield
tested against commercial checks across 19 environments...

Low adoption of agricultural technologies slows efforts to increase agricultural productivity and enhance rural livelihoods in developing countries. A large body of literature has sought explanations for the problem, but the focus has been mainly on...

Crop wild relatives (CWR) are an important source of genetic diversity for crop improvement. The aim of this study was to assess the usefulness of deploying CWR in durum wheat breeding (Triticum turgidum ssp. durum). A set of 60 accessions was...

Hessian fly, Mayetiola destructor (Say) is a destructive insect pest occurring in many wheat growing areas of the world. The most effective management option for controlling Hessian fly is the use of resistant wheat cultivars carrying specific...

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...

Flowering time is a critical stage for crop development as it regulates the ability of plants to adapt to an environment. To understand the genetic control of flowering time, a genome-wide association study (GWAS) was conducted to identify 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%...

Heat stress occurring during the reproductive stage of wheat has a detrimental effect on productivity. A durum wheat core set was exposed to simulated terminal heat stress by applying plastic tunnels at the time of flowering over two seasons. Mean...

The ICARDA’s durum wheat breeding program was established in 1977 in Aleppo, Syria, where it continued its work targeted to the drylands of the developing world until 2012, when it was forced to relocate. This movement represented an occasion to...

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...

Durum wheat (Triticum durum Desf.) is a major crop of North Africa. Here, its production is affected by Hessian fly (Mayetiola destructor, HF) epidemics. Genetic resistance against this pest exist, but its molecular basis remains unclear. Here, a...

The Senegal River basin (Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, and Senegal) is a key agricultural production area in
sub-Saharan Africa. Here, rice fields are left fallow during the cooler winter season, when the night temperatures reach 16 °C but the maximum...

Durum wheat (Triticum durum Desf.) breeders over the past century have increased the productivity and resilience of this crop via strong selection applied to genes controlling agronomically important traits. Along this process, some of the primitive...

Durum wheat (Triticum durum Desf.) is the 10th most important crop in the world, and its cultivation occurs on a vast array of international agroenvironments. However, its wide international adaptation is only marginally documented. Here, 24 durum...

Durum wheat is the 10th most important crop in the world, and its use traces back to the origin of agriculture. Unfortunately, in the last century only part of the genetic diversity available for this species has been captured in modern varieties...

The virulence of 135 single-spore isolates of Pyrenophora tritici-repentis, collected from durum wheat fields representing most of the major agro-ecological zones of Morocco from 2013 to 2015, was assessed on six international differential wheat...

Wheat is the principal staple food in most countries of the Central and West Asia and North Africa (CWANA) region, accounting for 45% of the region’s per capita calorie intake with an average wheat consumption of about 200 kg/capita/year, which is...

The nuclear-encoded species cytoplasm specific (scs) genes control nuclear–cytoplasmic compatibility in wheat (genus Triticum). Alloplasmic cells, which have nucleus and cytoplasm derived from different species, produce vigorous and vital organisms...

In the last decade the breeding technology referred to as ‘genomic selection’ (GS) has been implementedin a variety of species, with particular success in animal breeding. Recent research shows the potentialof GS to reshape wheat breeding. Many...

Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) flour represents one of the primary sources of calories and proteins for the human diet.
The increase in the wheat yield without losing its baking and milling quality is an important breeding objective. The
use of QTL...

Since the dawn of wheat cytogenetics, chromosome 3B has been known to harbor a gene(s) that, when removed, causes chromosome desynapsis and gametic sterility. The lack of natural genetic diversity for this gene(s) has prevented any attempt to fine...

Leaf rust (Puccinia triticina Eriks. & Henn.) is a major disease affecting durum wheat production. The Lr14a-resistant gene present in the durum wheat cv. Creso and its derivative cv. Colosseo is one of the best characterized leaf-rust resistance...

The species cytoplasm specific (scs) genes affect nuclear-cytoplasmic interactions in interspecific hybrids. A radiation hybrid (RH) mapping population of 188 individuals was employed to refine the location of the scsae locus on Triticum aestivum...

In the course of evolution, the genomes of grasses have maintained an observable degree of gene order conservation. The information available for already sequenced genomes can be used to predict the gene order of nonsequenced species by means of...