Seed composition, including the protein, lipid and sucrose contents of 334 accessions of wild soybean (Glycine soja) collected in Japan, was evaluated using near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS) technology. The distribution of protein, lipid and sucrose contents and correlations among these three classes of seed components were determined. Protein, lipid and sucrose levels ranged in accessions from 48.6 to 57.0, 9.0 to 14.3 and 1.24 to 3.53%, respectively. Average levels of protein, lipid and sucrose in the accessions were 54, 11 and 2.5%, respectively. High negative correlations were observed between the protein and lipid contents, and the protein and sucrose contents. Mean levels of the three constituents were compared among collection sites classified by climatic conditions. The total protein content of accessions from regions with a high annual mean temperature was high. The protein content of accessions from the II-1 region was higher than those from the III-3 region, and the sucrose content from the II-1 region was lower than those from regions III-2 and IV-3. The lipid content of plants from the II-1 region was lower than those from other regions, and the accessions in region II had a higher protein content and lower sucrose and lipid contents than the other regions. These results provide diverse and wide-ranged protein, lipid and sucrose contents information of Japanese wild soybean resources according to climatic region; thus, providing a foundation for the future development and selection of new soybean varieties with desired traits in global environmental changes.

Overexploitation in search of its valuable non-wood fragrance product has put pressure on the survival of the endangered Aquilaria trees in the wild. In this study, the pattern of genetic variation among wild populations was measured to aid in designing useful strategies for in situ conservation. We sequenced the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) of the nuclear region of 19 wild Aquilaria malaccensis populations from different states in Peninsular Malaysia, and compared the sequence with the same species residing outside of Malaysia, mainly from the Assam region in India and Sumatra in Indonesia. This widely distributed species is found in the Indomalesian region and is a major source of agarwood. In addition, we included five wild Aquilaria hirta populations for semblance purposes. Intraspecific variations were not found within A. malaccensis and A. hirta populations in Peninsular Malaysia. Interestingly, Single Nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were identified when comparing A. malaccensis from three geographical regions, with a total of 25 SNPs detected. We imply that geographical segregation is a contributing factor toward genetic variation in A. malaccensis. This is the first report on utilizing the ITS region for analysing genetic variation in A. malaccensis of various geographical regions. The molecular information obtained in this study will serve as a useful reference in designing in situ programmes for this endangered species.

In many regions of the world, the cultivation of landraces is still common, in particular in centres of crop diversity. Significant effort has been put into ex situ conservation of landraces but limited data exist on the changes in genetic diversity that occur over time in farmers’ fields. We assessed temporal changes in barley landrace diversity in Jordan using seed samples collected in 1981 and 2012 from the same locations. We did not observe significant changes in the amount of genetic diversity, but samples collected in 2012 were more homogenous and less locally distinct. In two sites, we observed replacement of the old material. We observed a change in phenotype, and phenotypes were found to be more homogeneous among sites in 2012. Climate changed significantly over the study period, becoming hotter and dryer, but we did not identify any correlation between the changes in climate and genetic and phenotypic variations. While the amount of genetic diversity in terms of allelic richness and number of multi-locus genotypes has been maintained, local distinctiveness among landrace barley populations in Jordan was reduced.

A total of 326 pearl millet accessions selected for fodder traits from the world collection at ICRISAT genebank, India were evaluated in rainy, postrainy and summer seasons to identify promising sources for fodder yield. In rainy season, majority of accessions grew significantly tall, produced thick stems, long and broad leaves compared with postrainy and summer seasons. Total tillers per plant were significantly more in rainy and summer seasons than in postrainy season. Significant (P = 0.05) positive correlations were observed among all traits in all seasons except total tillers, which showed significant negative correlation with all other traits but for a few cases. Accessions of cluster 1 flowered early and produced more tillers per plant, while those of cluster 3 flowered late, grew tall, produced thick stems, more leaves per plant, which were long and broad. Promising sources identified include IP 11839 and IP 11840 for plant height and number of leaves per plant, IP 15710, IP 15735 and IP 15752 for stem thickness and leaf width, and IP 3628, IP 15285, IP 15288, IP 15302, IP 15342, IP 15351, IP 15290, IP 20347 and IP 20350 for total tillers per plant. Further testing of these sources of fodder traits at different locations will be very useful.

Having knowledge on genetic similarity and DNA profile of potato genotypes facilitates a breeder's decision for parent selection and provides accurate variety identification. Fingerprinting and identification of genetic similarity among 151 potato genotypes were achieved using an inter-primer-binding sites (iPBS) retrotransposon marker system. Our study is the first application of iPBS markers for fingerprinting and distinguishing large numbers of Solanum tuberosum genotypes. Initially, 16 potato genotypes were screened using 45 iPBS retrotransposon markers to identify polymorphisms. Seventeen of these primers were selected for fingerprinting the whole set of accessions due to strong, reproducible and polymorphic bands. The 17 iPBS primers produced 290 scorable bands of which 224 were polymorphic. The number of bands per primer ranged from 10 to 26 with an average of 17.1. The number of polymorphic bands per primer was between 6 and 21. The polymorphism percentage per primer ranged from 46.2 to 100.0% with an average of 77.2% per primer. The mean polymorphism information content (PIC) values of iPBS primers varied from 0.12 to 0.31 per primer. Genetic similarity based on Jaccard's coefficient of potato genotypes ranged from 0.61 to 0.93 with an average of 0.73. The data produced herein may be used for selection of appropriate parents and variety description in the future. The findings of the present study suggest that iPBS retrotransposons are powerful and easy DNA markers for fingerprinting the large samples of potato germplasm.

Evaluating quality traits is important to the selection of elite lines in Brassica napus L. In this study, the quality traits of 488 global collections of B. napus L were evaluated for two consecutive years under central Chinese growing conditions, and a series of phenotypic data was obtained. The measured total glucosinolate content (GLC) and erucic acid content (ERU) values for 95.5% of the accessions were consistent with the original values, and large variations in quality traits were found among these accessions, thus enabling selection for these characters. In general, Chinese accessions tended to have a higher oil content (OC) than foreign accessions, while compared with winter and spring accessions, semi-winter accessions tended to have the highest OC. The mean GLC and ERU of Chinese rapeseed accessions showed gradual downward trends over time, and the genotypic variation in ERU accounted for 98.44% of the total variation, which was the highest among all 10 of the quality traits. Additionally, the heritability for ERU was largest among all 10 of the quality traits. Significant correlations were observed between different traits; OC had significantly (P < 0.01) negative correlation coefficients with oleic acid content, whereas OC had significantly (P < 0.01) positive correlation coefficients with ERU. Principal component analysis revealed that there was no clear boundary among materials of different geographic origins and different ecotypes according to the first two principal coordinates, respectively. This information about variations in quality traits revealed in this study could identify parents for improved rapeseed breeding.

A world-wide coconut germplasm collection (79 genotypes) was analyzed for genetic diversity and population structure based on 48 simple sequence repeat (SSR) loci. The genotypes displayed moderately high amount of genetic diversity, which was strongly structured according to geographical origins. Number of SSR alleles ranged from 2 to 7 with an average of 4.1 per locus. Gene diversity (expected heterozygosity) estimates ranged from 0.162 to 0.811 with a mean of 0.573. Polymorphism information content values ranged from 0.149 to 0.785 with an average of 0.522. Hierarchical clustering analysis grouped the genotypes into two major clusters with two sub-groups in each, which corresponded with the geographic origins. The first cluster comprised of ‘Tall’ genotypes originated from Indo-Atlantic and South Asia regions. The second cluster comprised mostly of ‘Dwarf’ genotypes and some Tall genotypes which originated from Indo-Pacific and South-East Asia regions. Model-based clustering by STRUCTURE analysis also supported the presence of clear genetic structuring in the collection with two major populations (K = 2) and four sub-populations (K = 4). The proportion of SSR locus-pairs in linkage disequilibrium was low (2.4%). Association analysis in a subset of 44 genotypes detected a single SSR locus, CnCir73 (chromosome 1) putatively associated with fruit yield component traits, which corresponded with a previously mapped quantitative trait locus in coconut.

Castor is an industrially important oilseed crop. Vascular wilt caused by the soil borne fungus Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. ricini is a serious disease of castor. Use of resistant cultivars is the only viable option for management of wilt disease problem in castor production. Excellent sources of resistance to wilt have been found in castor germplasm. In this study, a set of four castor inbred lines (48–1, CI-1, AP42 and AP48) was characterized for inheritance of resistance to wilt by studying segregating populations generated by crossing these inbred lines with eight different susceptible genotypes. An artificial screening method (sick pot) with a new scoring system (days to wilt) was used for evaluation of plant progenies for reaction to the pathogen infection. The reaction of F1s indicated that the nature of resistance in 48–1, CI-1 and AP48 is recessive whereas it was dominant in AP42. Inheritance results from eight F2 populations showed that resistance to wilt is conferred by a single locus in one population and at least two loci, which interact in complementary way, in other seven populations. Different modes of inheritance were also observed when the same resistant source was crossed with different susceptible parents, indicating the possible role of genetic backgrounds in determining resistance. Overall, the results suggested that Mendelian resistance to wilt is predominant in the castor genotypes, which can be exploited for breeding cultivars. Particularly, AP42 with dominant nature of resistance will be of great interest to hybrid breeding.

Stripe rust, caused by Puccinia striiformis f.sp. tritici (Pst), is an important disease of winter wheat in Central Asia. Stripe rust races contain diverse virulence/avirulence patterns and change rapidly. Therefore the objectives of this research were to: (i) examine current pathotype variability of Pst races collected from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and (ii) evaluate stripe rust resistance in leading cultivars and advanced breeding lines targeted to those regions. Analyses of 152 Pst samples showed diverse virulence patterns with avirulence to Yr5, Yr10 and Yr15 being common. Most of identified races are among the rare. Analysis of a mixed Pst population showed 10 distinct pathotypes with frequencies ranged from 1.2 to 8.7%. The virulence patterns ranged from least ‘31–1.5’ and X-1.5 to highly virulent ‘86 + E16’. Seedling evaluation of 62 genotypes using the 10 pathotypes showed variations for resistance. Bunyodkor and Barhayot showed resistance to all pathotypes. Five Yr genes were postulated. Yr1 in KR12-5075, and Yr6 in KR11-03 and KR12-5003 were postulated. Yr5 combined with Yr10 and Yr15 genes were determined in Bunyodkor. The wheat genotypes also showed different levels of resistance in adult plant stage under field conditions. Twenty genotypes showed <20% severity in both Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The disease severity on several genotypes differed in this countries, suggesting different Pst populations in the two countries. Several resistant genotypes were identified, which should be further evaluated for release as new varieties or used in breeding programmes. Two resistant lines from this study were identified as new varieties in Georgia and Uzbekistan.

Bamboo shoots and leaves are valuable food sources for both humans and livestock. The USDA-ARS NPGS (National Plant Germplasm System) collections hold 93 bamboo species in 20 genera. Total leaf protein, amino acid composition and elemental content for these important genetic resources had never been quantified. Lack of nutrition information hinders germplasm utilization. The above-mentioned nutritional traits were evaluated from these 93 species in this study. Leaf protein content among bamboo species ranged from 8.12 to 16.33% with an average of 12.84%. This average was higher than 9.0% observed for switchgrass leaves, but considerably lower than 32.48% in cassava leaves. For 18 quantified amino acids, there was more than a twofold variation among the samples evaluated. For 12 quantified mineral elements, there was significant variability from the low end (4.2-fold, 2.27–9.52 mg/g calcium; 4.4-fold, 56.17–246.43 µg/g sodium) to the high end (61.5-fold, 17.67–1087.0 µg/g manganese; 40.8-fold, 42.0–1713.5 µg/g aluminium). Due to their variability in leaf nutritive value, bamboo species should be carefully chosen when they are used as a feedstock. The results from this study will be useful for the bamboo industry, producers and consumers.

Galantamine (GAL), a morphine-like alkaloid produced by some members of the Amaryllidaceae plant family, is a possible therapeutic agent in Alzheimer's disease because of its central cholinergic effects. GAL has been extracted from the plant sources or produced synthetically for pharmaceutical use. Limited supply of the natural source and high cost of synthetic production has led to a search for alternative sources of this valuable compound. In the present study, a total of six Galanthus nivalis populations (GNPs) and 11 Narcissus tazetta populations (NTPs) were collected across different regions of Iran and were then subjected to the high-performance liquid chromatography analysis for their GAL quantification. The GAL content ranged from 0.05 to 0.36 mg/g dry weight (DW) in the bulbs of GNPs, and from 0.03 to 0.33 mg/g DW in the bulbs of NTPs. Maximum content of GAL (0.36 and 0.33 mg/g DW) was measured in the Zirab population of G. nivalis and Ghaemshahr population of N. tazetta, respectively. Our results provided a suitable material for further agronomical and biotechnological strategies for enhanced production of valuable GAL compound on a large scale.