Evidence, Mechanisms and Improved Understanding of Controlled Salinity Waterflooding Part 1 : Sandstones

Acknowledgements TOTAL are thanked for partial supporting Jackson through the TOTAL Chairs programme at Imperial College London, for supporting Vinogradov through the TOTAL Laboratory for Reservoir Physics at Imperial College London, and for granting permission to publish this work.Peer reviewedPostprin

L'amélioration des plantes tropicales

L'amélioration des plantes a connu au cours des dix dernières années une évolution rapide. D'une part, elle bénéficie désormais des outils biotechnologiques d'exploitation des ressources génétiques et de création de variétés, qui viennent enrichir les méthodes classiques de sélection. D'autre part, elle doit répondre à de nouvelles attentes : gérer la biodiversité et concourir à une agriculture durable. Cet ouvrage présente les derniers progrès réalisés en amélioration des plantes tropicales. Il se fonde principalement sur les travaux que les équipes françaises du CIRAD et de l'ORSTOM conduisent en collaboration avec leurs homologues des pays tropicaux. Il comprend vingt-quatre chapitres, chacun étant consacré à une culture et rédigé par des spécialistes de la génétique et de la sélection de l'espèce. Pour chaque plante ou groupe de plantes, les auteurs analysent la diversité des formes cultivées et leurs relations avec les espèces sauvages apparentées. Ils décrivent les méthodes d'amélioration et les apports des biotechnologies dans la pratique du sélectionneur. Ils examinent les progrès génétiques réalisés en partant d'exemples tirés des programmes de création variétale. Enfin ils traitent de la diffusion des variétés améliorées. Cet ouvrage de référence s'adresse au chercheur, à l'enseignant, à l'étudiant comme au professionnel de la sélection. (Résumé d'auteur

First report of early blight caused by Alternaria protenta on potato in Algeria

Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) is one of the most important vegetable crop grown in Algeria. Although less studied than late blight, early blight caused by large-spored Alternaria species including A. solani, and A. grandis is an important foliar disease on these crops under Algerian climatic conditions. Over the past few years, this disease became a major constraint on potato production in Algeria and high incidences of early blight (up to 80 %) were recorded in the north-western parts of Algeria (Bessadat et al., 2016). During years 2012-2014, surveys were carried out and sampling was performed in 12 potato growing regions from East to West and from North to South of Algeria. Two hundred and forty-seven samples with typical early blight symptoms (dark, elongated or circular lesions with concentric rings surrounded by a yellow halo) were collected. Two to three lesions perleaf were excised, surface disinfested for 2 min in 0.1% (v/v) sodium hypochlorite solution and plated on potato dextrose agar medium at 22°C. Twenty-two pure cultures were induced to sporulate by plating on V8 medium and incubating for two weeks under alternating 12 h darkness and 12 h near UV light. Cultural and morphological characteristics of the isolates [color and pigmentation of the culture, shape and size of the conidia (conidial length and width, beak length)] compared with those in the literature (Simmons, 2007) did not clearly differentiate between the large-spored Alternaria species currently reported on potato crops. For identification at the species level, partial regions of the calmodulin (cal) and RNA polymerase second largest subunit (rpb2) genes were amplified using published primer sets (Gannibal et al., 2014; Woudenberg et al., 2014) and sequenced. Maximum likelihood cluster analyses of the resulting nucleotide sequences revealed two isolates (AD82 and AD86 isolated from potato samples collected in the El Oued region) with sequences at the two loci [GenBank accession Nos. KX870505 and KX870506 (cal locus), KX870507 and KX870508 (rpb2 locus)] that shared 100% sequence homology to A. protenta isolate CBS 116696 (KJ718394, JQ646236) and were thus assigned to this species. A. protenta was previously known in Africa only on Helianthus annuus (Simmons, 1986) but isolates from S. tuberosum and S. lycopersicum collected in New Zealand and USA and formerly recognized as A. solani, were recently moved to A. protenta based on phylogeny (Woudenberg et al., 2014). To confirm pathogenicity of the two A. protenta isolates, leaves of susceptible 3-week-old potato plants were inoculated with two 10 µL drops of a 104 conidia/ml suspension. All leaves inoculated with A. protenta showed extending lesions that may reach up 50% of the leaf area at 21 dpi. To our knowledge, we report the first occurrence of A. protenta as pathogen on potato in Algeria.

Gene flow estimation with microsatellites in a Malagasy seed orchard of Eucalyptus grandis

International audienceEucalyptus grandis has a mixed-mating repro- ductive system. Malagasy Eucalyptus seed orchards were established 15 years ago with two aims both based on panmixia: open-pollinated seed production and genetic improvement. The panmixia hypothesis has never been confirmed in the seed orchard. From a seedling seed- orchard stand comprising 349 trees and using data obtained with six selected microsatellite markers, pater- nity analysis was performed for 724 offspring collected on 30 adult trees. Paternity assignment, based on exclu- sion procedures and likelihood-ratio method, was achieved with high accuracy; the exclusion probability value was 0.997. The outcrossing rate was very high (96.7%). More than 50% of potential male trees (199 out of 349) in the seed orchard contributed to pollination for 440 offspring of 30 progenies (8.6% of the basic population). The pollination rate from outside the seed orchard was high (39.2%), but might be due to the small size of this seed orchard. This study showed that "panmixia-like pollination" can be assume

End-to-End Evaluation in Simultaneous Translation

This paper presents the end-to-end evaluation of an automatic simultaneous translation system, built with state-of-the-art components. It shows whether, and for which situations, such a system might be advantageous when compared to a human interpreter. Using speeches in English translated into Spanish, we resent the evaluation procedure and we discuss the results both for the recognition and translation components as well as for the overall system. Even if the translation process remains the Achilles’ heel of the system, the results show that the system can keep at least half of the information, becoming potentially useful for final users

Terminal-repeat retrotransposons with GAG domain in plant genomes : a new testimony on the complex world of transposable elements

A novel structure of nonautonomous long terminal repeat (LTR) retrotransposons called terminal repeat with GAG domain (TR-GAG) has been described in plants, both in monocotyledonous, dicotyledonous and basal angiosperm genomes. TR-GAGs are relatively short elements in length (<4 kb) showing the typical features of LTR-retrotransposons. However, they carry only one open reading frame coding for the GAG precursor protein involved for instance in transposition, the assembly, and the packaging of the element into the virus-like particle. GAG precursors show similarities with both Copia and Gypsy GAG proteins, suggesting evolutionary relationships of TR-GAG elements with both families. Despite the lack of the enzymatic machinery required for their mobility, strong evidences suggest that TR-GAGs are still active. TR-GAGs represent ubiquitous nonautonomous structures that could be involved in the molecular diversities of plant genomes