Extending Integrated Pest Management to indigenous vegetables

Leafy gboma (Solanum macrocarpon) and amaranths (Amaranthus sp.) are the two most important indigenous vegetables in the urban and peri-urban areas of Benin. IITA’s vegetable project has generated extensive baseline information on diversity, distribution and economic importance of pests of the crops; identified abuse and misuse of chemical pesticides in the vegetable sector; isolated suitable strains of entomopathogenic fungi as biopesticides against foliage feeders; and identified botanicals against root knot nematodes. Among 435 project-trained vegetable producers (30% women), 81 of them serve as community organizers to assist their colleagues incorporate research findings into vegetable production, increase local ownership and wider adoption of IPM options. Private-sector participation is required to assist move proven biologically-based IPM options from experimental to commercial level

HLA-G, -E and -F regulatory and coding region variability and haplotypes in the Beninese Toffin population sample

HLA-G/E/F genes exhibit immunomodulatory properties and are expressed in placenta. Little attention has been devoted to the study of these genes in sub-Saharan African populations, which are yet the most diverse. To fill this gap, we evaluated the complete gene variability, approximately 5.1 kb for HLA-G (n = 149), 7.7 kb for HLAE (n = 150) and 6.2 kb for HLA-P (n = 152) in the remote Beninese Toffin population, using massive parallel sequencing. Overall, 96, 37 and 68 variable sites were detected along the entire HLA-G,-E and-F, respectively, arranged into region-specific haplotypes; i.e., promoter haplotypes (16, 19, and 15 respectively), coding haplotypes (19, 15, and 29 respectively), 3' untranslated region (3'UTR) haplotypes (12, 7 and 2, respectively) and extended haplotypes (33, 31 and 32 respectively). All promoter/coding/3'UTR haplotypes followed the patterns already described in worldwide populations. HLA-E was the most conserved, exhibiting mainly two full-length encoded-molecules (E*01:01 and E*01:03), followed by HLA-F, three full-length proteins (F*01:01, F*01:02 and F*01:03) and HLA-G, four proteins: three full-length (G*01:01, G*01:03 and G*01:04) and one truncated (G*01:05N). Although HLA-G/E/F alleles in the Toffin population were the most frequently observed worldwide, the frequencies of the coding haplotypes were closely similar to those described for other African populations (Guinea-Conakry and Burkina-Faso), when compared to non-African ones (Brazilian), indicating that variable sites along these genes were present in Africa before human dispersion