Genetic structure and molecular diversity of cacao plants established as local varieties for more than two centuries: the genetic history of cacao plantations in Bahia, Brazil

ahia is the most important cacao-producing state in Brazil, which is currently the sixth-largest country worldwide to produce cacao seeds. In the eighteenth century, the Comum, Pará and Maranhão varieties of cacao were introduced into southern Bahia, and their descendants, which are called ‘Bahian cacao’ or local Bahian varieties, have been cultivated for over 200 years. Comum plants have been used to start plantations in African countries and extended as far as countries in South Asia and Oceania. In Brazil, two sets of clones selected from Bahian varieties and their mutants, the Agronomic Institute of East (SIAL) and Bahian Cacao Institute (SIC) series, represent the diversity of Bahian cacao in germplasm banks. Because the genetic diversity of Bahian varieties, which is essential for breeding programs, remains unknown, the objective of this work was to assess the genetic structure and diversity of local Bahian varieties collected from farms and germplasm banks. To this end, 30 simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers were used to genotype 279 cacao plants from germplasm and local farms. The results facilitated the identification of 219 cacao plants of Bahian origin, and 51 of these were SIAL or SIC clones. Bahian cacao showed low genetic diversity. It could be verified that SIC and SIAL clones do not represent the true diversity of Bahian cacao, with the greatest amount of diversity found in cacao trees on the farms. Thus, a core collection to aid in prioritizing the plants to be sampled for Bahian cacao diversity is suggested. These results provide information that can be used to conserve Bahian cacao plants and applied in breeding programs to obtain more productive Bahian cacao with superior quality and tolerance to major diseases in tropical cacao plantations worldwide1012CONSELHO NACIONAL DE DESENVOLVIMENTO CIENTÍFICO E TECNOLÓGICO - CNPQCOORDENAÇÃO DE APERFEIÇOAMENTO DE PESSOAL DE NÍVEL SUPERIOR - CAPESFUNDAÇÃO DE AMPARO À PESQUISA DO ESTADO DE SÃO PAULO - FAPESP620239/2008-5; 555432/2009-2PROCAD-NF20082008/52197-4; 2010/50033-4; 2013/08086-

Abstracts

Tradução, para a língua inglesa, dos resumos dos artigos publicados nesta edição

Os mártires e a cristianização do território na América portuguesa, séculos XVI e XVII

O artigo investiga um grupo de atores sociais bastante relevante para viabilizar a cristianização na América portuguesa: os mártires cristãos, indivíduos muito especiais, dispostos a regar a terra com seu próprio sangue, de forma a tornar definitiva e irreversível a ocupação cristã do território. Os mártires - e principalmente a narrativa em torno deles - parecem ter sido bastante acionados para integrar a América portuguesa e seus habitantes nativos à temporalidade e territorialidade cristã. Os mártires dos séculos XVI e XVII, principalmente missionários, reeditavam os martírios do início da cristandade, que espalharam o cristianismo rumo a diversas partes do mundo na antiguidade. Dessa forma, viabilizaram a cristianização das novas fronteiras, consagrando o solo com seu sangue divino e viabilizando posteriores processos de urbanização. Além da função estratégica dos mártires para os cristãos, o texto mostra que eles também tiveram significado peculiar na interlocução com as culturas ameríndias, que tinha como um de seus principais personagens o grande guerreiro, disposto a perder seu sangue em prol de seu grupo.This paper looks into a group of social agents who played a significant role in the Christianization of Portuguese America, namely, the Christian martyrs - very special individuals who were ready to wet the land with their own blood in order to make possible a definitive and irreversible occupation of the territory by Christian settlers. The martyrs, and above all the stories told about them, seem to have been called upon to integrate Portuguese America and its native inhabitants into the temporalities and territory of Christendom. Mostly made up of missionaries, this group of 16th and 17th-century martyrs reedited the martyrdom of early Christians, who spread their creed across numerous parts of the Ancient World. They enabled the Christianization of new frontiers by consecrating the soil with their divine blood and paving the way for subsequent processes of urban development. In addition to their strategic significance for Christianity, the text also shows that their martyrdom played a specific role in the Christian settlers' interaction with Amerindian culture, whose main cults included the figure of the great warrior, ever ready to shed his own blood for his group

Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research

Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time,1,2 and attempts to address it require a clear un derstanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space.3,4 While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environmental changes,5–7 vast areas of the tropics remain understudied.8–11 In the American tropics, Amazonia stands out as the world’s most diverse rainforest and the primary source of Neotropical biodiversity,12 but it remains among the least known forests in America and is often underrepre sented in biodiversity databases.13–15 To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications16,17 may elim inate pieces of the Amazon’s biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological com munities are responding. To increase generalization and applicability of biodiversity knowledge,18,19 it is thus crucial to reduce biases in ecological research, particularly in regions projected to face the most pronounced environmental changes. We integrate ecological community metadata of 7,694 sampling sites for multiple or ganism groups in a machine learning model framework to map the research probability across the Brazilian Amazonia, while identifying the region’s vulnerability to environmental change. 15%–18% of the most ne glected areas in ecological research are expected to experience severe climate or land use changes by 2050. This means that unless we take immediate action, we will not be able to establish their current status, much less monitor how it is changing and what is being lostinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The Genome of Anopheles darlingi, the main neotropical malaria vector

Anopheles darlingi is the principal neotropical malaria vector, responsible for more than a million cases of malaria per year on the American continent. Anopheles darlingi diverged from the African and Asian malaria vectors ∼100 million years ago (mya) and successfully adapted to the New World environment. Here we present an annotated reference A. darlingi genome, sequenced from a wild population of males and females collected in the Brazilian Amazon. A total of 10 481 predicted protein-coding genes were annotated, 72% of which have their closest counterpart in Anopheles gambiae and 21% have highest similarity with other mosquito species. In spite of a long period of divergent evolution, conserved gene synteny was observed between A. darlingi and A. gambiae. More than 10 million single nucleotide polymorphisms and short indels with potential use as genetic markers were identified. Transposable elements correspond to 2.3% of the A. darlingi genome. Genes associated with hematophagy, immunity and insecticide resistance, directly involved in vectorhuman and vectorparasite interactions, were identified and discussed. This study represents the first effort to sequence the genome of a neotropical malaria vector, and opens a new window through which we can contemplate the evolutionary history of anopheline mosquitoes. It also provides valuable information that may lead to novel strategies to reduce malaria transmission on the South American continent. The A. darlingi genome is accessible at www.labinfo.lncc.br/index.php/anopheles- darlingi. © 2013 The Author(s)