Genetic variation and stability of agronomic and quality traits in soybean varieties grown in western Canada between 2013 and 2018

Non-Peer ReviewedSoybean is one of the major crops of the world, but relatively new to western Canada, especially areas west of Morden, Manitoba. Expansion of soybean production to these Canadian Prairies has been slow due to a lack of adapted very-early maturing cultivars. Evaluation of stability and adaptability of a genotype to a broad range of environments is beneficial to recommend cultivars for known conditions of cultivation. Diverse soybean varieties were evaluated over multiple locations in Saskatchewan for six years (2013-2018). Significant effects of genotype, environment, and genotype and environment interaction were detected for phenology, agronomic and quality traits. Broad sense heritability estimates are medium to high for most of these traits in many site-years. Varieties with good performance stability for yield, quality and days to maturity were detected over the study period. Results from this study suggests some recommendations for soybean breeding and expansion in western Canada

Mapping QTL associated with yield and yield components and Ascochyta blight in chickpea

Non-Peer ReviewedChickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is the third important legume crop in production among the world pulse crops. A better understanding of the genetic basis of yield and disease traits and their association with flowering time could contribute to their use in the breeding strategies of the crop in the Canadian Prairies. The objective of this study was to evaluate a set of Recombinant Inbred Lines (RILs) of chickpea for yield and disease traits and to locate Quantitative Trait Loci (QTL) associated with these traits. This study used a RIL population derived from across between ICCV 96029 (a desi market class, an extra early maturing, highly susceptible to ascochyta blight and CDC Frontier (a kabuli market class, late maturing, moderately resistant to ascochyta blight. A population consisting of 92 RILs together with the 2 parents were grown in a field at Elrose, Saskatchewan in 2011 in a micro plot with 2 replications. Measurements on agronomic traits were made on an individual plant basis and the means of five plants were used for analysis. Plants were air-dried at 35°C for 48 h before measuring the above-ground biomass. Traits measured were grain yield (in gm /plant), above ground biomass (in g/ plant), number of grains /plant, number of pods/ plant, and 1000 seed weight. Harvest index (HI) = grain weight/total above ground dry weight. The result indicated that, there was significant difference in plant height (in cm), number of seeds /plant, number of seeds/pod, 1000 seeds weight (in gm/plant) and Harvest Index (%). The same lines were evaluated in the greenhouse for Ascochyta blight reaction and in the growth chambers for their flowering responses to different photoperiod. Mapping of QTL will be performed on the line mean data for single years of the field observation and for different photoperiod treatments in the growth chamber

Ectopia cordis about a case at Ourossogui regional hospital center

We report in this work, an extremely rare and major case of anterior body wall defects included ectopia cordis define by abnormal location of heart outside of the thorax. This case was diagnosed at the maternity of Ourossogui regional hospital center, in Senegal. Any scan was performed during the pregnancy. Newborn died 10 minutes after birth. Ectopia cordis is related to a possible ventral midline developmental abnormality. It’s associated to other midline abnormalities and is a part of pentalogy of Cantrell. An X-linked genetic abnormality

Chefe (ICCV 92318) - a new kabuli chickpea variety for Ethiopia

Chefe (ICCV 92318) is a new kabuli chickpea cultivar developed from a 3-way cross, i.e. (ICCV 2 × Surutato) × ICC 7344, at ICRISAT, Patancheru, Andhra Pradesh, India, and released in 2004 primarily for its attractive and large (35 g/100 seeds) seeds (compared to 26 g/100 seeds in Arerti), and high level of resistance to Fusarium wil

A human endothelial cell-based recycling assay for screening of FcRn targeted molecules.

Albumin and IgG have remarkably long serum half-lives due to pH-dependent FcRn-mediated cellular recycling that rescues both ligands from intracellular degradation. Furthermore, increase in half-lives of IgG and albumin-based therapeutics has the potential to improve their efficacies, but there is a great need for robust methods for screening of relative FcRn-dependent recycling ability. Here, we report on a novel human endothelial cell-based recycling assay (HERA) that can be used for such pre-clinical screening. In HERA, rescue from degradation depends on FcRn, and engineered ligands are recycled in a manner that correlates with their half-lives in human FcRn transgenic mice. Thus, HERA is a novel cellular assay that can be used to predict how FcRn-binding proteins are rescued from intracellular degradation. Nat Commun 2018 Feb 12; 9(1):621

Stability Analysis in Chickpea Genotype Sets as Tool for Breeding Germplasm Structuring Strategy and Adaptability Scoping

Chickpea research program has come across realizing the importance of restructuring the working germplasm pool in Ethiopia where we have 39 divergent agroecological zones (AEZ). Though chickpea is not suit to all, it adapts in more than 30% of the agroecologies having different scale of responses. Hence, as show case we have tried to scan the agroecologies discrimination power based on crop using three sets of bred-crop responses. Evidently enough, germplasms in all the sets have revealed differential responses for economical yield and associated traits, from the three set of 57 entries put under 47 environments. The AMMI stability value and stability index have been able to discriminate genotypes with designated position; and supposed the breeding program would signify values by attempting both environment and genetics still as key considerable factors

Tuberculosis and HIV co-infection: its impact on quality of life

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licens

Measuring performance on the Healthcare Access and Quality Index for 195 countries and territories and selected subnational locations: A systematic analysis from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016

Background A key component of achieving universal health coverage is ensuring that all populations have access to quality health care. Examining where gains have occurred or progress has faltered across and within countries is crucial to guiding decisions and strategies for future improvement. We used the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2016 (GBD 2016) to assess personal health-care access and quality with the Healthcare Access and Quality (HAQ) Index for 195 countries and territories, as well as subnational locations in seven countries, from 1990 to 2016. Methods Drawing from established methods and updated estimates from GBD 2016, we used 32 causes from which death should not occur in the presence of effective care to approximate personal health-care access and quality by location and over time. To better isolate potential effects of personal health-care access and quality from underlying risk factor patterns, we risk-standardised cause-specific deaths due to non-cancers by location-year, replacing the local joint exposure of environmental and behavioural risks with the global level of exposure. Supported by the expansion of cancer registry data in GBD 2016, we used mortality-to-incidence ratios for cancers instead of risk-standardised death rates to provide a stronger signal of the effects of personal health care and access on cancer survival. We transformed each cause to a scale of 0–100, with 0 as the first percentile (worst) observed between 1990 and 2016, and 100 as the 99th percentile (best); we set these thresholds at the country level, and then applied them to subnational locations. We applied a principal components analysis to construct the HAQ Index using all scaled cause values, providing an overall score of 0–100 of personal health-care access and quality by location over time. We then compared HAQ Index levels and trends by quintiles on the Socio-demographic Index (SDI), a summary measure of overall development. As derived from the broader GBD study and other data sources, we examined relationships between national HAQ Index scores and potential correlates of performance, such as total health spending per capita. Findings In 2016, HAQ Index performance spanned from a high of 97·1 (95% UI 95·8–98·1) in Iceland, followed by 96·6 (94·9–97·9) in Norway and 96·1 (94·5–97·3) in the Netherlands, to values as low as 18·6 (13·1–24·4) in the Central African Republic, 19·0 (14·3–23·7) in Somalia, and 23·4 (20·2–26·8) in Guinea-Bissau. The pace of progress achieved between 1990 and 2016 varied, with markedly faster improvements occurring between 2000 and 2016 for many countries in sub-Saharan Africa and southeast Asia, whereas several countries in Latin America and elsewhere saw progress stagnate after experiencing considerable advances in the HAQ Index between 1990 and 2000. Striking subnational disparities emerged in personal health-care access and quality, with China and India having particularly large gaps between locations with the highest and lowest scores in 2016. In China, performance ranged from 91·5 (89·1–93·6) in Beijing to 48·0 (43·4–53·2) in Tibet (a 43·5-point difference), while India saw a 30·8-point disparity, from 64·8 (59·6–68·8) in Goa to 34·0 (30·3–38·1) in Assam. Japan recorded the smallest range in subnational HAQ performance in 2016 (a 4·8-point difference), whereas differences between subnational locations with the highest and lowest HAQ Index values were more than two times as high for the USA and three times as high for England. State-level gaps in the HAQ Index in Mexico somewhat narrowed from 1990 to 2016 (from a 20·9-point to 17·0-point difference), whereas in Brazil, disparities slightly increased across states during this time (a 17·2-point to 20·4-point difference). Performance on the HAQ Index showed strong linkages to overall development, with high and high-middle SDI countries generally having higher scores and faster gains for non-communicable diseases. Nonetheless, countries across the development spectrum saw substantial gains in some key health service areas from 2000 to 2016, most notably vaccine-preventable diseases. Overall, national performance on the HAQ Index was positively associated with higher levels of total health spending per capita, as well as health systems inputs, but these relationships were quite heterogeneous, particularly among low-to-middle SDI countries. Interpretation GBD 2016 provides a more detailed understanding of past success and current challenges in improving personal health-care access and quality worldwide. Despite substantial gains since 2000, many low-SDI and middle- SDI countries face considerable challenges unless heightened policy action and investments focus on advancing access to and quality of health care across key health services, especially non-communicable diseases. Stagnating or minimal improvements experienced by several low-middle to high-middle SDI countries could reflect the complexities of re-orienting both primary and secondary health-care services beyond the more limited foci of the Millennium Development Goals. Alongside initiatives to strengthen public health programmes, the pursuit of universal health coverage hinges upon improving both access and quality worldwide, and thus requires adopting a more comprehensive view—and subsequent provision—of quality health care for all populations.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio