Physico-Chemical Characterization and Biological Activities of a Digestate and a More Stabilized Digestate-Derived Compost from Agro-Waste

The excessive use of agricultural soils and the reduction in their organic matter, following circular economy and environmental sustainability concepts, determined a strong attention in considering composting as a preferred method for municipalities and industries to recycle organic by-products. Microorganisms degrade organic matter for producing CO2, water and energy, originating stable humus named compost. The current study analyzed the chemical composition of a cow slurry on-farm digestate and a more stabilized digestate-derived compost (DdC), along with their phytotoxic, genotoxic and antifungal activities. The chemical analysis showed that digestate cannot be an ideal amendment due to some non-acceptable characteristics. Biological assays showed that the digestate had phytotoxicity on the tested plants, whereas DdC did not induce a phytotoxic effect in both plants at the lowest dilution; hence, the latter was considered in subsequent analyses. The digestate and DdC induced significant antifungal activity against some tested fungi. DdC did not show genotoxic effect on Vicia faba using a micronuclei test. Soil treated with DdC (5 and 10%) induced damping-off suppression caused by Fusarium solani in tomato plants. The eco-physiological data indicated that DdC at 5–10% could increase the growth of tomato plants. In conclusion, DdC is eligible as a soil amendment and to strengthen the natural soil suppressiveness against F. solani

Breeding effects on durum wheat traits detected using GWAS and haplotype block analysis

IntroductionThe recent boosting of genomic data in durum wheat (Triticum turgidum subsp. durum) offers the opportunity to better understand the effects of breeding on the genetic structures that regulate the expression of traits of agronomic interest. Furthermore, the identification of DNA markers useful for marker-assisted selection could also improve the reliability of technical protocols used for variety protection and registration.MethodsWithin this motivation context, 123 durum wheat accessions, classified into three groups: landraces (LR), ancient (OC) and modern cultivars (MC), were evaluated in two locations, for 34 agronomic traits, including UPOV descriptors, to assess the impact of changes that occurred during modern breeding.ResultsThe association mapping analysis, performed with 4,241 SNP markers and six multi-locus-GWAS models, revealed 28 reliable Quantitative Trait Nucleotides (QTNs) related to plant morphology and kernel-related traits. Some important genes controlling flowering time and plant height were in linkage disequilibrium (LD) decay with QTNs identified in this study. A strong association for yellow berry was found on chromosome 6A (Q.Yb-6A) in a region containing the nadh-ubiquinone oxidoreductase subunit, a gene involved in starch metabolism. The Q.Kcp-2A harbored the PPO locus, with the associated marker (Ku_c13700_1196) in LD decay with Ppo-A1 and Ppo-A2. Interestingly, the Q.FGSGls-2B.1, identified by RAC875_c34512_685 for flag leaf glaucosity, mapped less than 1 Mb from the Epistatic inhibitors of glaucousness (Iw1), thus representing a good candidate for supporting the morphological DUS traits also with molecular markers. LD haplotype block approach revealed a higher diversity, richness and length of haploblocks in MC than OC and LR (580 in LR, 585 in OC and 612 in MC), suggesting a possible effect exerted by breeding programs on genomic regions associated with the agronomic traits.DiscussionOur findings pave new ways to support the phenotypic characterization necessary for variety registration by using a panel of cost-effectiveness SNP markers associated also to the UPOV descriptors. Moreover, the panel of associated SNPs might represent a reservoir of favourable alleles to use in durum wheat breeding and genetics

Towards the Development, Maintenance and Standardized Phenotypic Characterization of Single-Seed-Descent Genetic Resources for Chickpea

Here we present the approach used to develop the INCREASE “Intelligent Chickpea” Collections, from analysis of the information on the life history and population structure of chickpea germplasm, the availability of genomic and genetic resources, the identification of key phenotypic traits and methodologies to characterize chickpea. We present two phenotypic protocols within H2O20 Project INCREASE to characterize, develop, and maintain chickpea single-seed-descent (SSD) line collections. Such protocols and related genetic resource data from the project will be available for the legume community to apply the standardized approaches to develop Chickpea Intelligent Collections further or for multiplication/seed-increase purposes. © 2022 The Authors. Current Protocols published by Wiley Periodicals LLC

Evolution of the genetic structure in Tricticum Durum Desf. germplasm from Southern Italy.

The thesis that modern plant breeding has led to loss of genetic diversity in durum wheat (Triticum durum Desf.) has often been supported. Since the “Green Revolution”, a huge number of durum wheat variety have been obtained by artificial selection, generally based on high yield, disease resistance and technological qualities. On the other hand, at the same time, traditional local varieties have been considerably reduced. The evaluation of diversity at morphological and molecular level can be used to reveal temporal trends of diversity among different historical classes of durum wheat germplasm and to help in the selection of materials that need to be conserved. A set of 107 durum wheat accessions collected in Southern Italy starting from the 1947 up to year 2009 was analyzed at the University of Basilicata by 22 quanti-qualitative morphological traits and 30 nuSSRs. The accessions were grouped into two temporal groups on the basis of their collection date (1947-1951 and 1973-2009) in order to study the genetic structure changes that occurred over time. Morphological traits, particularly quantitative ones, revealed a high level of variability and showed a significative differentiation among the two groups. High polymorphism was observed for SSR, with a total of 115 alleles identified and an average of 3,83 alleles per locus. While in some loci one or more alleles were gained between the first and the second group, in other cases the allelic constitution at loci remained constant. The use of morphological traits and molecular markers revealed of great utility in assessing temporal trends in the diversity of Southern Italy durum wheat germplasm. The results indicated that the impact of breeding systems did not lead to any significant quantitative losses of genetic diversity in the set of accessions over the two temporal groups

Variabilità genetica in una collezione di frumento duro (Triticum durum Desf.) per marcatori morfologici, biochimici e molecolari

The changed growing conditions and the new focus on typical local products have proposed the opportunity to reintroduce the old local varieties in cultivation to recreate the income opportunities in marginal agriculture areas, moreover to ensure the typicality is important to have traceability procedures able to provide consumers with quality and food safety. 130 accessions of old traditional populations have been reported in Basilicata and characterized by qualitative and quantitative morphological, biochemical and molecular characters. The collection showed variability for morphological characters. 49 accessions had the g-42 band. 35 accessions had the g-45 band. The gluteinic analysis provided 19 different patterns. 25 SSR alleles was identified in the durum wheat collection, 17 widely distributed and 8 rare. The joint analysis of data have allowed to assess the genetic diversity in the entire collection and the profile singleness obtained provided a useful tool for genetic traceability of food products

Mesoamerica x Ande inter-gene pool hybridization and the introduction bottleneck of the common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) in Europe.

Common bean diversity within and between Mesoamerican and Andean gene pools was compared in 89 landraces from America and 256 landraces from Europe to elucidate the effects of introduction bottleneck and selection for adaptation during the subsequent spread of common bean over the whole Europe. Thirteen highly polymorphic nuclearmicrosatellite (nuSSRs) were used to complement chloroplast microsatellite (cpSSRs) and nuclear markers (phaseolin and Pv-shatterproof1) data from previous studies on theexpansion of Phaseolus vulgaris in Europe. The overall amount of nuclear genetic diversity was the same in America (He = 0.52) and in Europe ( He = 0.51) supporting the hypothesis of not significant bottleneck. The between gene pools variance was much larger in America than in Europe, however in America diversity within both the Mesoamerican and the Andean gene pools was smaller than within the same gene pool in Europe. This shows that the two gene pools are more differentiated in America than in Europe where extensive inter-gene pools hybridization did occur.To distinguish inter-gene pool hybrids from “pure” accessions two different approaches were combined: 1. Bayesian assignments based on nuSSR and 2. cpSSR data.This powerful method detected more intermediate genotypes (hybrids) than were previously identified and their frequency was four times larger in Europe (40.9%) than in America (9.3%). The genetic bottleneck following introduction in Europe estimated only with “pure” accessions was significant and five times larger for Mesoamerican than for Andean germplasm. The frequent inter-gene pool hybridization in the European common beans mitigated the effects on genotypic diversity of the introduction bottleneck of common bean in Europe