Marker assisted backcross breeding to enhance drought tolerance in Kenyan chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) germplasm

Drought is the number one constraint in chickpea production. In the past, breeding efforts to improve terminal drought tolerance have been hindered by its quantitative genetic basis and poor understanding of the physiological basis of yield in water-limited conditions

Sero-surveillance for IgG to SARS-CoV-2 at antenatal care clinics in three Kenyan referral hospitals: Repeated cross-sectional surveys 2020-21.

INTRODUCTION: The high proportion of SARS-CoV-2 infections that have remained undetected presents a challenge to tracking the progress of the pandemic and estimating the extent of population immunity. METHODS: We used residual blood samples from women attending antenatal care services at three hospitals in Kenya between August 2020 and October 2021and a validated IgG ELISA for SARS-Cov-2 spike protein and adjusted the results for assay sensitivity and specificity. We fitted a two-component mixture model as an alternative to the threshold analysis to estimate of the proportion of individuals with past SARS-CoV-2 infection. RESULTS: We estimated seroprevalence in 2,981 women; 706 in Nairobi, 567 in Busia and 1,708 in Kilifi. By October 2021, 13% of participants were vaccinated (at least one dose) in Nairobi, 2% in Busia. Adjusted seroprevalence rose in all sites; from 50% (95%CI 42-58) in August 2020, to 85% (95%CI 78-92) in October 2021 in Nairobi; from 31% (95%CI 25-37) in May 2021 to 71% (95%CI 64-77) in October 2021 in Busia; and from 1% (95% CI 0-3) in September 2020 to 63% (95% CI 56-69) in October 2021 in Kilifi. Mixture modelling, suggests adjusted cross-sectional prevalence estimates are underestimates; seroprevalence in October 2021 could be 74% in Busia and 72% in Kilifi. CONCLUSIONS: There has been substantial, unobserved transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in Nairobi, Busia and Kilifi Counties. Due to the length of time since the beginning of the pandemic, repeated cross-sectional surveys are now difficult to interpret without the use of models to account for antibody waning

Marker assisted backcross breeding to enhance drought tolerance in Kenyan chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) germplasm

Drought is the number one constraint in chickpea production. In the past, breeding efforts to improve terminal drought tolerance have been hindered by its quantitative genetic basis and poor understanding of the physiological basis of yield in water-limited conditions

Replication Data for: Revealing the extent of the COVID-19 pandemic in Kenya based on serological and PCR-test data

This is a replication dataset for the submitted manuscript "Ojal, J., Brand, S.P., Were, V., Okiro, E.A., Kombe, I.K., Mburu, C., Aziza, R., Ogero, M., Agweyu, A., Warimwe, G.M. and Uyoga, S., 2020. Revealing the extent of the COVID-19 pandemic in Kenya based on serological and PCR-test data. medRxiv.". The related study was conducted to estimate the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic peak and COVID-19 disease burden including reported severe cases and deaths in the major urban counties in Kenya. National surveillance PCR tests, serological surveys, and mobility data were used to develop and fit a county-specific transmission model in the country. These datasets presented contain the number of positive PCR-confirmed swab tests for each county by date of sample collection (21st Feb to 6th August), the number of positive and negative serological results for each county by date of sample collection (21st Feb to 6th August), number of deaths with a PCR-confirmed swab test for each county by recorded date of death (21st Feb to 6th August), the total number of swab samples collected in Mombasa county, and analyzed at Kemri-Wellcome Research Program testing center (21st Feb – 27th June), and summary data of Kenyan epidemic, including reported total number of test performed. The datasets are used for COVID-19 forecasts

Replication Data for: Prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 Antibodies from a one-year National Serosurveillance of Kenyan Blood Transfusion Donors

These data contain anonymised residual donor serum samples used for screening of transfusion transmissible infections collected at the KNBTS regional centres which has been used to compute standardised SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence by age, sex and region using KNBS population as the standard population

The evolving SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in Africa: Insights from rapidly expanding genomic surveillance

The past 2 years, during which waves of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) variants swept the globe, have starkly highlighted health disparities across nations. Tegally et al. show how the coordinated efforts of talented African scientists have in a short time made great contributions to pandemic surveillance and data gathering. Their efforts and initiatives have provided early warning that has likely benefited wealthier countries more than their own. Genomic surveillance identified the emergence of the highly transmissible Beta and Omicron variants and now the appearance of Omicron sublineages in Africa. However, it is imperative that technology transfer for diagnostics and vaccines, as well the logistic wherewithal to produce and deploy them, match the data-gathering effort