Risks to Birds Traded for African Traditional Medicine: A Quantitative Assessment

Few regional or continent-wide assessments of bird use for traditional medicine have been attempted anywhere in the world. Africa has the highest known diversity of bird species used for this purpose. This study assesses the vulnerability of 354 bird species used for traditional medicine in 25 African countries, from 205 genera, 70 families, and 25 orders. The orders most represented were Passeriformes (107 species), Falconiformes (45 species), and Coraciiformes (24 species), and the families Accipitridae (37 species), Ardeidae (15 species), and Bucerotidae (12 species). The Barn owl (Tyto alba) was the most widely sold species (seven countries). The similarity of avifaunal orders traded is high (analogous to ‘‘morphospecies’’, and using Sørensen’s index), which suggests opportunities for a common understanding of cultural factors driving demand. The highest similarity was between bird orders sold in markets of Benin vs. Burkina Faso (90%), but even bird orders sold in two geographically separated countries (Benin vs. South Africa and Nigeria vs. South Africa) were 87% and 81% similar, respectively. Rabinowitz’s ‘‘7 forms of rarity’’ model, used to group species according to commonness or rarity, indicated that 24% of traded bird species are very common, locally abundant in several habitats, and occur over a large geographical area, but 10% are rare, occur in low numbers in specific habitats, and over a small geographical area. The order with the highest proportion of rare species was the Musophagiformes. An analysis of species mass (as a proxy for size) indicated that large and/or conspicuous species tend to be targeted by harvesters for the traditional medicine trade. Furthermore, based on cluster analyses for species groups of similar risk, vultures, hornbills, and other large avifauna, such as bustards, are most threatened by selective harvesting and should be prioritised for conservation action.University of the Witwatersrand SPARC Prestigious and URC Postdoctoral Fellowships; National Research Foundatio

Chickpea Genomics

As precise phenotyping is essential and the cost of generating phenotyping data at every generation is very expensive, recent advances in genomics technologies and the availability of a wide range of genotyping platforms have made the cost of genotyping much less expensive compared with phenotyping. The recent developments in sequencing technologies have manifold increased the repertoire of various types of markers that are available in chickpea including SSRs, SNPs, DArTs, hundreds of thousands transcript reads and BAC-end sequences saturated genetic maps, QTL maps as well as physical maps, and the sequencing of both kabuli and desi type has greatly helped in using marker-assisted technologies to be applied in plant breeding. Germplasm resequencing for identification of genome-wide SNPs and their subsequent utilization in genomic selection has the potential to break the yield barrier being experienced in chickpea and many other crops. Genomic-assisted breeding for marker-assisted backcrossing (MABC) for introgressing QTL region, marker-assisted recurrent selection, gene pyramiding, marker-assisted selection (MAS), and genomic selection can now be taken up in chickpea. The conventional plant breeding should take these tools to make greater genetic gains, increase selection potential, and have faster breeding cycles so that the genetic improvement gains are increased in chickpea

Chickpea Genomics

As precise phenotyping is essential and the cost of generating phenotyping data at every generation is very expensive, recent advances in genomics technologies and the availability of a wide range of genotyping platforms have made the cost of genotyping much less expensive compared with phenotyping. The recent developments in sequencing technologies have manifold increased the repertoire of various types of markers that are available in chickpea including SSRs, SNPs, DArTs, hundreds of thousands transcript reads and BAC-end sequences saturated genetic maps, QTL maps as well as physical maps, and the sequencing of both kabuli and desi type has greatly helped in using marker-assisted technologies to be applied in plant breeding. Germplasm resequencing for identification of genome-wide SNPs and their subsequent utilization in genomic selection has the potential to break the yield barrier being experienced in chickpea and many other crops. Genomic-assisted breeding for marker-assisted backcrossing (MABC) for introgressing QTL region, marker-assisted recurrent selection, gene pyramiding, marker-assisted selection (MAS), and genomic selection can now be taken up in chickpea. The conventional plant breeding should take these tools to make greater genetic gains, increase selection potential, and have faster breeding cycles so that the genetic improvement gains are increased in chickpea