Exploratory QTL analyses of some pepper physiological traits in two environments

behind phenotypic differences and led to selection of genotypes having favourable traits. Continuous monitoring of environmental conditions has also become an accessible option. Rather than single trait evaluation, we would prefer smarter approaches capable of evaluating multiple, often correlated and time dependent traits simultaneously as a function of genes (QTLs) and environmental inputs, where we would The use of molecular breeding techniques has increased insight into the genetics like to include intermediate genomic information as well. In this paper, an exploratory QTL analysis over two environments was undertaken using available genetic and phenotypic data from segregating recombinant inbred lines (RIL) of pepper (Capsicum annuum). We focused on vegetative traits, e.g. stem length, speed of stem development, number of internodes etc. We seek to improve the estimation of allelic values of these traits under the two environments and determine possible QTL x E interaction. Almost identical QTLs are detected for each trait under the two environments but with varying LOD scores. No clear evidence was found for presence of QTL by environment interactions, despite differences in phenotypes and in magnitude of QTLs expression. Within the EU project SPICY (Voorrips et al., 2010 this issue), a larger number of environments will be studied and more advanced statistical analysis tools will be considered. The correlation between the traits will also be modelled. The identification of markers for the important QTL (Nicolaï et al., 2010 this issue) will improve the speed and accuracy of genomic prediction of these complex phenotype

Blur2sharp: A gan-based model for document image deblurring

The advances in mobile technology and portable cameras have facilitated enormously the acquisition of text images. However, the blur caused by camera shake or out-of-focus problems may affect the quality of acquired images and their use as input for optical character recognition (OCR) or other types of document processing. This work proposes an end-to-end model for document deblurring using cycle-consistent adversarial networks. The main novelty of this work is to achieve blind document deblurring, i.e., deblurring without knowledge of the blur kernel. Our method, named “Blur2Sharp CycleGAN, ” generates a sharp image from a blurry one and shows how cycle-consistent generative adversarial networks (CycleGAN) can be used in document deblurring. Using only a blurred image as input, we try to generate the sharp image. Thus, no information about the blur kernel is required. In the evaluation part, we use peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) and structural similarity index (SSIM) to compare the deblurring images. The experiments demonstrate a clear improvement in visual quality with respect to the state-of-the-art using a dataset of text images

Perspectives of animal health workers in Nigeria to global eradication of peste des petits ruminants (PPR)

The Food Agriculture Organization - Office International des Epizooties (FAO-OIE) coordinated global eradication program, launched in 2015, is expected to help stamp out pestes des petits ruminants (PPR) from across the world by the year 2030. A questionnaire survey was employed to assess the perception of animal healthcare workers about the possibility of PPR elimination in the country, using FAO-OIE strategy. A total of four hundred and forty six (446) animal health workers participated in the survey, out of which 126 (28.25%) considered PPR the most important small ruminant disease. Despite the history of disease endemicity in Nigeria, only 40% of animal health workers have received PPR vaccination request since they began practice. Result also showed that 58% of study respondents were aware of the ongoing FAO-OIE global eradication programme against PPR, with their information sources being internet (55%), professional colleagues (32%) radio, print media (12%) and television (1%). Respondents were of the opinion that PPR eradication and control was the sole responsibility of animal health workers (67%), veterinarians (29%), technologists (4%) and government (0%). To achieve disease eradication in Nigeria by year 2030, the focal areas that need urgent attention are veterinary infrastructure, vaccine production, disease diagnosis, surveillance and notification.Keywords: Animal health workers, Awareness, Global eradication, Nigeria, Perspective, PP

Multi-trait and multi-environment QTL analyses of yield and a set of physiological traits in pepper

For many agronomic crops, yield is measured simultaneously with other traits across multiple environments. The study of yield can benefit from joint analysis with other traits and relations between yield and other traits can be exploited to develop indirect selection strategies. We compare the performance of three multi-response QTL approaches based on mixed models: a multi-trait approach (MT), a multi-environment approach (ME), and a multi-trait multi-environment approach (MTME). The data come from a multi-environment experiment in pepper, for which 15 traits were measured in four environments. The approaches were compared in terms of number of QTLs detected for each trait, the explained variance, and the accuracy of prediction for the final QTL model. For the four environments together, the superior MTME approach delivered a total of 47 regions containing putative QTLs. Many of these QTLs were pleiotropic and showed quantitative QTL by environment interaction. MTME was superior to ME and MT in the number of QTLs, the explained variance and accuracy of predictions. The large number of model parameters in the MTME approach was challenging and we propose several guidelines to help obtain a stable final QTL model. The results confirmed the feasibility and strengths of novel mixed model QTL methodology to study the architecture of complex traits

Room temperature THz detection and emission with semiconductor nanodevices

In this paper we present the advances on the fabrication of THz emitters and detectors obtained within the framework of the European ROOTHz project. Two types of devices are explored, self-switching diodes and slot-diodes, using both narrow bandgap and wide bandgap semiconductors. This broad approach allows us to improve the frequency and power generated by Gunn diodes and the responsivity and noise of detectors at THz frequencies