Evaluation of Drought Tolerance in USDA Tomato Germplasm and Genome-wide Association Study and Genomic Prediction of Fusarium wilt Resistance in Common Bean Core Collection

Drought stress and Fusarium wilt disease present significant challenges to plant growth and agricultural productivity, particularly affecting crops such as tomato and common beans. To address these issues, researchers have extensively evaluated germplasm collections under field and greenhouse conditions to identify genotypes with drought tolerance and disease resistance. This study aimed to achieve two objectives. Firstly, we conducted a phenotypic evaluation of drought tolerance in USDA tomato germplasm to identify drought-tolerant accessions for future breeding programs targeting enhanced drought tolerance in tomato cultivars. Secondly, we conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) and genomic prediction (GP) on USDA common bean germplasm using publicly available disease response and SNP datasets to identify single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers and candidate genes associated with Fusarium wilt resistance. Chapter 1 describes the evaluation of tomato accessions in a greenhouse at the Arkansas Agricultural Research and Extension Center, Fayetteville, AR. The experiment involved planting tomato seeds in pots and subjecting the plants to drought conditions alongside control sets under optimal irrigation. After 35 days of growth, we withheld water from the drought-treated plants for approximately 10 days until the more susceptible plants began to die off. We collected data on leaf wilting, leaf rolling, plant height, and leaf chlorophyll content from both the drought-treated and control groups to understand how different genotypes respond to drought stress. This study identified four highly drought-tolerant tomato accessions, which can be valuable for breeding programs to develop elite drought-tolerant tomato cultivars. Chapter 2 focuses on GWAS and GP for Fusarium wilt resistance in 157 USDA common bean accessions. These accessions were previously evaluated by (Brick et al., 2006) for resistance to Fusarium wilt caused by Fusarium oxysporum (Fop) race 1 and race 4 in a greenhouse condition. We utilized a dataset from this evaluation and performed comprehensive GWAS and GP analyses using SNP markers from the BARCBean6K_3 Infinium BeadChips. As a result, we identified significant SNP markers associated with Fusarium wilt resistance and the discovery of candidate genes, shedding light on the genetic factors contributing to resistance in common beans. The study also explores the potential of genomic prediction techniques for predicting resistance to Fusarium wilt, offering valuable insights into marker-assisted and genomic selection strategies for breeding programs. In conclusion, this thesis contributes important knowledge on drought tolerance in tomatoes and Fusarium wilt resistance in common beans. The findings can serve as a foundation for future breeding efforts focused on improving these traits in crop cultivars, ultimately enhancing agricultural productivity and sustainability

Taxation of Foreign Investments in Malawi. Lessons from Japan

Foreign investments remain an important source of economic growth in both developing and developed countries. Their contribution to capital formation, employment opportunities, revenues and technology to the host countries are likely to continue creating strong competition among countries in attracting them. In order to be competitive, developing countries provide generous tax incentives to MNEs which tend to encourage high incidence of tax avoidance and evasion. With inadequate institutional capacity to ensure tax compliance, governments are losing more tax revenues from the MNEs who use complex accounting mechanisms to avoid tax payments. This paper has explained how Malawi Government has been taxing foreign investments to achieve optimal balance of increasing domestic resource mobilization and considerably attract new foreign investments. The central objective of the paper was to investigate taxation of the foreign investments in Malawi. The study primarily focused on Malawi tax system in comparison with international taxation from Japanese tax system. Furthermore, the paper investigated tax anti-avoidance measures that are available in domestic legislations which ensure tax compliance from the MNEs. The paper also discussed tax erosion practices that are associated with MNEs such as transfer pricing, internal debt arrangements among others that help to reduce taxable income of the MNEs. The paper has provided the shortfalls of Malawi international taxation system and some practical solutions have been recommended emanating from Japanese tax system.Malaw, Japan, MNEs,Foreign Investments, International Taxation

Evaluation of Drought Tolerance in USDA Tomato Germplasm and Genome-wide Association Study and Genomic Prediction of Fusarium wilt Resistance in Common Bean Core Collection

Drought stress and Fusarium wilt disease present significant challenges to plant growth and agricultural productivity, particularly affecting crops such as tomato and common beans. To address these issues, researchers have extensively evaluated germplasm collections under field and greenhouse conditions to identify genotypes with drought tolerance and disease resistance. This study aimed to achieve two objectives. Firstly, we conducted a phenotypic evaluation of drought tolerance in USDA tomato germplasm to identify drought-tolerant accessions for future breeding programs targeting enhanced drought tolerance in tomato cultivars. Secondly, we conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) and genomic prediction (GP) on USDA common bean germplasm using publicly available disease response and SNP datasets to identify single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers and candidate genes associated with Fusarium wilt resistance. Chapter 1 describes the evaluation of tomato accessions in a greenhouse at the Arkansas Agricultural Research and Extension Center, Fayetteville, AR. The experiment involved planting tomato seeds in pots and subjecting the plants to drought conditions alongside control sets under optimal irrigation. After 35 days of growth, we withheld water from the drought-treated plants for approximately 10 days until the more susceptible plants began to die off. We collected data on leaf wilting, leaf rolling, plant height, and leaf chlorophyll content from both the drought-treated and control groups to understand how different genotypes respond to drought stress. This study identified four highly drought-tolerant tomato accessions, which can be valuable for breeding programs to develop elite drought-tolerant tomato cultivars. Chapter 2 focuses on GWAS and GP for Fusarium wilt resistance in 157 USDA common bean accessions. These accessions were previously evaluated by (Brick et al., 2006) for resistance to Fusarium wilt caused by Fusarium oxysporum (Fop) race 1 and race 4 in a greenhouse condition. We utilized a dataset from this evaluation and performed comprehensive GWAS and GP analyses using SNP markers from the BARCBean6K_3 Infinium BeadChips. As a result, we identified significant SNP markers associated with Fusarium wilt resistance and the discovery of candidate genes, shedding light on the genetic factors contributing to resistance in common beans. The study also explores the potential of genomic prediction techniques for predicting resistance to Fusarium wilt, offering valuable insights into marker-assisted and genomic selection strategies for breeding programs. In conclusion, this thesis contributes important knowledge on drought tolerance in tomatoes and Fusarium wilt resistance in common beans. The findings can serve as a foundation for future breeding efforts focused on improving these traits in crop cultivars, ultimately enhancing agricultural productivity and sustainability

Cell-Penetrating Peptides: A Challenge for Drug Delivery

Cell-penetrating peptide (CPP) is a term that describes relatively short amphipathic and cationic peptides (7–30 amino acid residues) with rapid translocation across the cell membrane. They can be used to deliver molecular bioactive cargoes due to their efficacy in cellular internalization and also to their low cytotoxicity. In this review we provide an overview of the current approaches and describe the potential of CPP-based drug delivery systems and indicate their powerful promise for clinical efficacy

Some statistical methods for dimension reduction

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel UniversityThe aim of the work in this thesis is to carry out dimension reduction (DR) for high dimensional (HD) data by using statistical methods for variable selection, feature extraction and a combination of the two. In Chapter 2, the DR is carried out through robust feature extraction. Robust canonical correlation (RCCA) methods have been proposed. In the correlation matrix of canonical correlation analysis (CCA), we suggest that the Pearson correlation should be substituted by robust correlation measures in order to obtain robust correlation matrices. These matrices have been employed for producing RCCA. Moreover, the classical covariance matrix has been substituted by robust estimators for multivariate location and dispersion in order to get RCCA. In Chapter 3 and 4, the DR is carried out by combining the ideas of variable selection using regularisation methods with feature extraction, through the minimum average variance estimator (MAVE) and single index quantile regression (SIQ) methods, respectively. In particular, we extend the sparse MAVE (SMAVE) reported in (Wang and Yin, 2008) by combining the MAVE loss function with different regularisation penalties in Chapter 3. An extension of the SIQ of Wu et al. (2010) by considering different regularisation penalties is proposed in Chapter 4. In Chapter 5, the DR is done through variable selection under Bayesian framework. A flexible Bayesian framework for regularisation in quantile regression (QR) model has been proposed. This work is different from Bayesian Lasso quantile regression (BLQR), employing the asymmetric Laplace error distribution (ALD). The error distribution is assumed to be an infinite mixture of Gaussian (IMG) densities

The Impact of Donor and NGO Activities on Maize Seed and Fertilizer Markets and Food Security in Malawi.

A study was carried out in Mitundu, Chiwamba and Chiponde EPAs to analyze the impact of donor and NGO activities on maize seed and fertilizer markets and food security in Malawi. Farmers, traders and officials were interviewed in both the production and trading activities. The study showed that the free input programme had negative impact on the commercial marketing of maize seed and fertilizer. There was reduced demand hence low volume of sales in wholesale and retail markets. It was further found that the study areas have few private traders in these agricultural inputs than soon after introduction of market liberalization. On the part of production the study results showed that there was positive impact on maize production due to use of fertilizer and improved maize varieties. This positive impact on yields was also related to farm size, and amount of fertilizer used. The study revealed that there was some disruption of retail market for fertilizers as normal supply channels were taken over by the project. Supplies of the maize seed already limited, were diverted from their usual retailers.Malawi; NGO; Donors; Markets; Maize; Fertilizer

Maximal arc partitions of designs

AbstractIt is known that the designs PGn-1(n,q) in some cases have spreads of maximal α-arcs. Here a α-arc is a non-empty subset of points that meets every hyperplane in 0 or α points. The situation for designs in general is not so well known. This paper establishes an equivalence between the existence of a spread of α-arcs in the complement of a Hadamard design and the existence of an affine design and a symmetric design which is also the complement of a Hadamard design

Entire solutions to the Monge–Ampère equation

AbstractWe consider the Monge–Ampère equation det(D2u)=Ψ(x,u,Du) in Rn, n⩾3, where Ψ is a positive function in C2(Rn×R×Rn). We prove the existence of convex solutions, provided there exist a subsolution of the form u̲=a|x|2 and a superharmonic bounded positive function φ satisfying: Ψ>(2a+Δφn)n

Translating Yemeni cartoons into English: A Systemic Functional Linguistics approach

This study deals with the problems involving translating Arabic cartoons into English and the strategies that can be adopted by a translator to make them more accessible and more target-audience friendly. It uses an approach based on Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL; Halliday 1985/1994; Halliday and Matthiessen 2004). The concept of equivalence is revisited within the framework of SFL to include register analysis and the three strands of meaning or metafunctions. The study is based on a number of Yemeni cartoons that have been translated in the Yemen Times, a prominent English-language Yemeni newspaper. The study concludes that if a cartoon is to be translated in such a way that the target cartoon sounds as natural and entertaining to the target audience as the original, the translator should take into account the context of culture, the context of situation (i.e., register analysis) and the metafunction(s) involved in the source cartoon and tries to render them as far as possible in the target language. In addition, a cartoon is a multi-semiotic genre in which both text and image go hand in hand. The image-text semantic relation in this multi-model discourse can facilitate the comprehension of the context and the interpretation of the schemata of the cartoons more clearly. The translation of a cartoon cannot be achieved unless the two codes are considered.Keywords: Cartoon; translation; equivalence; SFL; context; register; metafunction; ideational; interpersonal; textua