Use made of wild legume relatives in breeding

Presently vast genetic resources are available for improvement of the main crops used by humans and animals. The ex-situ collections safeguard those resources collected in the past, although not all collections are safe even today as far as personnel and facilities are concerned. Use of in-situ collections is feasible but meeting with obstacles. Free accessibility is not as straightforward as has been in the past. Apart from the cultivated accessions of crops, wild relatives have always attracted breeders, for these contribute many useful traits. Their genetic background, particularly of species in the secondary or tertiary genepool, makes transfer difficult requiring new techniques to effectuate gene transfers. There have been many attempts and evaluation and conservation of wild relatives is usually a task taken up by most genebanks. Genetic modification, the modern way of transferring wanted genes, has barely begun for the legume food crops. This paper presents some examples of successful use made of wild relatives of chickpea, pigeonpea, fababean and lentil for breeding during the past decenni

Opportunities for indigenous African vegetables

Attention is drawn to vegetables of limited geographical distribution in Africa. A wealth of information is available in the 2004 PROTA Handbook 2: Vegetables, published simultaneously in English and French. Research gaps are pointed out in the 2005 companion issue Special Products. Distinction is made in several categories, such as species with well-defined vegetable use well covered by extension and research, those deserving more attention, or vegetable species with established or potential other uses such as medicinal or ornamental use

Observations on Pests and Diseases of Wild Cicer Species

Preliminary observations of the occurrence of pests and diseases on wild Cicer species in Turkey, Ethiopia and Afghanistan are reported for the first time. Lepidop-teran borers and bruchids appear to be the most serious pests. In most natural habitats, grazing by domestic animals is an important source of damage

A new way of editing a flora

Modern electronic tools have become common tools of most scientists. Flora writers and other botanists producing large manuscripts with a certain fixed structure may go even further and use the so-called Mail Merge option in a word processor such as Microsoft Word™. This tool allows structuring a document strictly, especially for the contributions of invited authors, to pre-format the final layout, and to simplify correspondence with contributors. Contributors fill in a structured Microsoft Excel™ spreadsheet with fixed headings, without any requirements for layout or formatting. The file is then used as data source for a merge document in the word processor. For completion of an entire Flora, such as the Flore Analytique du Bénin (Akoègninou et al., 2006), this iteration was done with 45 authors, producing over 180 different manuscripts, viz. one for each family. Final editing includes a check on correct language, insertion of separately produced keys, figures, references, etc