Incorporation of stay-green Quantitative Trait Loci (QTL) in elite sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L. Moench) variety through marker-assisted selection at early generation

Incorporation of stay-green Quantitative Trait Loci (QTL) in elite sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L. Moench) variety through marker-assisted selection at early generation.Objective: The present investigation was undertaken to develop drought tolerant varieties through introgression of stay-green QTLs in order to improve sorghum yield in semi-arid areas of Burkina Faso.Methodology and Result: Marker-assisted selection was carried out to introgress stay-green QTLs into elite sorghum variety. A stay-green donor source, BTx642 (B35), was crossed to the elite variety (Sariaso09) to obtain F1 progenies that were backcrossed to their recurrent parents to obtain the BC1F1 progenies. Seventeen flanking Simple Sequence Repeat (SSRs) polymorphic markers were used for foreground selection and 18 were used for background selection. Eighteen BC1F1 were heterozygous at all target loci for stay-green (stg1, stg2, stg3, stg4 and stgB), 5 progenies (S9B37, S9B43, S9B46 S9B85 and S9B13) had incorporated 3 of these QTLs. 4 plants (S9B34, S9B38, S9B73 and S9B16) incorporated double QTLs (Stg3 and StgB) and three plants (S9B44, S9B48 and S9B20) were heterozygous for Stg1.Conclusions and applications of findings: Among BC1F1 generation, 30 progenies had incorporated at least one stay-green QTL. Two of the introgression lines had high levels of the recurrent parents’ genomes and constitute some promising lines to develop drought tolerant varieties that will ensure sorghum production in semi-arid tropics areas and therefore, contribute to ensure food security in Burkina Faso. Despite the small number of genotypes obtained, the results showed the efficiency of Marker Assisted Back Crossing (MABC) versus the conventional backcross procedure.Keywords: sorghum, stay-green, drought, post-flowering, QTL, MAB

Évaluation agronomique en pépinière de deux variétés de manguiers polyembryonnées utilisées comme porte-greffes au Burkina Faso

Au Burkina Faso, la mangue a une importance socio-économique non négligeable. Dans une perspective d’actions visant à déterminer les caractères agronomiques de deux variétés de manguiers ordinaires, cette étude a été initiée. Le comptage de la levée des plants a été réalisé tous les quinze jours et les mensurations, le 105ème jours. Les résultats obtenus montrent que le délai de la levée des plantules a été de 27 Jour Après Semi (JAS), un taux de levée de 53,5%, un taux de survie de 9,04%, un délai de la dernière levée de 105 JAS et un nombre de plants de 3 à 6 par noyau. Les plants nucellaires ont été observés avec un taux de levée (31,07%) plus important que celui des plants zygotiques (28,6%). Cependant, les plants zygotiques ont obtenus des hauteurs moyennes et des diamètres moyens plus importants que ceux des plants nucellaires. Une identification plus poussée des types de plants par l’utilisation des marqueurs moléculaires est nécessaire

Assessment of Bollgard II cotton pollen mediated transgenes flow to conventional cotton in the farming conditions of Burkina Faso

Cotton is the main cash crop in Burkina Faso. However, production is highly affected by bollworms and leafworms in the last years due to the spread out of the resistance of bollworms to most used pesticides. This has led to experiment on Bt cotton from 2003 to 2007. The inevitable coexistence between transgenic and conventional cottons requires the assessment of transgene outflow. The study was carried out from 2004 to 2006, at Farako-Bâ, Boni and Kouaré. The presence/absence of transgenes was assessed using Bollgard II detection kits. The experimental design consisted of a Bt plot surrounded by a non-transgenic field. Different distances between the Bt and the non-transgenic field were considered. Application and non application of pest control measure was also taken into account. The results show that without insecticide application, the flow of transgene near the source at 2 m (4.63 %) was different and higher than those of more distant rates. With insecticide application, no transgene flow was detected at ≥ 25 m from the transgenic field. Study must be continued after commercial adoption to draw concrete conclusions and to suggest some strategies to prevent Bt cotton transgene outflow in Burkina Faso.Keywords: Transgenic cotton, Bollgard II cotton, Transgenes, transgene outflow, immunological test, Burkina Faso.African Journal of Biotechnology Vol. 12(33), pp. 5192-519

Phenotypic detection of Metallo-β-Lactamase in imipenem-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Stenotrophomonas maltophilia at Schiphra Hospital of Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso

Background: Epidemic of carbapenemase-producing bacteria has become worldwide. Thus, during the last decade, the prevalence of carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae and non fermentative Gram-negative bacteria in human patients have increased. Carbapenemase-producing bacteria are usually multidrug resistant. Therefore, early recognition of carbapenemase producers is critical to prevent their spread. Objectives: The aim of this study was to contribute establishing the prevalence of isolates producing Metallo-β-Lactamase isolated from patients admitted to Schiphra Hospital of Ouagadougou. Methods: Susceptibility of bacteria to antimicrobial agents was evaluated by disc diffusion method using imipenem as screening antibiotic. The combination of imipenem-EDTA was used after detection the resistance to imipenem. Results: A total of 52 isolates resisting one of the third generation cephalosporins were collected. Five isolates showed an intermediary resistance to imipenem (9.61%). Two isolates were resistant to imipenem-EDTA (3.85%). The test of imipenem-EDTA was done to confirm to production of Metallo-β-Lactamase. The hydrolysis of bacterial extract by meropenem was confirmed by production with a kinetic activity at spectrophotometer V0=4.77x10–5µM/min for Pseudomonas aeruginosa and V0=1.183x10-4 µM/min for Stenotrophomonas maltophilia. Conclusion: This study showed that bacterial resistances by production to metallo-β-lactamases are a reality in Burkina Faso

Heterotic relationship between INERA, CIMMYT and IITA maize inbred lines under drought and well-watered conditions

The Institute of Environment and Agricultural Research of Burkina Faso has extracted a large number of inbred lines from Open Pollinated Varieties, which are environmentally adapted and adopted by farmers. However, there is a gap in knowledge on heterotic grouping of these lines and their heterotic relationship with exotic lines. Twenty-four CIMMYT and INERA white lines were crossed to two CIMMYT testers and; twenty six IITA and INERA yellow inbred lines were crossed to two IITA testers. Two trials composed of 48 white testcrosses and 52 yellow test¬crosses plus three checks were evaluated in well-watered and drought stress conditions in the dry season over two years. Significant general combining ability (GCA) effects due to lines and, testers for many traits including grain yield were observed. However, specific combining ability (SCA) effects for most traits except for plant and ear heights were not significant. Of the 24 CIMMYT and INERA white lines, 15 lines could be classified into het¬erotic groups based on the SCA effects and testcross mean grain yield in well-watered environment and, 10 lines were classified under drought stress condition. Eighty five percent of the IITA and INERA yellow lines were clas¬sified into heterotic groups in both drought and non-drought conditions. Thirteen yellow lines and five white lines maintained their heterotic groups in both well-watered and water-stressed conditions

De Novo Transcriptome Sequencing in Anopheles funestus Using Illumina RNA-Seq Technology

BACKGROUND: Anopheles funestus is one of the primary vectors of human malaria, which causes a million deaths each year in sub-Saharan Africa. Few scientific resources are available to facilitate studies of this mosquito species and relatively little is known about its basic biology and evolution, making development and implementation of novel disease control efforts more difficult. The An. funestus genome has not been sequenced, so in order to facilitate genome-scale experimental biology, we have sequenced the adult female transcriptome of An. funestus from a newly founded colony in Burkina Faso, West Africa, using the Illumina GAIIx next generation sequencing platform. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We assembled short Illumina reads de novo using a novel approach involving iterative de novo assemblies and "target-based" contig clustering. We then selected a conservative set of 15,527 contigs through comparisons to four Dipteran transcriptomes as well as multiple functional and conserved protein domain databases. Comparison to the Anopheles gambiae immune system identified 339 contigs as putative immune genes, thus identifying a large portion of the immune system that can form the basis for subsequent studies of this important malaria vector. We identified 5,434 1:1 orthologues between An. funestus and An. gambiae and found that among these 1:1 orthologues, the protein sequence of those with putative immune function were significantly more diverged than the transcriptome as a whole. Short read alignments to the contig set revealed almost 367,000 genetic polymorphisms segregating in the An. funestus colony and demonstrated the utility of the assembled transcriptome for use in RNA-seq based measurements of gene expression. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: We developed a pipeline that makes de novo transcriptome sequencing possible in virtually any organism at a very reasonable cost ($6,300 in sequencing costs in our case). We anticipate that our approach could be used to develop genomic resources in a diversity of systems for which full genome sequence is currently unavailable. Our An. funestus contig set and analytical results provide a valuable resource for future studies in this non-model, but epidemiologically critical, vector insect