Publications by authors named "Benedicte Rhone"

Humans have a long history of transporting and trading plants, contributing to the evolution of domesticated plants. Theobroma cacao originated in the Neotropics from South America. However, little is known about its domestication and use in these regions.

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Article Synopsis
  • - Genomic offset statistics help predict how well populations can adapt to fast changes in their environment by linking genetic traits to environmental conditions, but they come with limitations and lack a strong theoretical basis for interpretation.
  • - The authors developed a new theoretical framework connecting genomic offset statistics to unmeasured fitness traits influenced by environmental selection, introducing a geometric measure to forecast fitness in response to rapid habitat alterations.
  • - This new theory was supported by computer simulations and real-world data from African pearl millet, offering a comprehensive view of genomic offset statistics and laying the groundwork for their use in conservation efforts amid environmental changes.
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Pearl millet is among the top three-cereal production in one of the most climate vulnerable regions, sub-Saharan Africa. Its Sahelian origin makes it adapted to grow in poor sandy soils under low soil water regimes. Pearl millet is thus considered today as one of the most interesting crops to face the global warming.

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Cocoa (Theobroma cacao L.) is the only tree that can produce cocoa. Cocoa beans are highly sought after by chocolate makers to produce chocolate.

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Climate change is already affecting agro-ecosystems and threatening food security by reducing crop productivity and increasing harvest uncertainty. Mobilizing crop diversity could be an efficient way to mitigate its impact. We test this hypothesis in pearl millet, a nutritious staple cereal cultivated in arid and low-fertility soils in sub-Saharan Africa.

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  • About 15,000 angiosperms are dioecious, meaning they have distinct male and female plants, but the exact processes behind their sex determination, especially involving Y chromosomes, are not well understood.
  • The study investigates a dioecious cucurbit with a notable level of X/Y chromosome differences, identifying sex-linked genes through RNA sequencing and a method called SEX-DETector.
  • Findings indicate significant Y chromosome degeneration, evidenced by a lower average gene expression on the Y chromosome and a potential loss of about 40% of Y-linked genes, while the X chromosome appears to compensate for this reduced expression, hinting at common patterns of dosage compensation across various plant species.
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-derived tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) production is increasing very fast worldwide. is a dioecious plant with XY Chromosomes, and only females (XX) are useful for THC production. Identifying the sex chromosome sequence would improve early sexing and better management of this crop; however, the genome projects have failed to do so.

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There have been intense debates over the geographic origin of African crops and agriculture. Here, we used whole-genome sequencing data to infer the domestication origin of pearl millet (Cenchrus americanus). Our results supported an origin in western Sahara, and we dated the onset of cultivated pearl millet expansion in Africa to 4,900 years ago.

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African rice (Oryza glaberrima) was domesticated independently from Asian rice. The geographical origin of its domestication remains elusive. Using 246 new whole-genome sequences, we inferred the cradle of its domestication to be in the Inner Niger Delta.

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Background: After cereals, root and tuber crops are the main source of starch in the human diet. Starch biosynthesis was certainly a significant target for selection during the domestication of these crops. But domestication of these root and tubers crops is also associated with gigantism of storage organs and changes of habitat.

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  • Pearl millet is a critical food source for over 90 million farmers in dry regions of sub-Saharan Africa, India, and South Asia.
  • Researchers have sequenced the whole genome of a reference genotype, revealing approximately 38,579 genes and a focus on genes related to wax biosynthesis, which may enhance the crop's heat and drought resistance.
  • The study also involved resequencing 994 pearl millet lines to explore genetic diversity and domestication, aiming to support genomic selection and hybrid performance prediction for better breeding outcomes.
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Several studies suggest that cis-regulatory mutations are the favorite target of evolutionary changes, one reason being that cis-regulatory mutations might have fewer deleterious pleiotropic effects than protein-coding mutations. A review of the process also suggests that this bias towards adaptive cis-regulatory variation might be less pronounced at the intraspecific level compared with the interspecific level. In this study, we assessed the contribution of cis-regulatory variation to adaptation at the intraspecific level using populations of wild pearl millet (Cenchrus americanus ssp.

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Uncovering genomic regions involved in adaption is a major goal in evolutionary biology. High-throughput sequencing now makes it possible to tackle this challenge in nonmodel species. Yet, despite the increasing number of methods targeted to specifically detect genomic footprints of selection, the complex demography of natural populations often causes high rates of false positive in gene discoveries.

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Earliness is very important for the adaptation of wheat to environmental conditions and the achievement of high grain yield. A detailed knowledge of key genetic components of the life cycle would enable an easier control by the breeders. The objective of the study was to investigate the effect of candidate genes on flowering time.

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In agricultural systems, biodiversity includes diversity within species and among species and provides many benefits for production, resilience and conservation. This article addresses the effects of a strategy of in situ conservation called dynamic management (DM) on population evolution, adaptation and diversity. Two French DM initiatives are considered, the first one corresponding to an experimental context, the second to an on-farm management.

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In annual plant species, flowering time is a major adaptive trait that synchronizes the initiation of reproduction with favorable environmental conditions. Here, we aimed at studying the evolution of flowering time in three experimental populations of bread wheat, grown in contrasting environments (Northern to Southern France) for 12 generations. By comparing the distribution of phenotypic and presumably neutral variation, we first showed that flowering time responded to selection during the 12 generations of the experiment.

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Experimental populations evolving under natural selection represent an interesting tool to study genetic bases of adaptation. Evolution of genes possibly involved in adaptive response can be followed together with the corresponding phenotypic traits. Using experimental populations of hexaploid wheat, we studied the evolution of flowering time, a major adaptive trait that synchronizes the initiation of reproduction and the occurrence of favourable environmental conditions.

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Dynamic management (DM) is a method of genetic resources conservation that aims at maintaining evolutionary process in subdivided populations cultivated in contrasted environments. Such populations are often submitted to strong natural selection as it was the case for experimental wheat populations maintained under DM. Understanding impacts of selection on genetic diversity around selected genes is necessary for the middle-term maintenance of genetic variability in DM populations.

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