Publications by authors named "Benjamin Karikari"

Drought is one of the major environmental issues that reduce crop yield. Seed germination is a crucial stage of plant development in all crop plants, including soybean. In soybean breeding, information about genetic mechanism of drought tolerance has great importance.

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  • The study analyzes the genetic diversity and population structure of 242 newly developed maize inbred lines using 3,305 SNP markers to understand their genetic makeup and potential for host plant resistance.
  • It found that the inbred lines showed high gene diversity and low levels of heterozygosity, indicating they are distantly related with unique genetic traits, which could be valuable for maize improvement.
  • The results also suggest that these inbred lines can be categorized into three subgroups, providing insights into their breeding history and assisting in the development of locally adapted varieties resistant to fall armyworm in West and Central Africa.
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Waterlogging is one of the key abiotic factors that severely impedes the growth and productivity of soybeans on a global scale. To develop soybean cultivars that are tolerant to waterlogging, it is a prerequisite to unravel the mechanisms governing soybean responses to waterlogging. Hence, we explored the morphological, physiological, biochemical, and transcriptional changes in two contrasting soybean introgression lines, A192 (waterlogging tolerant, WT) and A186 (waterlogging sensitive, WS), under waterlogging.

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Red crown rot (RCR) disease caused by negatively impacts soybean yield and quality. Unfortunately, the knowledge of the genetic architecture of RCR resistance in soybeans is limited. In this study, 299 diverse soybean accessions were used to explore their genetic diversity and resistance to RCR, and to mine for candidate genes via emergence rate (ER), survival rate (SR), and disease severity (DS) by a multi-locus random-SNP-effect mixed linear model of GWAS.

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Background: Due to rising costs, water shortages, and labour shortages, farmers across the globe now prefer a direct seeding approach. However, submergence stress remains a major bottleneck limiting the success of this approach in rice cultivation. The merger of accumulated rice genetic resources provides an opportunity to detect key genomic loci and candidate genes that influence the flooding tolerance of rice.

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  • * A study identified 45 F-box proteins (GmFBXLs) in soybean and classified them into ten subgroups, showing similarities with proteins from other plants like Arabidopsis and chickpea.
  • * Overexpressing a specific GmFBXL (GmFBXL12) led to improved seed size, pod count, and seed yield in soybeans, highlighting the potential for genetic advancements in crop yield through F-box proteins.
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Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have allowed the discovery of marker-trait associations in crops over recent decades. However, their power is hampered by a number of limitations, with the key one among them being an overreliance on single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) as molecular markers. Indeed, SNPs represent only one type of genetic variation and are usually derived from alignment to a single genome assembly that may be poorly representative of the population under study.

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Climate change significantly impacts crop production by inducing several abiotic and biotic stresses. The increasing world population, and their food and industrial demands require focused efforts to improve crop plants to ensure sustainable food production. Among various modern biotechnological tools, microRNAs (miRNAs) are one of the fascinating tools available for crop improvement.

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  • * The application of plant secondary metabolites, like alkaloids and flavonoids, is becoming popular for controlling insect attacks, involving complex biosynthetic pathways and classical metabolic engineering techniques.
  • * The review also explores genetic methods, including genome editing and RNA interference, to develop insect-resistant crops while stressing the importance of understanding genes related to secondary metabolite production for future advancements.
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  • Red and blue LEDs influence the nutritional quality of sweet potato leaves, with blue light boosting soluble proteins, phenolics, flavonoids, and antioxidants, while red light enhances chlorophyll, sugars, proteins, and vitamin C.
  • * Blue LEDs led to a higher accumulation of metabolites, particularly 77 compounds, compared to 18 with red LEDs, with notable pathways in alpha-linoleic and linolenic acid metabolism.
  • * 615 genes showed differential expression between the two light treatments, with blue light upregulating 510 genes and significantly promoting the biosynthesis of important compounds like anthocyanins and carotenoids.
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Unlabelled: The hundred-seed weight (HSW) is an important yield component and one of the principal breeding traits in soybean. More than 250 quantitative trait loci (QTL) for soybean HSW have been identified. However, most of them have a large genomic region or are environmentally sensitive, which provide limited information for improving the phenotype in marker-assisted selection (MAS) and identifying the candidate genes.

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Progression of leaf senescence consists of both degenerative and nutrient recycling processes in crops including wheat. However, the levels of metabolites in flag leaves in spring-cultivated wheat, as well as biosynthetic pathways involved under different nitrogen fertilization regimes, are largely unknown. Therefore, the present study employed a widely untargeted metabolomic profiling strategy to identify metabolites and biosynthetic pathways that could be used in a wheat improvement program aimed at manipulating the rate and onset of senescence by handling spring wheat () flag leaves sampled from no-, low-, and high-nitrogen (N) conditions (designated Groups 1, 2, and 3, respectively) across three sampling times: anthesis, grain filling, and end grain filling stages.

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Early leaf spot (ELS) and late leaf spot (LLS) diseases are the two most destructive groundnut diseases in Ghana resulting in ≤ 70% yield losses which is controlled largely by chemical method. To develop leaf spot resistant varieties, the present study was undertaken to identify single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers and putative candidate genes underlying both ELS and LLS. In this study, six multi-locus models of genome-wide association study were conducted with the best linear unbiased predictor obtained from 294 African groundnut germplasm screened for ELS and LLS as well as image-based indices of leaf spot diseases severity in 2020 and 2021 and 8,772 high-quality SNPs from a 48 K SNP array Axiom platform.

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The study was conducted with C31 and C80 genotypes of the potato ( L.), which are tolerant and susceptible to phosphite (Phi, HPO), respectively. To decipher the molecular mechanisms underlying tolerance and susceptibility to Phi in the potato, RNA sequencing was used to study the global transcriptional patterns of the two genotypes.

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In the present study, the synergistic effects of quercetin (Q) and vitamin E (E) on cecal microbiota composition and function, as well as the microbial metabolic profile in aged breeder hens were investigated. A total of 400 (65 weeks old) Tianfu breeder hens were randomly allotted to four experimental groups (four replicates per group). The birds were fed diets containing quercetin at 0.

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Introduction: The willingness of Africa's population to patronise the COVID-19 vaccines is critical to the efficiency of national immunisation programmes. This study surveys the views of adult African inhabitants toward vaccination and the possibility of participating or not participating in governments' efforts to get citizens vaccinated.

Method: A cross-sectional online survey of adult Africans was undertaken from December 2020 to March 2021.

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Plant height of soybean is associated with a haplotype block on chromosome 19, which classified 211 soybean accessions into five distinct groups showing significant differences for the target trait. Genetic variation is pivotal for crop improvement. Natural populations are precious genetic resources.

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Information on combining ability and heterotic patterns of multiple stress-tolerant inbred lines are fundamental prerequisites for devising appropriate breeding strategies for the development of climate-resilient maize hybrids. In the present study, we evaluated 150 single cross hybrids derived from the North Carolina Design II (NCD II) along with six commercial checks under terminal drought stress (TDS), heat stress (HS), and combined drought and heat stress (CHDS)conditions. The objectives of the study were to: (i) determine the combining ability of the inbred lines and identify the best testers across the stresses; (ii) classify the inbred lines into heterotic groups (HGs) based on the general combining ability of multiple traits (HGCAMT) and sequencing-based diversity array technology (DArTseq) and (iii) assess the performance and stability of the lines in hybrid combinations.

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Plants are subjected to biotic and abiotic stresses regularly, which irreparably harm agricultural production. Eco-friendly and sustainable technology to deal with this challenge is to breed abiotic stress tolerant cultivars. To generate crop plants conferring resistance against stresses, conventional breeding was used in the past, but because of the complex heredity of abiotic stress tolerance traits, such techniques remain insufficient in making greater enhancement.

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Plant height (PH) and its component traits are critical determinants of lodging resistance and strongly influence yield in rice. The genetic architecture of PH and its component traits were mined in two mapping populations. In the natural population composed of 504 accessions, a total of forty simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers associated with PH and its component traits were detected across two environments via association mapping.

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Wheat grain yield and nitrogen (N) content are influenced by the amount of N remobilized to the grain, together with pre-anthesis and post-anthesis N uptake. Isotopic techniques in farmed areas may provide insight into the mechanism underlying the N cycle. N-labeled urea was applied to microplots within five different fertilized treatments 0 kg ha (N1), 52.

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Soybean pubescence plays an important role in insect resistance, drought tolerance, and other stresses. Hence, a deep understanding of the molecular mechanism underlying pubescence is a prerequisite to a deeper understanding of insect resistance and drought tolerance. In the present study, quantitative trait loci (QTL) mapping of pubescence traits was performed using a high-density inter-specific linkage map of one recombinant inbred line (RIL) population, designated NJRINP.

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The present study was undertaken to profile transcriptional changes in flag leaves between anthesis and end of grain filling stages of rainfed spring wheat cultivar under varying nitrogen (N) application rates: 0 kg/ha (NN), 52.5 kg/ha (LN), and 210 kg/ha (HN). A total of 4485 and 4627 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were detected in LN and HN, respectively.

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