Publications by authors named "Muhammad L Umar"

Introduction: The cowpea weevil, Fab., is the most economically important storage pest of cowpeas, causing up to 100 percent grain losses within six months of storage. To sustainably resist weevil damage, the cowpea cultivar IT86D-1010 was genetically modified via -mediated transformation to produce event CSI-32, which expresses the kidney bean alpha-amylase inhibitor 1 (αAI-1) protein exclusively in the seed, providing suppression of weevil development.

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Background: The increasing cases of chronic kidney disease is a global public health concern. The potential link between consumption of food contaminated with heavy metals and development of end stage renal disease is becoming an emerging challenge. This study aimed to identify heavy metal contaminants in food and environmental risk factors for development of chronic kidney disease in Nigeria.

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Introduction: foodborne diseases are an emerging public health challenge due to the global increase in vended food. This study aimed to compare food safety knowledge among mobile and canteen food handlers in Kano metropolis.

Methods: a comparative cross-sectional design was used to study 310 mobile food vendors and 310 canteen food handlers selected using a multi-stage sampling technique.

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Background: The burden of food-borne diseases is becoming a global problem. The aim of this study was to assess and compare personal hygiene knowledge among street food vendors and canteen food handlers in the Kano metropolis.

Methodology: An explanatory sequential mixed methods study was carried out using a structured interviewer-administered questionnaire, focus group discussion guide and observation checklist, to assess and compare personal hygiene knowledge among street food vendors and canteen food handlers in Kano metropolis, Nigeria.

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Matching crop varieties to their target use context and user preferences is a challenge faced by many plant breeding programs serving smallholder agriculture. Numerous participatory approaches proposed by CGIAR and other research teams over the last four decades have attempted to capture farmers' priorities/preferences and crop variety field performance in representative growing environments through experimental trials with higher external validity. Yet none have overcome the challenges of scalability, data validity and reliability, and difficulties in capturing socio-economic and environmental heterogeneity.

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Cowpea ( L. Walp) is an important legume crop, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Poor soil fertility is among the major abiotic factors that contribute to this crop's low yield.

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Legumes are important components of sustainable agricultural production, food, nutrition and income systems of developing countries. In spite of their importance, legume crop production is challenged by a number of biotic (diseases and pests) and abiotic stresses (heat, frost, drought and salinity), edaphic factors (associated with soil nutrient deficits) and policy issues (where less emphasis is put on legumes compared to priority starchy staples). Significant research and development work have been done in the past decade on important grain legumes through collaborative bilateral and multilateral projects as well as the CGIAR Research Program on Grain Legumes (CRP-GL).

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