Aflatoxins Levels in Concentrate Feeds Collected from Specialized Dairy Farms and Local Markets in Selected Urban Centers of Eastern Ethiopia.

Aflatoxin constitutes a significant concern for food and feed safety, posing detrimental health risks to both animals and humans. This study aimed to examine the prevalence and concentration of aflatoxins in maize feed, total mixed ration, and wheat bran collected from specialized dairy farms and local markets in three major urban centers in eastern Ethiopia. A total of 180 feed samples were collected from September 2021 to January 2022 in Chiro town, Dire Dawa city, and Harar city.

Non-Feeding Transmission Modes of the Tomato Yellow Leaf Curl Virus by the Whitefly Do Not Contribute to Reoccurring Leaf Curl Outbreaks in Tomato.

Tomato yellow leaf curl virus (TYLCV) causes significant yield loss in tomato production in the southeastern United States and elsewhere. TYLCV is transmitted by the whitefly cryptic species in a persistent, circulative, and non-propagative manner. Unexpectedly, transovarial and sexual transmission of TYLCV has been reported for one strain from Israel.

A complete genome sequence of pathovar YM7902.

pathovar YM7902 was originally isolated as a pathogen of cucumber in Japan. Here, we report a nearly complete genome sequence for this strain, assembled using a hybrid approach combining Illumina paired-end reads and longer reads sequenced using technology from Oxford Nanopore.

Integrated Metabolomic, Lipidomic and Proteomic Analysis Define the Metabolic Changes Occurring in Curled Areas in Leaves With Leaf Peach Curl Disease.

Peach Leaf Curl Disease, caused by Taphrina deformans, is characterized by reddish hypertrophic and hyperplasic leaf areas. To comprehend the biochemical imbalances caused by the fungus, dissected symptomatic (C) and asymptomatic areas (N) from leaves with increasing disease extension were analyzed by an integrated approach including metabolomics, lipidomics, proteomics, and complementary biochemical techniques. Drastic metabolic differences were identified in C areas with respect to either N areas or healthy leaves, including altered chloroplastic functioning and composition, which differs from the typical senescence process.

Islands are key for protecting the world's plant endemism.

Islands are renowned as evolutionary laboratories and support many species that are not found elsewhere. Islands are also of great conservation concern, with many of their endemic species currently threatened or extinct. Here we present a standardized checklist of all known vascular plants that occur on islands and document their geographical and phylogenetic distribution and conservation risk.

Combined Effects of Heavy Metal and Simulated Herbivory on Leaf Trichome Density in Sunflowers.

Trichomes play a key role in both heavy metal tolerance and herbivory defense, and both stressors have been shown to induce increased trichome density. However, the combined effect of these stressors on trichome density in general, and specifically on metal-hyperaccumulating plants, has yet to be examined. The aim of this study was to test the effect of cadmium availability and herbivory on leaf trichome density and herbivore deterrence in the metal hyperaccumulator .

Study of the effect of feeding larvae during their rearing on their growth, nutritional profile, value and safety of the produced flour.

Science and food industry must strive to ensure and improve edible insect's benefits, and especially their safety and nutritional value. This study investigated how various food substrates used in the rearing of larvae influence their growth, the safety of the larvae, and the nutritional quality of the resulting flour. The main findings indicate that all samples showed significant differences in their nutritional profile, larval characteristics, and heavy metal content.

Effective number of different populations: A new concept and how to use it.

Widely used methods to assess population genetic structure and differentiation rely on independence of marker loci. Following the assumption, the common metrics, for example , evaluate genetic structure by averaging across loci. Common metrics do not use information in the associations among loci at the individual level and are often criticized for failing to measure true differentiation even when loci segregate independently.

Assembly, comparative analysis, and utilization of a single haplotype reference genome for soybean.

Cultivar Williams 82 has served as the reference genome for the soybean research community since 2008, but is known to have areas of genomic heterogeneity among different sub-lines. This work provides an updated assembly (version Wm82.a6) derived from a specific sub-line known as Wm82-ISU-01 (seeds available under USDA accession PI 704477).

DIRT/µ: automated extraction of root hair traits using combinatorial optimization.

As with phenotyping of any microscopic appendages, such as cilia or antennae, phenotyping of root hairs has been a challenge due to their complex intersecting arrangements in two-dimensional images and the technical limitations of automated measurements. Digital Imaging of Root Traits at Microscale (DIRT/μ) is a newly developed algorithm that addresses this issue by computationally resolving intersections and extracting individual root hairs from two-dimensional microscopy images. This solution enables automatic and precise trait measurements of individual root hairs.

Optimal interpolation approach for groundwater depth estimation.

In arid and semi-arid regions where surface water resources are scarce, groundwater is crucial. Accurate mapping of groundwater depth is vital for sustainable management practices. This study evaluated the performance of three spatial interpolation techniques - inverse distance weighting (IDW), ordinary kriging (OK), and radial basis functions (RBF) - in predicting groundwater depth distribution across Dire Dawa City, Ethiopia.

Manipulating the Maize () Microbiome.

Maize () is a multifaceted cereal grass used globally for nutrition, animal feed, food processing, and biofuels, and a model system in genetics research. Studying the maize microbiome sometimes requires its manipulation to identify the contributions of specific taxa and ecological traits (i.e.

Sampling and Analysis of the Maize Microbiome.

Maize is an important plant for both global food security and genetics research. As the importance of microorganisms to plant health is becoming clearer, there is a growing interest in understanding the relationship between maize and its associated microbiome; i.e.

Sampling Root-Associated Microbiome Communities of Maize ().

The soil microbiome of maize shapes its fitness, sustainability, and productivity. Accurately sampling maize's belowground microbial communities is important for identifying and characterizing these functions. Here, we describe a protocol to sample the maize rhizosphere (including the rhizoplane and endorhizosphere) and root zone (still influential but further from the root) in a form suitable for downstream analyses like culturing and DNA extractions.

Modifying row-configuration and vermicompost application reduces intercropped peanut ( L.) yield instability and penalty in sorghum at Babile, Eastern Ethiopia.

The yield of intercropped peanut ( L.) in cereal crops was drastically reduced by 20-55 %, presumably due to high interspecific competition caused by illogical field layout and imbalanced fertilizer application. Field experiments were conducted in the Babile district of Eastern Ethiopia during the main cropping seasons of 2021 and 2022 to assess the possibilities of minimizing the peanut yield penalty and instability while improving sorghum production.

Soil properties and nutrient uptake of maize () as influenced by mixed manure and blended inorganic fertilizer in Haramaya district, eastern Ethiopia.

The deteriorating state of soil fertility and low agricultural productivity in Ethiopia can be traced to the lack of equivalent consideration given to the soil's biological, chemical, and physical properties. A pot experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of mixed manure and blended nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur and boron (NPSB) fertilizer on phosphorus adsorption, and other properties of Vertisols, nutrient uptake, and growth performance of maize. The study findings indicate that the combined application of mixed manure and blended NPSB significantly reduced soil pH from 7.

Order of arrival and nutrient supply alter outcomes of co-infection with two fungal pathogens.

A pathogen arriving on a host typically encounters a diverse community of microbes that can shape priority effects, other within-host interactions and infection outcomes. In plants, environmental nutrients can drive trade-offs between host growth and defence and can mediate interactions between co-infecting pathogens. Nutrients may thus alter the outcome of pathogen priority effects for the host, but this possibility has received little experimental investigation.

Erratum to "The synergistic effects of organic composts and microelements co-application in enhancing potato productivity in saline soils" [Heliyon 10(12), 30 June 2024, Article e32694].

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1016/j.heliyon.

Enhanced pollen tube performance at high temperature contributes to thermotolerant fruit production in tomato.

Rising temperature extremes during critical reproductive periods threaten the yield of major grain and fruit crops. Flowering plant reproduction depends on development of sufficient numbers of pollen grains and on their ability to generate a cellular extension, the pollen tube, which elongates through the pistil to deliver sperm cells to female gametes for double fertilization. These critical phases of the life cycle are sensitive to temperature and limit productivity under high temperature (HT).

Origin and evolution of the bread wheat D genome.

Bread wheat (Triticum aestivum) is a globally dominant crop and major source of calories and proteins for the human diet. Compared with its wild ancestors, modern bread wheat shows lower genetic diversity, caused by polyploidisation, domestication and breeding bottlenecks. Wild wheat relatives represent genetic reservoirs, and harbour diversity and beneficial alleles that have not been incorporated into bread wheat.

Comparative analyses suggest a link between mRNA splicing, stability, and RNA covalent modifications in flowering plants.

Background: In recent years, covalent modifications on RNA nucleotides have emerged as pivotal moieties influencing the structure, function, and regulatory processes of RNA Polymerase II transcripts such as mRNAs and lncRNAs. However, our understanding of their biological roles and whether these roles are conserved across eukaryotes remains limited.

Results: In this study, we leveraged standard polyadenylation-enriched RNA-sequencing data to identify and characterize RNA modifications that introduce base-pairing errors into cDNA reads.

Guidelines for naming and studying plasma membrane domains in plants.

Biological membranes play a crucial role in actively hosting, modulating and coordinating a wide range of molecular events essential for cellular function. Membranes are organized into diverse domains giving rise to dynamic molecular patchworks. However, the very definition of membrane domains has been the subject of continuous debate.