It is sometimes argued that women play a more important role in seed and diversity management than men,and that women have greater abilities in managing crop diversity. In The Gambia, men and women also havethe belief that women are better in managing and identifying varieties than men. This article focuses on therole of gender in farmer management of crop diversity in two crops...

Sixty-six finger millet accessions composed of 64 landraces and two improved varieties were evaluated using RAPD markers to study the genetic diversity in finger millet landraces. The study was conducted at the Laboratory of Department of Genetics, Faculty of Science, Kasetsart University, Bangkok, Thailand. The RAPD analysis was executed using 15 primers, which were screened based on their eff...

It is generally understood that foxtail millet and broomcorn millet were initially domesticated in Northern China where they eventually became the dominant plant food crops. The rarity of older archaeological sites and archaeobotanical work in the region, however, renders both the origins of these plants and their processes of domestication poorly understood. Here we present ancient starch grai...

Grass species differ in many aspects of inflorescence architecture, but in most cases the genetic basis of the morphological difference is unknown. To investigate the genes underlying the morphology in one such instance, we undertook a developmental and QTL analysis of inflorescence differences between the cereal grain foxtail millet and its presumed progenitor green millet. Inflorescence diffe...

Sixteen fonio millet and 17 sesame samples were analysed for incidence of moulds, especially aflatoxigenic Aspergillus species, in order to determine the safety of both crops to consumers, and to correlate aflatoxin levels in the crops with levels produced by toxigenic isolates on laboratory medium. Diverse moulds including Alternaria, Aspergillus, Cercospora, Fusarium, Mucor, Penicillium, Rhiz...

In Africa a variety of indigenous cereals, legumes and tubers are cultivated as starchy food crops. These include sorghum, millet species including pearl millet, finger millet, teff and white and black fonio, and African rice as cereals; cowpea, Bambara groundnut, African yambean and West African locust bean as legumes; and Zulu round potato and the Livingstone potato as tubers. Many of these p...

The interaction of soiil water and P supply is of paramount importance to pearl millet [Penniseturn gluucum (L.) R. Br.] growth in Sahelian Africa due to unreliable rainfall and low soil P availability. This study was conducted to quantify the growth response of pe:ul millet to water supply and P under conditions analogous to the Saliel in terms of climatle and soil. Millet was grown for 84 d i...

Foxtail millet (Setariaitalica) is a drought-resistant, barren-tolerant grain crop and forage. Currently, it has become a new model plant for cereal crops and biofuel grasses. Although two reference genome sequences were released recently, comparative genomics research on foxtail millet is still in its infancy. Using the Solexa sequencing technology, we performed genome re-sequencing on one imp...

Native endophytic actinomycetes isolated from pearl millet roots were examined for their efficacy to protect pearl millet against downy mildew. Nineteen of 39 isolates were found to be proteolytic, of which 7 strains could directly suppress the sporangium formation of Sclerospora graminicola, the pearl millet downy mildew pathogen. Thus, mycelial suspensions containing either spores or cell-fre...

Analysis of organic residues in pottery vessels has been successful in detecting a range of animal and plant products as indicators of food preparation and consumption in the past. However, the identification of plant remains, especially grain crops in pottery, has proved elusive. Extending the spectrum is highly desirable, not only to strengthen our understanding of the dispersal of crops from...