Understanding evolutionary dynamics of pathogens during domestication of their hosts and rise of agro-ecosystems is essential for durable disease management. Here, we investigated changes in life-history traits of the fungal pathogen Venturia inaequalis during domestication of the apple. Life traits linked to fungal dispersal were compared between 60 strains that were sampled in domestic and wi...

Agricultural ecosystems are composed of genetically depauperate populations of crop plants grown at a high density and over large spatial scales, with the regional composition of crop species changing little from year to year. These environments are highly conducive for the emergence and dissemination of pathogens. The uniform host populations facilitate the specialization of pathogens to parti...

Italian ryegrass (Lolium multiflorum Lam.) is one of the most important forage grass species in Europe. In Portugal 34% of the cultivated area is dedicated to animal fodder. Italian ryegrass area in Entre Douro e Minho (EDM) region was mainly with landraces. Changes in traditional agricultural systems are contributing to a major loss of genetic diversity mainly to landraces. Portuguese Italian ...

Plants and pathogens evolve in response to each other. This coevolutionary arms race is fueled by genetic variation underlying the recognition of pathogen proteins by the host and the defeat of host defenses by the pathogen. Together with new mutations, genetic diversity in populations of both the host and pathogen represent a pool of possible variants to maintain adaptation via natural selecti...

Cowpea [(Vigna unguiculata L.) Walp. (Fabaceae)] is the most important food legume grown throughout West Africa. The seeds of this legume protein source are the least expensive for most African populations. However, cowpea production is severely limited by the losses (60-70%) caused by Callosobruchus maculatus F. (Coleoptera: Bruchidae). Whereas many studies have been devoted to the ecology of ...

Amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) was used to assess genetic diversity among 100 selected bambara groundnut [Vigna subterranea (L.) Verdc] landraces from a diverse geographic area of Tanzania. Eleven informative AFLP primer combinations generated a total of 49 scorable polymorphic amplification fragments across the bambara groundnut accessions. Genetic distances between all accessio...