Drought is a major environmental constraint responsible for grain yield losses of bread wheat (Triticum aestivum) in many parts of the world. Progress in breeding to improve complex multigene traits, such as drought stress tolerance, has been limited by high sensitivity to environmental factors, low trait heritability, and the complexity and size of the hexaploid wheat genome. In order to obtai...

The productivity in sorghum is low, owing to various biotic and abiotic constraints. Combining insect resistance with desirable agronomic and morphological traits is important to increase sorghum productivity. Therefore, it is important to understand the variability for various agronomic traits, their heritabilities and nature of gene action to develop appropriate strategies for crop improvemen...

High-throughput, noninvasive field phenotyping has revealed genetic variation in crop morphological, developmental, and agronomic traits, but rapid measurements of the underlying physiological and biochemical traits are needed to fully understand genetic variation in plant-environment interactions. This study tested the application of leaf hyperspectral reflectance (λ = 500-2,400 nm) as a high-...

Sclerotinia sclerotiorum, the causal agent of Sclerotinia stem rot, is a devastating fungal pathogen of soybean that can cause significant yield losses to growers when environmental conditions are favorable for the disease. The development of resistant varieties has proven difficult. However, poor resistance in commercial cultivars can be improved through additional breeding efforts and underst...

water and nutrient availability are two major constraints to forage maize production in arid and semi-arid areas; however, the effect of different n levels from organic and inorganic sources on nutrient (i.e., n and p) efficiency under drought stress conditions is not well known for maize faming. thus, a field study was conducted with the objective of determining the effect of n fertilization a...

Relatively little is known about the genetic control of agronomic traits in common wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) compared with traits that follow Mendelian segregation patterns. A doubled-haploid population was generated from the cross RL4452x'AC Domain' to study the inheritance of the agronomic traits: plant height, time to maturity, lodging, grain yield, test weight, and 1000-grain weight. Thi...

salinity tolerance is a genetically and physiologically complex trait, controlled by quantitative trait loci (qtls). in order to map the qtls associated with agronomic and physiological traits, 149 doubled haploid lines derived from a cross between clipper (salt susceptible) and sahara 3771 (salt tolerant) barley genotypes were evaluated under natural saline-stress and non-stress conditions usi...