Vegetable soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] is an underutilized legume with potential to improve nutrition and diversify cropping systems in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). A panel of 191 soybean accessions, including the World Vegetable Center large-seeded soybean core collection and SSA elite grain soybean materials, was characterized using 21,970 genome-wide single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers. Genetic relationships were investigated using principal component analysis, sparse non-negative matrix factorization, discriminant analysis of principal components, and neighbor-joining analysis. Cross-entropy was lowest at K = 7, while K = 3 was used to characterize the major population structure and for population-level analyses. At K = 3 and Q≥ 0.70, 121 accessions were assigned to three genetic groups. AMOVA attributed 83.78
Nepal is an important center of rice diversity, characterized by pronounced environmental heterogeneity, wide altitudinal gradients and long-standing farmer-managed seed systems. This study assessed the genetic diversity, population structure, and genetic connectivity of Nepalese rice (Oryza sativa L.) landraces to elucidate the factors underlying their genetic variation and implications for conservation and utilization. A total of 80 landraces, representing three agroecozones (High Hill, Mid Hill, and Terai) and two rice ecosystems (lowland and upland), were genotyped using 19 simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers. Moderate genetic diversity was detected, with 38 unique alleles across populations. The Mid Hill group exhibited the highest allelic richness and gene diversity (He = 0.436), while lowland populations showed greater diversity than upland populations. More than 80
Globally, many smallholder farmers cultivate crop varieties that have been developed, selected, and maintained over generations, known as farmers’ varieties. This paper examines the policy provisions, existing gaps, and prospects for the registration of farmers’ native varieties in Nepal through systematic review of relevant literature, legislation, regulations, and policy documents. It synthesizes key findings on the procedures for registering native varieties and the institutional and regulatory mechanisms for managing farmers’ seed systems. The finding showed that the procedures for notifying different categories of crop varieties were established under the Seed Regulation (2013) in four schedules (A, B, C, D). The revised Seed Regulation (2024) further expands this framework through provision of six annexes. Notably, Annex 5 specifically addresses the registration of farmers’ native varieties. Up to date, total of 24 farmers’ native varieties representing ten different crops were officially registered under schedule D (Annex 5 provision of seed regulation, 2024) through the National Seed Board (NSB). These registrations reflect increasing institutional recognition of farmers’ roles in varietal conservation, improvement, and seed system development. Despite notable progress in the registration of farmers’ varieties in Nepal, several policy-level gaps and implementation challenges exist including limited awareness of the relaxed registration provisions among farmers and stakeholders and inconsistent interpretation of registration criteria. This paper proposes an integrated, farmer-centered approach to strengthen the farmers’ variety registration, source-seed maintenance, and benefit sharing mechanisms through clear technical guidelines, capacity building, and coordinated engagement of farmers, government agencies, the private sector, NGOs and other relevant stakeholders.
Thymus saturejoides Coss. is a North African endemic aromatic and medicinal plant of considerable ecological, ethnobotanical and economic importance. However, its natural populations have been increasingly threatened by overharvesting, habitat fragmentation and environmental constraints, making molecular characterization essential for developing effective conservation and sustainable management strategies. In the present study, inter simple sequence repeat (ISSR) markers were used to assess the genetic diversity and population structure of ten natural Moroccan populations of T. saturejoides. DNA was extracted from 100 individuals, and 15 ISSR primers produced 138 scorable fragments, of which 123 were polymorphic, yielding 89.13
Cadmium (Cd) toxicity is a main environmental problem that adversely affects plant growth, physiological processes and food safety due to its high mobility and accumulation in the food chain. Heavy metal ATPases (HMAs) are vital P1B-type transporters implicated in metal transport, detoxification and homeostasis in plants. In the current study, a genome-wide identification and in silico characterization of the HMA gene family was performed in Lactuca sativa to examine the structural, evolutionary and predicted functional characteristics of this transporter family under heavy metal stress. A total of 14 LsHMA genes were identified, distributed across chromosomes 1, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9. Phylogenetic analysis classified the proteins into three clades belonging to two major groups: Group-I (Zn/Co/Cd/Pb-ATPases) and Group-II (Cu/Ag-ATPases). Conserved motif and domain analyses showed highly similar motif organization within each phylogenetic group, with most proteins containing E1-E2 ATPase, HMA and hydrolase-associated domains. Multiple sequence alignment identified the conserved DKTG phosphorylation motif and CPC/SPC metal-binding regions. Cis-regulatory element analysis detected light-, hormone-, development- and stress-responsive elements in the promoter regions of LsHMA genes. Gene Ontology analysis showed that LsHMA proteins were primarily associated with membrane-related cellular components and molecular functions including binding, catalytic, hydrolase, nucleotide-binding and transport activities. Synteny analysis showed a small number of conserved collinear relationships between LsHMA genes and HMA homologs from Arabidopsis and Brassica species. Protein-interaction and structural-modelling analyses, both computational predictions rather than experimental measurements, were consistent with a conserved P1B-type ATPase architecture for the LsHMA proteins. Re-analysis of publicly available expression data under Cd stress and melatonin treatment revealed distinct, gene-specific transcriptional patterns rather than a single family-wide response. LsHMA4a-c, LsHMA6 and LsHMA7c showed consistently high expression across all sampled time points (Table S4), indicating a constitutively high baseline expression for these genes rather than strict Cd- or melatonin-inducibility. LsHMA4d, LsHMA4e and LsHMA5 instead showed a progressive increase in root expression with increasing Cd-exposure duration, the pattern most consistent with genuine Cd-responsiveness among the family, while LsHMA2b, LsHMA7a and LsHMA7b showed comparatively low or declining expression under Cd exposure. Moderate expression was observed for LsHMA2a and LsHMA8a/b in roots. These expression trends are based on descriptive comparison of processed public RNA-seq data rather than a formal statistical time-by-treatment analysis and should be treated as hypotheses for future validation. Together, these findings provide a foundational genomic resource and identify candidate LsHMA genes for future experimental investigation of Cd transport and detoxification in lettuce.
