Two distinct classes of QTL determine rust resistance in sorghum

Background: Agriculture is facing enormous challenges to feed a growing population in the face of rapidly evolving pests and pathogens. The rusts, in particular, are a major pathogen of cereal crops with the potential to cause large reductions in yield. Improving stable disease resistance is an on-going major and challenging focus for many plant breeding programs, due to the rapidly evolving nature of the pathogen. Sorghum is a major summer cereal crop that is also a host for a rust pathogen which occurs in almost all sorghum growing areas of the world, causing direct and indirect yield losses in sorghum worldwide, however knowledge about its genetic control is still limited. In order to further investigate this issue, QTL and association mapping methods were implemented to study rust resistance in three bi-parental populations and an association mapping set of elite breeding lines in different environments. Results: In total, 64 significant or highly significant QTL and 21 suggestive rust resistance QTL were identified representing 55 unique genomic regions. Comparisons across populations within the current study and with rust QTL identified previously in both sorghum and maize revealed a high degree of correspondence in QTL location. Negative phenotypic correlations were observed between rust, maturity and height, indicating a trend for both early maturing and shorter genotypes to be more susceptible to rust. Conclusions: The significant amount of QTL co-location across traits, in addition to the consistency in the direction of QTL allele effects, has provided evidence to support pleiotropic QTL action across rust, height, maturity and stay-green, supporting the role of carbon stress in susceptibility to rust. Classical rust resistance QTL regions that did not co-locate with height, maturity or stay-green QTL were found to be significantly enriched for the defence-related NBS-encoding gene family, in contrast to the lack of defence-related gene enrichment in multi-trait effect rust resistance QTL. The distinction of disease resistance QTL hot-spots, enriched with defence-related gene families from QTL which impact on development and partitioning, provides plant breeders with knowledge which will allow for fast-tracking varieties with both durable pathogen resistance and appropriate adaptive traits.

African mahogany. Abstracts from 'Darwin 2011 - African Mahogany Plantation Industry Forum'

This publication summarises the talks presented at ‘Darwin 2011 – African Mahogany Plantation Industry Forum’ held at the Department of Resources Research Facility, Berrimah, Darwin, 31st August and 1st September 2011. The forum brought together a vast amount of experience and knowledge about African mahogany and its prospects as a plantation timber tree in the dry tropics of northern Australia. The abstracts and references represent a valuable body of knowledge building on that recorded in previous African mahogany workshops in Mareeba (2004) and Townsville (2006). Besides the presenters’ abstracts, this publication provides a list of all the authors and their contact details and a complete list of all the cited references and further reading.

Rhipicephalus microplus serine protease inhibitor family: annotation, expression and functional characterisation assessment

Background: Rhipicephalus (Boophilus) microplus evades the host's haemostatic system through a complex protein array secreted into tick saliva. Serine protease inhibitors (serpins) conform an important component of saliva which are represented by a large protease inhibitor family in Ixodidae. These secreted and non-secreted inhibitors modulate diverse and essential proteases involved in different physiological processes. Methods: The identification of R. microplus serpin sequences was performed through a web-based bioinformatics environment called Yabi. The database search was conducted on BmiGi V1, BmiGi V2.1, five SSH libraries, Australian tick transcriptome libraries and RmiTR V1 using bioinformatics methods. Semi quantitative PCR was carried out using different adult tissues and tick development stages. The cDNA of four identified R. microplus serpins were cloned and expressed in Pichia pastoris in order to determine biological targets of these serpins utilising protease inhibition assays. Results: A total of four out of twenty-two serpins identified in our analysis are new R. microplus serpins which were named as RmS-19 to RmS-22. The analyses of DNA and predicted amino acid sequences showed high conservation of the R. microplus serpin sequences. The expression data suggested ubiquitous expression of RmS except for RmS-6 and RmS-14 that were expressed only in nymphs and adult female ovaries, respectively. RmS-19, and -20 were expressed in all tissues samples analysed showing their important role in both parasitic and non-parasitic stages of R. microplus development. RmS-21 was not detected in ovaries and RmS-22 was not identified in ovary and nymph samples but were expressed in the rest of the samples analysed. A total of four expressed recombinant serpins showed protease specific inhibition for Chymotrypsin (RmS-1 and RmS-6), Chymotrypsin / Elastase (RmS-3) and Thrombin (RmS-15). Conclusion: This study constitutes an important contribution and improvement to the knowledge about the physiologic role of R. microplus serpins during the host-tick interaction.