Powdery mildew [Podosphaera xanthii (Castagne) Braun & Shishkoff (syn. Sphaerotheca fuliginea auct. p.p.)] is now a common disease on watermelon [Citrullus lanatus (Thunb.) Matsum. & Nakai] in the United States. In this study, the entire available U.S. Plant Introduction collection of Citrullus Schrad. ex Eckl. & Zeyh. species was evaluated for resistance to P. xanthii race 1W. The collection consists of four Citrullus species and one Praecitrullus Pangalo species [C. lanatus var. citroides (L.H. Bailey) Mansf., C. colocynthis (L.) Schrad., C. rehmii De Winter, and P. fistulosus (Stocks) Pangalo]. Wild-type accessions tended to be more resistant more often than the cultivated species, C. lanatus var. lanatus. None were immune, eight of the 1573 accessions exhibited high levels of resistance, and another 86 demonstrated intermediate resistance. Stem and leaf disease severity were weakly correlated (r 2 = 0.64, P = 0.001). The majority of accessions having resistance were collected in Zimbabwe. Resistance was found in four species.

Climate change is expected to aggravate the effects of drought, heat and combined drought and heat stresses. An important step in developing ‘climate smart’ maize varieties is to identify germplasm with good levels of tolerance to the abiotic stresses. The primary objective of this study was to identify landraces with combined high yield potential and desirable secondary traits under drought, heat and combined drought and heat stresses. Thirty-three landraces from Burkina Faso (6), Ghana (6) and Togo (21), and three drought-tolerant populations/varieties from the Maize Improvement Program at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture were evaluated under three conditions, namely managed drought stress, heat stress and combined drought and heat stress, with optimal growing conditions as control, for two years. The phenotypic and genetic correlations between grain yield of the different treatments were very weak, suggesting the presence of independent genetic control of yield to these stresses. However, grain yield under heat and combined drought and heat stresses were highly and positively correlated, indicating that heat-tolerant genotypes would most likely tolerate combined drought and stress. Yield reduction averaged 46% under managed drought stress, 55% under heat stress, and 66% under combined drought and heat stress, which reflected hypo-additive effect of drought and heat stress on grain yield of the maize accessions. Accession GH-3505 was highly tolerant to drought, while GH-4859 and TZm-1353 were tolerant to the three stresses. These landrace accessions can be invaluable sources of genes/alleles for breeding for adaptation of maize to climate change.

The mothers had marginally depleted liver reserves of vitamin A at baseline on the basis of MRDR test results. Liver reserves of vitamin A significantly improved in both treatment groups, and the improvement was maintained for >or= 5 mo.