Fusarium wilt is caused by the fungal pathogens, Fusarium oxysporum or Fusarium solani. It is a devastating disease that affects many important food and vegetable crops and a major source of loss to farmers worldwide. Initial strategies developed to combat this devastating plant disease include the use of cultural, physical and chemical control. None of these strategies have been able to give the best results of completely ameliorating the situation except for the cultural method which is mainly preventive. A good knowledge of the nature, behaviour and environmental conditions of growth of the disease agent is very important to controlling the disease development in that case. Biological control has been shown to be an environmentally friendly alternative. It makes use of rhizospheric and endophytic microorganisms that can survive and compete favourably well with the Fusarium wilt pathogen. They include plant growthpromoting rhizobacteria PGPR such as Bacillus spp. and Pseudomonas spp.. For PGPR to control or inhibit the growth of the Fusarium wilt pathogen, they make use of mechanisms such as indole acetic acid production, siderophore production, phosphate solublilization, systemic resistance induction and antifungal volatile production among others.

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Bambara groundnut (BGN) is an underutilized legume commonly found in sub-Saharan Africa. It thrives in marginal soils and is resistant to drought stress. Several studies have been carried out on the nutritional properties of BGN, but very little is known about the effects of plant growth changes and development on rhizosphere bacterial dynamics and function. This study reports on the bacterial dynamics and function in the bulk and rhizosphere soils of BGN at different growth stages (vegetative, flowering, pod-filling, and maturation stages). Aside from the maturation stage that shows distinct community structure from the other growth stages, results obtained showed no significant differences in bacterial community structure among the other growth stages. At a closer level, Actinobacteria, Proteobacteria, and Acidobacteria were dominant in rhizosphere soils at all growth stages. The bulk soil had the least average phyla abundance, while the maturity stage was characterized by the highest average phyla abundance. Rubrobacter, Acidobacterium, and Skermanella were the most predominant genus. It was observed from the analysis of operational taxonomic units that there was significant change in the bacterial structure of the rhizosphere with a higher abundance of potential plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria, at the different growth stages, which include the genera Bacillus and Acidobacterium. Biomarker analysis revealed 7 and 4 highly significant bacterial biomarkers by linear discriminant analysis effect size and random forest analysis at the maturation stage, respectively. The results obtained in this study demonstrated that the bacterial communities of BGN rhizosphere microbiome dynamics and function are influenced by the plant’s growth stages.

With the rise in the world population, environmental hazards caused by chemical fertilizers, and a decrease in food supply due to global climate change, food security has become very pertinent. In addition, considerable parts of agriculture lands have been lost to urbanization. It has therefore been projected that at the present rate of population increase coupled with the other mentioned factors, available food will not be enough to feed the world. Hence, drastic approach is needed to improve agriculture output as well as human sustainability. Application of environmentally sustainable approach, such as the use of beneficial microbes, and improved breeding of underutilized legumes are one of the proposed sustainable ways of achieving food security. Microbiome-assisted breeding in underutilized legumes is an untapped area with great capabilities to improve food security. Furthermore, revolution in genomics adaptation to crop improvement has changed the approach from conventional breeding to more advanced genomic-assisted breeding on the host plant and its microbiome. The use of rhizobacteria is very important to improving crop yield, especially rhizobacteria from legumes like Bambara groundnut (BGN). BGN is an important legume in sub-Saharan Africa with high ability to tolerate drought and thrive well in marginalized soils. BGN and its interaction with various rhizobacteria in the soil could play a vital role in crop production and protection. This review focus on the importance of genomics application to BGN and its microbiome with the view of setting a potential blueprint for improved BGN breeding through integration of beneficial bacteria.

Socio-demographic factors, ethnicity, beliefs, practices, attitude of students, friends, parents and villagers were the potential explanatory variables in univariate and multivariate analyses. Out of a sample of 98 medical students, only 15% indicated willingness to refer parents and friends to traditional healers. Gender, age, religion, province and district did not influence the referral intention. Positive attitude of friends (p=0.031), of villagers (p=0.047), of students (p=0.004), on consulting traditional healers (p<0.001) and beliefs of students in Traditional Medicine (TM) (p=0.002) were the significant correlates of referral intention. However, after adjusting for confounding factors, only positive attitude of medical students to TM was found to be the significant and independent determinant of referral intention to traditional healers. The data lead to the conclusion that referral intention to TH and TM was very low among medical students. Therefore, intervention for integrative medicine should begin with medical students to develop a positive attitude towards TM, the important and significant determinant of referral intention to TH/TM. If doctors recognize the effectiveness of CAM in the management of some illnesses, the current gap between both medical approaches will get narrowed.

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