Sustainable agricultural productivity is hampered by over-dependency on major staple crops, neglect and underutilization of others, climate change, as well as land deterioration. Challenges posed by these limiting factors are undoubtedly contributing to global food insecurity, increased rural poverty, and malnutrition in the less developed countries. Miscellaneous neglected and underutilized grain legumes (MNUGLs) are crops primarily characterized by inherent features and capabilities to withstand the effects of abiotic stress and climate change, significantly replenish the soil, as well as boost food and protein security. This chapter provides insight into the benefits of MNUGLs as food and nutritional security climate smart crops, capable of growing on marginal lands. Exploring and improving MNUGLs depend on a number of factors among which are concerted research efforts, cultivation and production, as well as utilization awareness across global populace geared toward reawakening the interest on the abandoned legumes. The emergence of the clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR/cas9) technology combined with marker-assisted selection (MAS) offers great opportunities to improve MNUGLs for sustainable utilization. Advances in improvement of MNUGLs using omic technologies and the prospects for their genetic modification were highlighted and discussed.

Despite the success of antibiotic discovery, infectious diseases remain the second leading source of death worldwide, while the resistance to antibiotics is among the significant problems in the twenty-first century. Medicinal plants are very rich in phytochemicals which can be structurally optimized and processed into new drugs. Nigeria enjoys a diverse collection of medicinal plants, and joint research has ascertained the efficacy of these plants. Plants such as guava (Psidium guajava), ginger (Zingiber officinale), neem (Azadirachta indica), and moringa (Moringa oleifera) have been found to exhibit broad range of antimicrobial activities. Studies on Nigerian plants have shown that they contain alkaloids, polyphenols, terpenes, glycosides, and others with possible therapeutic potentials. The antimicrobial activities of some new compounds such as alloeudesmenol, hanocokinoside, orosunol, and 8-demethylorosunol, identified from medicinal plants in Nigeria, are not yet explored. Further investigation and optimization of these compounds will facilitate the development of new sets of pharmacologically acceptable antimicrobial agents. This review study revealed the efficacy of medicinal plants as an alternative therapy in combating and curtailing the development and survival of multidrug-resistant pathogens coupled with the toxic effects of some antibiotics. Due to enormous therapeutic possibilities buried in medicinal plants, there is a need for more research into unique fingerprints and novel compounds that can provide cure to the neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) of humans and animals facing Africa, especially Nigeria.

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This study reports a combination of two indices, air pollution tolerance index (APTI) and anticipated performance index (API) as viable tools for selecting suitable plants for pollution abatement program. Leaf samples of 6 plant species; Mangifera indica, Araucaria heterophylla, Elaeis guineensis, Syzygium malaccense, Acacia auriculiformis, and Chrysophyllum albidium were collected from an industrial and academic areas at Ado-Odo, Ota, Nigeria; during the dry season of January to March 2018. Biochemical parameters; leaf-pH, relative leaf water content, total chlorophyll content, and ascorbic acid content were analyzed to compute the APTI values. Combined APTI, botanical and socioeconomic indices were graded to evaluate the API of the different plant species. The APTI for the species ranged between 4.79 and 10.7, ideal for sensitive species category (APTI < 11), and the plants are classified as bio indicators of air pollution. The API indicates Mangifera indica and Syzygium malaccense (API = 4) as good performers while Chrysophyllum albidum is a moderate performer (API = 3). The three tree species were identified as suitable green belt plants and thus valuable additions to the green belt development plant list in tropical Africa.

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