Full potential of African tomato has not been tapped due to lack of information regarding its characterization. The aim of this work was to study the diversity of 17 African tomato landraces collected from Solanaceae gene bank – Tanzania. Evaluation was done using Complete Random Block Design. Morphological data collected were subjected to GenStat's and Darwin6 software. RNA was extracted from leaf samples, fruits at three ripening stages using modified Trizol method and sequencing done using Illumina sequencing platform. The raw reads were filtered and analysed using the Bioinformatics tools. Phenotypically, the landraces clustered into three clusters dendrogram representation. Clustering was attributed by phenotypic variation. Analysis of variance showed significant phenotypic variations among the landraces (P < 0.05). A total of 115,965 validated single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were mined from the 303,754,051 high-quality filtered reads. Molecular characterization showed significant variation within the landraces at fruit development stages. Unlike the phenotypic variation, phylogenetic tree representation grouped the 17 landraces according to their geographical location with some landraces from different countries grouping together. The findings of this study reveal significant morphological variation among African tomato contributed by plant height, leaf blade length, leaf blade width and fruit width. Positive correlation between fruit width and yield (r = 0.93, P < 0.01) was observed. Results of this study reveal that there is admixture of landraces from various geographical locations. Morphological characterization of African tomato can only lay a foundation but it does not reveal genetic diversity. The transcriptome SNP analysis revealed significant variation among the African tomato according to their geographical location.
The banana industry in Kenya is threatened by the presence of Banana streak virus (BSV). The Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) commercial banana laboratory uses tissue culture (TC) technique for mass propagation of plantlets which are free from most disease causing organisms for commercial purposes. To evaluate in vitro protocols for production of Banana Streak Virusfree TC banana planting materials for farmers, leaf samples were collected from Thika, Kisii, and JKUAT orchards for indexing. The corms were taken through the TC procedure up to the 2 nd subculture stage after which they were subjected to three virus elimination techniques; chemotherapy, meristem tip culture and thermotherapy for evaluation. Indexing for BSV using PCR BSV indicated 90, 80 and 40% infection levels for Kisii, JKUAT and Thika orchards, respectively. For chemotherapy evaluation, concentrations of between 10 and 40 mg/l were used resulting in 0 to 90% virus elimination. For thermotherapy, 27°C (control), 32°C, 34°C, 36°C and 38°C for 10 days, resulted in 0 and 90% virus elimination. Meristem tip culture at 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5mm (control) gave between 0 and 90% virus elimination, respectively. The study indicates that BSV can be eliminated using chemotherapy, thermotherapy and meristem tip culture. Chemotherapy using salicylic acid at 20mg/l can be used to eliminate BSV up 90%. It is also easy to implement since it is incorporated into the medium.
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