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Plant molecular farming: challenges and opportunities.

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.

Vegetable crops are highly susceptible to a wide range of pests and diseases among which are the root-knot nematodes (Meloidogyne species). Traditionally, identification of Meloidogyne species had been based on use of morphological characters such as the perennial pattern. In recent times, accuracy of nematode identification using only morphological tools has been challenged due to similarities in morphological characters of some nematode species. The aim of this study was to identify the root-knot nematodes associated with some vegetable crops cultivated on Covenant University farm, Ota, South-west, Nigeria using molecular tools and to determine the population densities of Meloidogyne spp. on the selected vegetable crops. Plant-parasitic nematodes were extracted from soil and roots of Abelmoschus esculentus, Celosia argentea and Corchorus olitorius cultivated on Covenant University farm. The nematode species were identified and counted under a compound microscope. The molecular characterization of the Meloidogyne species was done using single adult female nematodes and eggs which were picked out for DNA extraction and amplified with specie-specific primers through Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) and separated on 0.5% agarose gel. High population of plant-parasitic nematodes was recorded on the vegetable crops cultivated on covenant university farm. Also significantly higher population (p<0.005) o f Meloidogyne spp. were found in association with C. argentea and Corchorus olitorius than those recorded on Abelmoschus esculentus from the vegetable farm. The molecular characterization of the Meloidogyne species from the farm indicates Meloidogyne incognita as the nematode species associated with the vegetable crops.