The paper provides an insight into the problem of land degradation in Sub-Saharan Africa, with emphasis on soil erosion and its effect on soil quality and productivity, and proposes a lowland-based rice-production technology for coping with the situation. Crop yields are, in addition to the degree of past and current erosion, determined by a number of interacting variables. This, coupled with the generally weak database on erosion-induced losses in crop yield in spite of the region’s high vulnerability to erosion, makes it difficult to attain a reliable inference on the cause-effect relationship between soil loss and productivity. Available data suggest, however, that the region is at risk of not meeting up with the challenges of agriculture in this 21st century. Based on the few studies reviewed, methodology appears to have an overwhelming influence on the erosion-productivity response, whereas issues bordering on physical environment and soil affect the shape of the response curve. We argue that thesawahecotechnology has the potential of countering the negative agronomic and environmental impacts of land degradation in Sub-Saharan Africa. This is a farmer-oriented, low-cost system of managing soil, water, and nutrient resources for enhancing lowland rice productivity and realizing Green Revolution in the region.
We identified 77 EST clones encoding germin-like proteins (GLPs) from a moss, Physcomitrella patens in a database search. These Physcomitrella GLPs ( PpGLP s) were separated into seven groups based on DNA sequence homology. Phylogenetic analysis showed that these groups were divided into two novel clades clearly distinguishable from higher plant germins and GLPs, named bryophyte subfamilies 1 and 2. PpGLPs belonging to bryophyte subfamilies 1 lacked two cysteines at the conserved positions observed in higher plant germins or GLPs. PpGLPs belonging to bryophyte subfamily 2 contained two cysteines as observed in higher plant germins and GLPs. In bryophyte subfamily 1, 12 amino acids, in which one of two cysteines is included, were deleted between boxes A and B. Further, we determined the genomic structure of all of seven PpGLP genes. The sequences of PpGLP s of bryophyte subfamily 1 contained one or two introns, whereas those of bryophyte subfamily 2 contained no introns. Other GLPs from bryophytes, a liverwort GLP from Marchantia polymorpha , and two moss GLPs from Barbula unguiculata and Ceratodon purpureus also fell into bryophyte subfamily 1 and bryophyte subfamily 2, respectively. No higher plant germins and GLPs were grouped into the bryophyte subfamilies 1 and 2 by our analysis. Moreover, we revealed that PpGLP6 had manganese-containing extracellular superoxide dismutase activity. These results indicated that bryophyte possess characteristic GLPs, which phylogenetically are clearly distinguishable from higher plant GLPs.
Recently, the occurrences of extreme flooding and drought, often in the same areas, have increased due to climate change. Wetland plant species are known to oxygenate their rhizospheres by releasing oxygen (O2) from their roots. We tested the hypothesis that wetland species could help upland species under flood conditions; that is, O2 released from the wetland crop roots would ameliorate rhizosphere O2-deficient stress and hence facilitate upland crop root function. Flooding tolerance of upland-adapted staple crops-pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum) and sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) mix-cropped with rice (Oryza spp.) was investigated in glasshouse and laboratory. We found a phenomenon that strengthens the flood tolerance of upland crops when two species-one wetland and one drought tolerant-were grown using the mixed cropping technique that results in close tangling of their root systems. This technique improved the photosynthetic and transpiration rates of upland crops subjected to flood stress (O2-deficient nutrient culture). Shoot relative growth rates during the flooding period (24 days) tended to be higher under mixed cropping compared with single cropping. Radial oxygen loss from the wetland crop roots might be contributed to the phenomenon observed. Mixed cropping of wet and dryland crops is a new concept that has the potential to overcome flood stress under variable environmental conditions.
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