Crop wild relatives are a valuable source of genetic material for improving cultivated crops. However, feral populations—self‐sustaining plants that have escaped cultivation—are often mistaken for wild relatives because they exhibit traits such as seed dispersal and dormancy, which resemble wild forms and support persistence in natural habitats. This study examined the genetic diversity, population structure, and morphology of...

Background and aims This study investigated whether root traits at the seedling stage are maintained at the flowering stage in two chickpea ( Cicer arietinum ) genotypes with contrasting root morphology and physiology; and whether the genotype with greater rhizosheath carboxylates mobilises more poorly-available phosphorus (P) pools to increase shoot P at flowering/podding and seed yield at maturity. Methods Two chickpea genot...

Identifying the genomic bases of adaptation to novel environments is a long‐term objective in evolutionary biology. Because genetic differentiation is expected to increase between locally adapted populations at the genes targeted by selection, scanning the genome for elevated levels of differentiation is a first step towards deciphering the genomic architecture underlying adaptive divergence. The pea aphid Acyrthosiphon pisum...

Understanding the processes of adaptive divergence, which may ultimately lead to speciation, is a major question in evolutionary biology. Allochronic differentiation refers to a particular situation where gene flow is primarily impeded by temporal isolation between early and late reproducers. This process has been suggested to occur in a large array of organisms, even though it is still overlooked in the literature. We here fo...

Inbreeding results from the mating of related individuals and may be associated with reduced fitness because it brings together deleterious variants in one individual. In general, inbreeding is estimated with respect to an arbitrary base population consisting of ancestors that are assumed unrelated. We herein propose a model‐based approach to estimate and characterize individual inbreeding at both global and local genomic scal...

Improving resistance durability involves to be able to predict the adaptation speed of pathogen populations. Identifying the genetic bases of pathogen adaptation to plant resistances is a useful step to better understand and anticipate this phenomenon. Globodera pallida is a major pest of potato crop for which a resistance QTL , GpaV vrn , has been identified in Solanum vernei . However, its durability is threatened as G. pall...

Aquaculture is currently the fastest expanding global animal food production sector and is a key future contributor to food security. An increase in food security will be dependent upon the development and improvement of sustainable practices. A prioritization exercise was undertaken, focusing on the future knowledge needs to underpin UK sustainable aquaculture (both domestic and imported products) using a ‘task force’ group o...

Breeding indigenous African taurine cattle tolerant to trypanosomosis is a straightforward approach to control costs generated by this disease. A recent study identified quantitative trait loci (QTL) underlying trypanotolerance traits in experimental crosses between tolerant N'Dama and susceptible Boran zebu cattle. As trypanotolerance is thought to result from local adaptation of indigenous cattle breeds, we propose an altern...