Larvae of 14 species and pupae of 12 species of Palaearctic Tychius Germar, 1817 are described for the first time. Larvae and pupae of T.meliloti Stephens, 1831, T. squamulatus Gyllenhal, 1835 and T. quinquepunctatus (Linnaeus, 1758), are redescribed with addition of new characters. They belong to 10 of 22 groups of species assembled through adult morphological characters in this region and, li...

Gram or Chickpea (Cicer arietinum Linnaeus), a member of family Fabaceae, is an ancient leguminous crop which is self pollinated, diploid annual (2N=16 chromosomes) grown since 7000BC, in different area of the world but major cultivation is concentrated in semi-arid environments of different areas of the world. It is ranked 3 rd after common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) and pea (Pisum sativum) ...

Populations of Rhizobium leguminosarum biovar viciae were sampled from two bulk soils, rhizosphere, and nodules of host legumes, fava bean (Vicia faba) and pea (Pisum sativum) grown in the same soils. Additional populations nodulating peas, fava beans, and vetches (Vicia sativa) grown in other soils and fava bean-nodulating strains from various geographic sites were also analyzed. The rhizobia ...

Evolutionary relationships were inferred among a worldwide sample of Ascochyta fungi from wild and cultivated legume hosts based on phylogenetic analyses of DNA sequences from the ribosomal internal transcribed spacer regions (ITS), as well as portions of three protein-coding genes: glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate-dehydrogenase (G3PD), translation elongation factor 1-alpha (EF) and chitin synthase 1...

The establishment of the nitrogen-fixing symbiosis between rhizobia and legumes requires an exchange of signals between the two partners. In response to flavonoids excreted by the host plant, rhizobia synthesize Nod factors (NFs) which elicit, at very low concentrations and in a specific manner, various symbiotic responses on the roots of the legume hosts. NFs from several rhizobial species hav...

Retrotransposons with long terminal repeats (LTR-RTs) are widespread mobile elements in eukaryotic genomes. We obtained a total of 81 partial LTR-RT sequences from lentil corresponding to internal retrotransposon components and LTRs. Sequences were obtained by PCR from genomic DNA. Approximately 37% of the LTR-RT internal sequences presented premature stop codons, pointing out that these elemen...