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Tef (Eragrostis tef [Zucc.] Trotter) is a tiny-seeded cereal with huge importance in Ethiopia. Creation of variability by hybridization and the subsequent selection RILs very important towards variety development. In order to identify superior genotypes, evaluation was performed on eight environments using three times replicated randomized complete block design. The result revealed that genotyp...

In this local-scale synecological study, we investigated the changes in plant community composition throughout secondary succession occurring after cessation of agricultural land use (i.e. grassland abandonment). The successional sequence studied had following pathway: Avenula pubescens (Huds.) Dumort. haypastures → Brachypodium pinnatum (L.) P.Beauv. Cornus sanguinea L. scrubs late-successiona...

BACKGROUND Production of range grasses under irrigation has been widely adopted in the arid environments of Kenya as a strategy for seasonal forage supply gap. However, their productivity has only been done under conventional methods without an evaluation of their performance at varied soil moisture conditions. This information is needed for making sustainable management of irrigation water and...

Eragrostis tef (Zucc.), a member of the Chloridoideae subfamily of grasses, is one of the most important food crops in Ethiopia. Lodging is the most important production problem in tef. The rht1 and sd1 dwarfing genes have been useful for improving lodging resistance in wheat and rice, respectively, in what has been known as the "Green Revolution." All homologs of rht1 and sd1 were cloned and s...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Previous studies on grass leaf tensile properties (behaviour during mechanical stress) have focused on agricultural applications such as resistance to trampling and palatability; no investigations have directly addressed mechanical properties during water stress, and hence these are the subject of this study. METHODS Critical (lethal) relative water contents were determine...

SYNOPSIS. Desiccation-tolerance in vegetative tissues of angiosperms has a polyphyletic origin and could be due to 1) appropriation of the seed-specific program of gene expression that protects orthodox seeds against desiccation, and/or 2) a sustainable version of the abiotic stress response. We tested these hypotheses by comparing molecular and physiological data from the development of orthod...