Zakaria Kehel

Wheat is the most important food crop which originated in the Fertile Crescent, the cradle of human civilization. Currently, it grows an average of 220 million hectares globally with an annual production level of 810 million tons. In Morocco, wheat...

Leaf rust (LR) caused by Puccinia hordei is a serious disease of barley worldwide, causing significant yield losses and reduced grain quality. Discovery and incorporation of new sources of resistance from gene bank accessions into barley breeding...

Ensuring global food security in the face of climate change is critical to human survival. With a predicted human population of 9.6 billion in 2050 and the demand for food supplies expected to increase by 60% globally, but with a parallel potential...

Barley is an important crop worldwide known for its adaptation to harsh environments and used in multiple forms as feed, food and beverages. Its productivity is affected by major abiotic and biotic stresses. Scald caused by hemibiotrophic fungus...

Globally, over 2 billion people suffer from malnutrition due to inadequate intake of micronutrients. Genomic-assisted breeding is identified as a valuable method to facilitate developing new improved plant varieties targeting grain yield and...

Globally, over 2 billion people sufer from malnutrition due to inadequate intake of micronutrients. Genomic-assisted breeding is identifed as a valuable method to facilitate developing new improved plant varieties targeting grain yield and...

Although barley is mainly used for livestock feed and beverages, its use as human feed can enrich human diets with some health benefits. The development of new hulless varieties rich in β-glucans and micronutrients can enhance the use of barley as...

Multiple sequence alignment (MSA) is essential for understanding genetic variations controlling phenotypic traits in all living organisms. The post-analysis of MSA results is a difficult step for researchers who do not have programming skills...

Durum wheat is a staple food of the Mediterranean Basin, mostly cultivated under rainfed conditions. As such, the crop is often exposed to moisture stress. Therefore, the identification of genetic factors controlling the capacity of genotypes to...

enome-wide prediction is a powerful tool in breeding. Initial results suggest that genome-wide approaches are also promising for enhancing the use of the genebank material: predicting the performance of plant genetic resources can unlock their hidden...

Grass pea is a promising crop with the potential to provide food and fodder, but its genomics has not been adequately explored. Identifying genes for desirable traits, such as drought tolerance and disease resistance, is critical for improving the...

The basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) transcription factor is a vital
component in plant biology, with a significant impact on various aspects of
plant growth, cell development, and physiological processes. Grass pea is a
vital agricultural crop that...

The tar spot complex (TSC) is a devastating disease of maize (Zea mays L.), occurring in 17 countries throughout Central, South, and North America and the Caribbean, and can cause grain yield losses of up to 80%. As yield losses from the disease...

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) are a powerful approach to dissect genotype-phenotype associations and identify causative regions. However, this power is highly influenced by the accuracy of the phenotypic data. To obtain accurate phenotypic...

Stripe rust, caused by Puccinia striiformis f. sp. tritici (Pst) is one of the most destructive diseases of wheat (Triticum aes- tivum L.) worldwide causing huge yield losses every year. Development and deployment of resistant varieties is the most...

Crop landraces have unique local agroecological and societal functions and offer important genetic resources for plant breeding. Recognition of the value of landrace diversity and concern about its erosion on farms have led to sustained efforts to...

Ascochyta blight (AB), caused by the fungal pathogen Ascochyta rabiei, is a devastating foliar disease of chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.). The genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS)-based approach was deployed for mapping QTLs associated with AB resistance in...

Rainfall and temperature are unpredictable factors in Mediterranean environments
that result in irregular environmental conditions for crop growth, thus being a critical
source of uncertainty for farmers. This study applied divergent single-plant...

Breeding hybrids with maximum heterosis requires efficient cross-pollination and an improved male sterility system. Renewed efforts have been made to dissect the phenotypic variation and genetic basis of hybrid floral traits, although the potential...

Ascochyta blight (Didymella rabiei) is an economically important disease of chickpea in Morocco and other parts of the world. Knowledge about pathogen diversity and their aggressiveness in the Moroccan D. rabiei population can help breeders to...

Sustainable barley production will require access to diverse ex-situ conserved collections to develop varieties with high yields and capable of overcoming the challenges imposed by major abiotic and biotic stresses. This study aimed at searching...

Durum wheat (Triticum turgidum subsp. durum) is mostly grown in Mediterranean type environments, characterized by unpredictable rainfall amounts and distribution, heat stress, and prevalence of major diseases and pests, all to be exacerbated with...

Barley production worldwide is limited by several abiotic and biotic stresses and breeding of highly productive and adapted varieties is key to overcome these challenges. Leaf scald, caused by Rhynchosporium commune is a major disease of barley that...

Wheat quality parameters are complex traits predominantly influenced by the genetic background of varieties. A total of 802 spring bread wheat breeding lines were tested at Marchouch station, Morocco in 2018 aimed at mining invaluable QTNs for grain...

Drought is the principal abiotic stress which affect grain yield and quality of wheat at the global level, more particularly in West and South Asia, North Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa. To identify marker-trait associations (MTA) and putative genes...

Hybrid wheat breeding is one of the most promising technologies for further sustainable
yield increases. However, the cleistogamous nature of wheat displays a major bottleneck for a successful
hybrid breeding program. Thus, an optimized breeding...

Drought and high temperature are the major abiotic stresses for wheat production. The present study investigated the effect of drought and chronic heat stress on physiological parameters of durum wheat lines derived from interspecific crosses and...

During the 1970s, Tunisian durum wheat landraces were replaced progressively by modern cultivars. These landraces are nowadays maintained by smallholder farmers in some ecological niches and are threatened gradually by extinction resulting in the...

Landraces are a potential source of genetic diversity and provide useful genetic resources to cope with the current and future challenges in crop breeding. Afghanistan is located close to the centre of origin of hexaploid wheat. Therefore...

Broomrape weeds (Orobanche spp.) are root holoparasitic plants that cause serious damage to a range of legume crops in the Mediterranean and sub‐Saharan African regions. Grain yield of cultivated species of grass pea (Lathyrus sativus L.) is almost...

The productivity of durum wheat is affected by drought or/and high temperatures, challenges to be amplified by climate change. Pre‐breeding using wild relatives can supply useful traits for durum wheat improvement to adapt to major abiotic and biotic...

Barley is a crop of global significance with multiple uses (feed, food and beverages), but its productivity worldwide is limited by several abiotic and biotic stresses. Crop wild relatives, exclusively, Hordeum vulgare ssp. spontaneum and H. bulbosum...

Abiotic stress, especially drought and heat, affects cereal yields and wheat production worldwide, more particularly in West and South Asia, North Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa. The present study was carried out on 229 spring bread wheat (Triticum...

Durum wheat (Triticum turgidum L. var durum) is among the most important crops in the world. High and stable grain yield in diverse environments is the major objective in durum breeding programs. This trait is linked to the quantitative trait loci...

Wheat breeding has significantly contributed
to enhancing yield potential and stability.
However, one of the most promising technologies for
further sustainable yield increases, hybrid wheat, is
still limited due to lack of well-established heterotic...

Over the past 70 years, the world has witnessed extraordinary growth in crop productivity, enabled by a suite of technological advances, including higher yielding crop varieties, improved farm management, synthetic agrochemicals, and agricultural...

Undomesticated wild species, crop wild relatives, and landraces represent sources of variation for wheat improvement to address challenges from climate change and the growing human population. Here, we study 56,342 domesticated hexaploid, 18,946...

The conservation and effective use of crop genetic diversity are crucial to overcome challenges related to human nutrition and agricultural sustainability. Farmers’ traditional varieties (“landraces”) are major sources of genetic variation. The...

Durum wheat is an important crop for the human diet and its consumption is gaining popularity. In order to ensure that durum wheat production maintains the pace with the increase in demand, it is necessary to raise productivity by approximately 1.5%...

Seed traits of bread wheat, including the seed size that is considered to be associated with early vigor of the crop and end-use quality, are valuable to farmers and breeders. In this study, a collection of 789 bread wheat landraces, held in-trust at...

Vapor pressure deficit (VPD) is one of the critical variables that drives evapotranspiration, and is of fundamental importance in crop physiology and modeling in the face of climate change. Unfortunately, direct records of atmospheric moisture are...

Tan spot (TS) and Septoria nodorum blotch (SNB) induced by Pyrenophora tritici-repentis and Parastagonospora nodorum, respectively, cause significant yield losses and adversely affect grain quality. The objectives of this study were to decipher the...

Tunisia, being part of the secondary center of diversity for durum wheat, has rich unexploited landraces that are being continuously lost and replaced by high yielding modern cultivars. This study aimed to investigate the genetic diversity and...

Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is the most important cereal crop in Tunisia, nonetheless production is highly affected by drought and diseases mainly Septoria tritici blotch (STB) caused by Zymoseptoria tritici (Roberge ex Desm.) Quaedvl. & Crous...

Genebanks are responsible for collecting, maintaining, characterizing, documenting, and distributing plant genetic resources for research, education, and breeding purposes. The rationale for requests of plant materials varies highly from areas of...

The present paper studied the performance of the stable isotope signatures of carbon (δ13C), nitrogen (δ15N) and oxygen (δ18O) in plants when used to assess early vigour and grain yield (GY) in durum wheat growing under mild and moderate...

Comparative performance of the stable isotope signatures of carbon, nitrogen and oxygen in assessing early vigour and grain yield in durum wheat – CORRIGENDUM