News

USA: New research reveals mutation responsible for disease resistance in cassava

Cassava
United States
Published Jul 21, 2022

Tridge summary

Groundbreaking research led by Rebecca Bart, PhD, associate member, Nigel Taylor, PhD, associate member, Dorothy King, distinguished investigator, Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, and their collaborators at ETH Zurich, University of California Los Angeles, and the National Crops Resources Research Institute (NaCRRI) in Uganda, has identified a genetic mutation that confers resistance to cassava mosaic disease (CMD).

Original content

Their findings have significant implications for improving cassava yield and sustaining farmer income in the face of a widespread disease, and their discovery could also shed light on disease resistance in other major crops. This seminal work, Mutations in DNA polymerase δ subunit 1 co-segregate with CMD2-type resistance to cassava mosaic geminiviruses, was recently published in the scientific journal Nature Communications. Farmers in Africa, India, and Southeast Asia – some of the largest cassava-producing regions in the world – too often suffer huge yield losses due to CMD. CMD-infected plants are stunted and do not fully develop the storage roots that are used for food. Several years ago, Taylor’s team unexpectedly discovered plants in the field that had lost resistance to CMD, thus triggering the present investigation into the genetic basis for resilience to the virus. “If CMD resistance hadn’t mysteriously been lost,” describes Bart, “we may never have gone after this ...
Source: Hortidaily
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