What is it about?
Although yam is a very important crop with the potential to address future food insecurity resulting from challenges due to climate change and increasing world population, its potential has largely remained unexploited in East Africa. Over the years, yam production in Uganda has been at a subsistence level, with farmers relying on unimproved landraces that are low-yielding and susceptible disease. In terms of research attention, yam is an “orphan” crop within the East African region despite its enormous potential. Currently, there is no effective yam breeding program in Uganda which hinders systematic improvement of the crop. For efficient and effective yam improvement to take place in Uganda, there is a need for a comprehensive assessment of existing local and introduced germplasm, farmers’ trait preferences and yam production challenges. In addition, crop improvement requires the utilization of existing molecular tools and genetic resources available worldwide.
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Why is it important?
It is important to note that the significant genetic diversity recorded among yam germplasm sourced from different geographical origins is valuable information for a variety of purposes, including the selection of parents for hybridization and development of new, improved yam varieties for target traits of interest, all of which contribute to the yam improvement program in Uganda. Also, the possibility of sharing genotypes with comparable genetic traits across countries/breeding programs for further development and release to farmers for use in agricultural production is very important. Furthermore, evaluating certain features of interest throughout the whole germplasm pool may prove to be quite beneficial. The representativeness of the current diversity in this germplasm, in addition, may be used to drive genotype selection in a training population for genomic prediction research. The outcome of this present study has revealed that there is no significant variation between germplasm sourced from Uganda, Ghana and Nigeria.
Perspectives
Writing this article was a great pleasure as it has co-authors with whom I have had long-standing collaborations. This article also lead to the identification of yam diversity in Uganda and ultimately to greater involvement in establishing a yam breeding program in Uganda
Dr Emmanuel AMPONSAH ADJEI
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Genetic diversity and population structure of Uganda’s yam (Dioscorea spp.) genetic resource based on DArTseq, PLOS One, February 2023, PLOS,
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0277537.
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