Projects

January 17, 2008

• Assessment of the importance of gene flow between wild and domesticated populations in Phaseolus vulgaris (common bean) in Mexico and Vigna unguiculata (cowpea) in Eastern Africa
  • Common bean
    • Asymmetry of gene flow between wild and domesticated types:
      • Papa and Gepts 2004
  • Spatial distances to detect gene flow:
    • Payró de la Cruz et al. 2005
  • Intra-genomic distances to detect gene flow:
    • Papa et al. 2005
  • Cowpea
    • Relationship between wild and domesticated cowpea in different regions of Africa
      • Coulibaly et al. 2002
      • Ba et al. 2004
• Isolation of genes for domestication in common bean:
  • Growth habit: determinacy (fin):
    • identification of a candidate gene
      • Kwak et al. 2008
    • patterns of genetic diversity around the fin locus as a consequence of selection and demographic events
  • Seed size (Phs):
    • fine-mapping around this seed protein locus
  • Pod dehiscence (St): requires additional funding
    
• Evolution of the Arcelin - Phytohemagglutinin - alpha-Amylase inhibitor (APA) gene family in Phaseolus:
  • Development of BAC libraries (see below)
  • Sequencing of BAC clones spanning the APA locus:
    • Kami et al. 2006
• Dynamics of landrace and wild populations of crop plants
  • Landraces of common bean and farmer management
    • Evolutionary dynamics and farmers' roles:
      • Zizumbo et al. 2005
  • Wild corn (teosinte) populations in Mexico
  • Landrace populations of pepper (Capsicum annuum) in Mexico
    
• Fingerprinting of the common bean germplasm:
  • Use of AFLP and microsatellite markers
    • Origin of the patented yellow bean Enola:
      • Pallottini et al. 2004

• Development of the core map for common bean
  • Freyre et al. 1998
  • Kelly et al. 2003
  • Blair et al. 2003
• Conversion of RFLP markers into sequence-tagged-sites (STS)
• Development of BAC libraries for Phaseolus spp
  • Kami et al. 2006

• Introduction of yield genes from wild beans:
  • Performance of domesticated x wild bean crosses
  • QTL analysis of the same