Search results for "Sorghum bicolor"
showing 3 items of 3 documents
Cropping system dynamics, climate variability, and seed losses among East African smallholder farmers: a retrospective survey.
2014
Abstract Climate variability directly affects traditional low input and rain-fed farming systems, but few studies have paid attention retrospectively to the cropping system’s ability to mitigate climate risk. This study analyzes the impacts of rainfall variability on farmers’ seed variety losses over time, considering changes in smallholder farming systems. The cropping system dynamics, in favoring maize at the expense of sorghum and pearl millet, have induced an increasing risk of seed loss during drought. Combining ecological anthropology and climatology, a retrospective survey asking farmers about the period 1961–2006 was carried out at three altitudinal levels (750, 950, and 1100 m) on …
Expression of Sorghum bicolor ammonium transporters upon colonization with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi
2012
Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) are important plant symbionts, trading mineral nutrients beyond the reach of roots, in particular ammonium, in exchange to their host’s photosynthetic products. Sorghum bicolor is one of the world's leading cereal crops, providing food, fibre and fuel across a range of environments and production systems. It has a particular ability to be productive even under strongly adverse conditions, tolerating much more severe drought than most other grain crops. As its genome has recently been sequenced, we have characterized all eight members of the ammonium transporter (AMT) family and studied their expression in different tissues of field-grown plants. While most…