What is it about?
Guava is known as a “super fruit” due to its high polyphenolic and multivitamin content. Currently its cultivation is threatened by the root-knot nematode, a pathogen that causes loss of fruit productivity and quality. In this work we have used a combination of genomic approaches to locate genes that confer natural resistance to this pathogen.
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Photo by Toushif Alam on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Controlling the root-knot pathogen by chemical control in guava is not an alternative due to environmental and human health concerns. The identification and use of the natural plant resistance genes coming from a wild guava species we found in our work, is the most environmentally and economically beneficial alternative for sustainable guava production.
Perspectives
Tropical fruit tree species like guava constitute a yet untapped supply of outstanding diversity of taste and nutritional value, with scarce or no genomic resources to tackle the challenges arising in modern breeding. It was a privilege to develop this pioneering applied genomics work with the guava fruit. I hope that this will stimulate further research not only with guava but also with the many still unexplored tropical fruit that exist in the world.
Dario Grattapaglia
EMBRAPA Brazilian Corporation of Agricultural Research
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Genetic associations with resistance to Meloidogyne enterolobii in guava (Psidium sp.) using cross-genera SNPs and comparative genomics to Eucalyptus highlight evolutionary conservation across the Myrtaceae, PLoS ONE, November 2022, PLOS,
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0273959.
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