Water Yam (water + yam)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Screening of Water Yam (Dioscorea alata L.) Genotypes for Reactions to Viruses in Nigeria

JOURNAL OF PHYTOPATHOLOGY, Issue 11-12 2006
B. O. Odu
Abstract Studies were made to identify sources of resistance to yam viruses in Dioscorea alata. Forty genotypes of D. alata were evaluated in both the field and in the screenhouse for reactions to the yam viruses: Yam mosaic virus (YMV), genus Potyvirus; Dioscorea alata virus (DAV), genus Potyvirus; Cucumber mosaic virus (CMV), genus Cucumovirus; and Dioscorea alata bacilliform virus (DaBV), genus Badnavirus. The D. alata genotypes were planted in the field and subsequently scored for virus symptom severity. All the genotypes were also planted in an insect-proofed screenhouse, and challenged mechanically and by vectors for susceptibility to each of the viruses. Analysis of variance (anova) of the symptom severity scores showed that the genotypes responded differently (P < 0.01) to virus disease in the field. Field evaluation also showed that TDa 291 (a landrace genotype from Puerto Rico), TDa 87/01091, TDa 96-4, TDa 95-163 and TDa 289 from Nigeria, and TDa 95-25 (a landrace genotype from Ghana), had a low virus disease symptom rating. Overall screening results showed that two D. alata genotypes (TDa 289 and TDa 291) are good sources of resistance to YMV, DAV and CMV, and that they are tolerant to DaBV. [source]


Anti-Fenton reaction activity of three taxa of water yam (Dioscorea alata L.)

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF FOOD SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY, Issue 9 2007
Tsu-Shing Wang
Summary In the present study, we compared the anti-Fenton reaction activity of three taxa of water yam (Dioscorea alata L.): DS2, TN2 and PSY [D. alata L. var. purpurea (Roxb.) M. Pouch]. Anti-Fenton reaction activity was evaluated by measuring the damage inflicted on calf thymus DNA by copper ions combined with hydrogen peroxide with the use of an ethidium bromide binding assay and agarose gel electrophoresis. We found that extracts of tuber pulp from all three taxa of yam had significant anti-Fenton reaction activity. The protection pattern of the three tuber pulp extracts was similar to that of EDTA, a typical divalent metal ion chelator, which displayed a significant protection lag-phase. With the use of thin-layer chromatography, we found that a common, major ansialdehyde-sulphuric acid stained spot (possibly a polysaccharide mucilage) with an Rf of 0.09 may be the most likely contributor to the anti-Fenton reaction activities of the yam tuber extracts investigated. The present study identifies the mechanism of the health benefit of the Dioscorea family. The copper-chelating and absorbing capability of yam tuber pulp extracts may be useful in functional screening. [source]


Resistance in water yam (Dioscorea alata) cultivars in the French West Indies to anthracnose disease based on tissue culture-derived whole-plant assay

PLANT PATHOLOGY, Issue 5 2006
T. J. Onyeka
Reactions of 60 water yam (Dioscorea alata) cultivars to three isolates of the yam anthracnose fungal pathogen (Colletotrichum gloeosporioides) were evaluated using tissue culture-derived whole-plant assay. Three disease parameters: single score on a scale of 0,6 at the seventh day after inoculation (SD7); area under the disease progress curve (AUDPC); and disease progress rate (Rd) were compared, and cultivars were classified into disease-response groups using a rank-sum method based on AUDPC scores for the two most virulent isolates. A wide range of variation in resistance of the D. alata cultivars, and significant effects of pathogen isolate and isolate,cultivar interactions, were observed for all disease parameters. The three disease parameters were positively correlated; however, four cultivars showed great dispersions from the regression lines for comparisons of SD7 with the multiple assessments based AUDPC and Rd. The 60 cultivars were separated into resistant (n = 12), moderately resistant (n = 19), moderately susceptible (n = 18) and susceptible (n = 11) groups. The potential of the tissue culture-derived whole-plant assay to resistance breeding programmes and further understanding of the yam anthracnose pathosystem is discussed. [source]