Cassava brown streak disease (CBSD) is a rapidly spreading viral disease that affects a major food security crop in sub-Saharan Africa. Currently, there are several proposed management interventions to minimize loss in infected fields. Field-scale data comparing the effectiveness of these interventions individually and in combination are limited and expensive to collect. Using a stochastic epidemiological model for the spread and management of CBSD in individual fields, we simulate the effectiveness of a range of management interventions. Specifically we compare the removal of diseased plants by roguing, preferential selection of planting material, deployment of virus-free 'clean seed' and pesticide on crop yield and disease status of individual fields with varying levels of whitefly density crops under low and high disease pressure. We examine management interventions for sustainable production of planting material in clean seed systems and how to improve survey protocols to identify the presence of CBSD in a field or quantify the within-field prevalence of CBSD. We also propose guidelines for practical, actionable recommendations for the deployment of management strategies in regions of sub-Saharan Africa under different disease and whitefly pressure.

Ustilago maydis is a smut fungus that infects all aerial maize organs, namely, seedling leaves, tassels, and ears. In all organs, tumors are formed by inducing hypertrophy and hyperplasia in actively dividing cells; however, the vast differences in cell types and developmental stages for different parts of the plant requires that U. maydis have both general and organ-specific strategies for infecting maize. In this review, we summarize how the maize–U. maydis interaction can be studied using mutant U. maydis strains to better understand how individual effectors contribute to this interaction, either through general or specific expression in a cell type, tissue, or organ. We also examine how male sterile maize mutants that do not support tumor formation can be used to explore key features of the maize anthers that are required for successful infection. Finally, we discuss key unanswered questions about the maize–U. maydis interaction and how new technologies can potentially be used to answer them.

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A library-friendly approach to generate new scaffolds is decisive for the development of molecular probes, drug like molecules and preclinical entities. Here, we present the design and synthesis of novel heterocycles with spiro-2,6-dioxopiperazine and spiro-2,6-pyrazine scaffolds through a three-component reaction using various amino acids, ketones, and isocyanides. Screening of select compounds over fifty CNS receptors including G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs), ion channels, transporters, and enzymes through the NIMH psychoactive drug screening program indicated that a novel spiro-2,6-dioxopyrazine scaffold, UVM147, displays high binding affinity at sigma-1 (σ 1 ) receptor in the nanomolar range. In addition, molecular docking of UVM147 at the human σ 1 receptor have shown that it resides in the same binding site that was occupied by the ligand 4-IBP used to obtain a crystal structure of the human sigma −1 (σ 1 ) receptor.