Genetic diversity in tef [Eragrostis tef (Zucc.) Trotter]

Abstract

Tef [Eragrostis tef (Zucc.) Trotter] is a cereal crop resilient to adverse climatic and soil conditions, and possessing desirable storage properties. Although tef provides high quality food and grows under marginal conditions unsuitable for other cereals, it is considered to be an orphan crop because it has benefited little from genetic improvement. Hence, unlike other cereals such as maize and wheat, the productivity of tef is extremely low. In spite of the low productivity, tef is widely cultivated by over six million small-scale farmers in Ethiopia where it is annually grown on more than three million hectares of land, accounting for over 30% of the total cereal acreage. Tef, a tetraploid with 40 chromosomes (2n = 4x = 40), belongs to the family Poaceae and, together with finger millet (Eleusine coracana Gaerth.), to the subfamily Chloridoideae. It was originated and domesticated in Ethiopia. There are about 350 Eragrostis species of which E. tef is the only species cultivated for human consumption. At the present time, the gene bank in Ethiopia holds over five thousand tef accessions collected from geographical regions diverse in terms of climate and elevation. These germplasm accessions appear to have huge variability with regard to key agronomic and nutritional traits. In order to properly utilize the variability in developing new tef cultivars, various techniques have been implemented to catalog the extent and unravel the patterns of genetic diversity. In this review, we show some recent initiatives investigating the diversity of tef using genomics, transcriptomics and proteomics and discuss the prospect of these efforts in providing molecular resources that can aid modern tef breeding.

Weed-Competitive Ability of Teff (Eragrostis tef (Zucc.) Trotter) Varieties

“…Plant height of a single variety, however, is spatiotemporally variable depending on the availability of water, nutrients, and sunlight, and most commonly in teff production a good supply of water, nutrients and sunlight results in taller plants and longer panicles for a cultivar. It is also very common to observe late-maturing varieties having taller plants than early-maturing varieties [4,5,17,26,28]. Not only genotypic variability, but also agronomic management practices of cereal crops have a conspicuous effect on plant height and panicle length [23].…”

“…Teff has a broad phenotypic and genetic diversity [3][4][5]. It shows a high diversity at different development stages in terms of its morphological, physiological, and phenological traits.…”

“…It shows a high diversity at different development stages in terms of its morphological, physiological, and phenological traits. Most of the varieties differ widely in seed color (which determines the consumer preference), seed emergence, panicle type, panicle length, tillering potential, plant height, leaf area, flowering, maturity, lodging potential and overall dry weight [3][4][5]. These traits also enable it to adapt to various moisture conditions, so that it can perform well under both drought and water-logged conditions [4,5].…”

Genetic variation and trait association of tef [Eragrostis tef (Zucc.) Trotter] evaluated under optimal and moisture stressed environments

“…Crop production in Ethiopia is rainfall-dependent with low productivity due to variable and erratic rainfall. Tef is a major crop grown across wide agroecologies in Ethiopia, under both optimal and moisture stressed conditions (Assefa et al, 2015). The levels of yield reductions due to moisture stress measured in these traits indicated the importance of developing moisture stress tolerant tef varieties, which could contribute to the sustainable production of tef in Ethiopia.…”

Gene action controlling yield and yield‐related traits among tef (Eragrostis tef [Zucc.] Trotter) populations under drought‐stressed and nonstressed conditions

“…Breeding for lodging tolerance is one of the main goals of tef improvement. However, there is limited useful natural variability of the crop for this trait (Assefa et al., , ). Negative SCA effects are in a desirable direction for lodging tolerance, that is towards a reduced lodging index.…”