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This article, published in Frontiers in Genetics, discusses the use of genomics in improving crop plants for adaptation to marginal environments. The authors highlight the challenges of climate change and the need for sustainable agricultural practices to meet future food security demands. They emphasize the importance of genetic advancements and state-of-the-art findings in enhancing crop resilience and adaptation. The article presents various studies on crop plants, including wheat, cotton, Brassica oleracea, and passion fruits, that demonstrate the potential of genomics in improving crop tolerance to abiotic and biotic stresses. The authors also discuss the importance of genomic selection in breeding programs and the need for a comprehensive strategy to achieve genetic gains in crop varieties for marginal environments. [Extracted from the article]

Males and females are subjected to distinct kinds of selection pressures, often leading to the evolution of sex‐specific genetic architecture, an example being sex‐specific dominance. Sex‐specific dominance reversals (SSDRs), where alleles at sexually antagonistic loci are at least partially dominant in the sex they benefit, have been documented in Atlantic salmon, rainbow trout, and seed beetles. Another interesting feature of many sexually reproducing organisms is the asymmetric inheritance pattern of X chromosomes, which often leads to distinct evolutionary outcomes on X chromosomes compared to autosomes. Examples include the higher efficacy of sexually concordant selection on X chromosomes, and X chromosomes being more conducive to the maintenance of sexually antagonistic polymorphisms under certain conditions. Immunocompetence is a trait that has been extensively investigated for sexual dimorphism with growing evidence for sex‐specific or sexually antagonistic variation. X chromosomes have been shown to harbor substantial immunity‐related genetic variation in the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. Here, using interpopulation crosses and cytogenetic cloning, we investigated sex‐specific dominance and the role of the X chromosome in improved postinfection survivorship of laboratory populations of D. melanogaster selected against pathogenic challenge by Pseudomonas entomophila. We could not detect any contribution of the X chromosome to the evolved immunocompetence of our selected populations, as well as to within‐population variation in immunocompetence. However, we found strong evidence of sex‐specific dominance related to surviving bacterial infection. Our results indicate that alleles that confer a survival advantage to the selected populations are, on average, partially dominant in females but partially recessive in males. This could also imply an SSDR for overall fitness, given the putative evidence for sexually antagonistic selection affecting immunocompetence in Drosophila melanogaster. We also highlight sex‐specific dominance as a potential mechanism of sex differences in immunocompetence, with population‐level sex differences primarily driven by sex differences in heterozygotes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mass transfer coefficients and Sherwood numbers for catalyzed fluid cracking catalyst particles were measured and computed in a two-dimensional (2-D) bubbling fluidized bed, with ozone decomposition reaction. The measured and computed Sherwood numbers, using 3- and 2-D kinetic theory based computational fluid dynamics simulations, were of the order of 10−6-10−2. The low Sherwood numbers were in reasonable agreement with the literature data for small particles, at low Reynolds numbers. The computational fluid dynamics simulations showed that it is possible to compute conversions in fluidized bed reactors without using the conventional model with empirical mass transfer coefficients. © 2011 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 2012 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]