A RELEVANT project dubbed “Fruit Quality Improvement in ‘Carabao’ Mango through Quantitative Trait Loci (QTL) Identification for Scab and Stem-end Rot Resistance by Genotyping-By-Sequencing (GBS) and Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS)” was recently approved to evaluate the different Philippine mango varieties and strains for resistance to stem-end rot and scab diseases.
The three-year project was launched by the Philippine Council for Agriculture, Aquatic and Natural Resources Research and Development of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST-PCAARRD).
It said the stem-end rot, caused by fungi Cytosphaera mangiferae, Dothiorella dominicana, Botryodiplodia theobromae and Lasiodiplodia theobromae, is a major problem that limits the storage and shelf-life of mango fruits, where dark, circular lesions develop slowly from the stem end as the fruit ripens after harvest.
While the mango scab, on the other hand, is caused by the fungal pathogen, Elsinoë mangiferae.
The disease starts as small dark brown or grey spots on the underside of leaves or fruit, which then enlarges and darkens over time.
It usually affects young and mature fruits, the twigs, the leaves and the blossom spikes. Severely affected fruits will usually fall off while new shoots may defoliate.
These issues prompted the project team to identify the sources of resistance in mango germplasm that can be used in the improvement of the “Carabao” mango variety.
Dr. Edward A. Barlaan of the University of Southern Mindanao (USM) leads the project, which will also develop molecular markers and establish a GBS-generated sequence database associated with resistance to the said diseases.
An online inception meeting was recently held to formally launch the implementation of the project.
Meanwhile, a paper, which will serve as a baseline on creating the bilingual knowledge taxonomy for the agriculture, aquatic, and natural resources (AANR) sector, was also recently presented in another online conference.
Titled “Building a Filipino-English bilingual knowledge taxonomy using clustering,” the paper won as Best Paper in the recently held 2020 Computing Society of the Philippines-Information and Computing Education Conference (CSP-ICE).
Presented by information systems analyst Rikki Lee Mendiola, the paper was based on the project dubbed “Enhancing the Knowledge Management for Agriculture, Aquatic and Natural Resources (KM4AANR) System,” which was likewise funded by the DOST-PCAARRD.
The paper was co-authored by Catherine Bucu-Flores of the DOST-PCAARRD and Professor Concepcion L. Khan of the UPLB Institute of Computer Science, who is also the leader of the said project.
The paper will serve as a baseline work on creating the bilingual knowledge taxonomy for AANR knowledge artefacts to improve the KM4AANR’s search engine.
Knowledge taxonomy refers to the structure of available knowledge created for efficient storage, retrieval, and sharing across organizations.
Using an English-Filipino or bilingual mode, the search engine will be able to process query in any of the two languages and come up with relevant results even if most of the content in the current database are in English.
The search engine is also part of a proposed knowledge sharing system for mainstreaming local AANR knowledge to the R&D community and the general public./PN
