Vincent Lebot

TL;DR: The diversity and diversification of taro accessions from nineteen countries in Asia, the Pacific, Africa and America were investigated, with the highest genetic diversity and number of private alleles in Asian accessions, mainly from India.

TL;DR: It is confirmed that different taro cultivars have different drought avoidance and tolerance strategies to cope with water scarcity and three local cultivars showed high yield stability and could be considered as suitable parents for breeding programs.

TL;DR: The taro plants with enhanced WUE exhibited low Δ13C and δ15N values as a physiological response to drought stress, which has developed new tools that could be used in further research on taro response to environmental stresses.

TL;DR: The δ15N values indicated a generalised N reallocation between whole-plant organs under drought, as a physiological integrator of response to environmental stress, which can aid the selection of traits to be used in sweet potato breeding programs, to adapt this crop to climate change.

TL;DR: Results indicated that hybrids tolerant to taro leaf blight, developed by Hawaii, Papua New Guinea and Samoa breeding programmes outperformed local cultivars in most locations, but several elite cultivars from SE Asia, also tolerant to TLB, outperformed improved hybrids in four countries and in one country none of the introductions performed better than the local cultivar.