(syn.- s.s.) is one of the most important tropical forages that transformed livestock industries in Australia and South America. Farmers in Africa are increasingly interested in growing to support the burgeoning livestock business, but the lack of cultivars adapted to African environments has been a major challenge. Therefore, this study examines genetic diversity of Tanzanian accessions to provide essential information for establishing a breeding program in Africa. A total of 36 historical accessions initially collected from Tanzania in 1985 were analyzed for genetic variation using 24 SSR markers along with six South American commercial cultivars. These markers detected 407 alleles in the 36 Tanzania accessions and 6 commercial cultivars. Markers were highly informative with an average polymorphic information content of 0.79. The analysis of molecular variance revealed high genetic variation within individual accessions in a species (92%), fixation index of 0.05 and gene flow estimate of 4.77 showed a low genetic differentiation and a high level of gene flow among populations. An unweighted neighbor-joining tree grouped the 36 accessions and six commercial cultivars into three main clusters. The clustering of test accessions did not follow geographical origin. Similarly, population structure analysis grouped the 42 tested genotypes into three major gene pools. The results showed the (A. Rich.) Stapf population has the highest genetic diversity ( = 0.94) with high utility in the breeding and conservation program. As the accessions analyzed in this study represented only 3 of 31 regions of Tanzania, further collection and characterization of materials from wider geographical areas are necessary to comprehend the whole diversity in Tanzania.

The knowledge about the level of genetic diversity and population structure in natural populations of L. is a primary step in breeding programs for development of new cultivars with higher artemisinin level and better quality of secondary metabolites composition. We used PCR-based "retrotransposon-microsatellite amplified polymorphisms" (REMAPs) to study insertional polymorphism in genome to assess genetic variability and population structure in a collection of 118 accessions collected from north and northwest of Iran. Twenty-five primer combinations of 10 retrotransposon and seven ISSR primers amplified a total of 693 clear and unambiguous fragments in the studied accessions. The average number of bands, polymorphic bands, polymorphism, effective number of alleles, Shannon's information index and expected heterozygosity were 27.72, 24.76, 88.14%, 1.47, 0.42 and 0.28, respectively. The analysis of molecular variance revealed high genetic variation present within sampled geographical regions. Distance-based cluster analysis assigned the studied accessions into four clusters according to their geographical origin, which were also confirmed by principal coordinate analysis. In model-based Bayesian clustering, the maximum value of Δ was obtained when the collection of 118 assayed accessions assigned into two subgroups ( = 2). The results showed the high genetic variation in the collection of Iranian sweet wormwood which revealed by REMAP markers indicating the reliability and efficiency of this marker system for analysis of genetic diversity and population structure of .

(L.) Mansf. is a medically important ginger species of the family Zingiberaceae but its genomic information on molecular phylogeny and identification is scarce. In this work, the chloroplast genome of was sequenced, characterized and compared to the other Zingiberaceae species to provide chloroplast genetic resources and to determine its phylogenetic position in the family. The chloroplast genome of was 163,817 bp in length and consisted of a large single-copy (LSC) region of 88,302 bp, a small single-copy (SSC) region of 16,023 bp and a pair of inverted repeats (IRA and IRB) of 29,746 bp each. The chloroplast genome contained 113 unique genes, including 79 protein-coding genes, 30 transfer RNA (tRNA) genes and four ribosomal RNA (rRNA) genes. Several genes had atypical start codons, while most amino acids exhibited biased usage of synonymous codons. Comparative analyses with various chloroplast genomes of Zingiberaceae taxa revealed several highly variable regions (, , , , and ) in the LSC and SSC regions in the chloroplast genome of that could be utilized as molecular markers for DNA barcoding and species delimitation. Phylogenetic analyses based on shared protein-coding genes revealed that formed a distinct lineage with Mood & L.M.Prince, in a subclade that also contained the genera and . These findings constitute the first chloroplast genome information of that could be a reference for phylogenetic analysis and identification of genus within the Zingiberaceae family.

Some plant lineages remain within the same biome over time (biome conservatism), whereas others seem to adapt more easily to new biomes. The c. 398 species (14 genera) of subfamily Cercidoideae (Leguminosae or Fabaceae) are found in many biomes around the world, particularly in the tropical regions of South America, Asia and Africa, and display a variety of growth forms (small trees, shrubs, lianas and herbaceous perennials). Species distribution maps derived from cleaned occurrence records were compiled and compared with existing biome maps and with the literature to assign species to biomes. Rainforest (144 species), succulent (44 species), savanna (36 species), and temperate (10 species) biomes were found to be important in describing the global distribution of Cercidoideae, with many species occurring in more than one biome. Two phylogenetically isolated species-poor temperate () and succulent () biome lineages are sister to two broadly distributed species-rich tropical clades. Ancestral state reconstructions on a time-calibrated phylogeny suggest biome shifts occurred throughout the evolutionary history of the subfamily, with shifts between the succulent and rainforest biomes, from the rainforest to savanna, from the succulent to savanna biome, and one early occurring shift into (or from) the temperate biome. Of the 26 inferred shifts in biome, three are closely associated with a shift from the ancestral tree/shrub growth form to a liana or herbaceous perennial habit. Only three of the 13 inferred transcontinental dispersal events are associated with biome shifts. Overall, we find that biome shifts tend to occur within the same continent and that dispersals to new continents tend to occur within the same biome, but that nonetheless the biome-conserved and biogeographically structured Cercidoideae have been able to adapt to different environments through time.