Journal of Genetics and Genomes

Polymerase chain reaction is the most commonly used nucleic acid amplification for the diagnosis of several infectious and non-infectious diseases of animal and humans. But, it requires high expensive instrumentation for amplification and analysis. There are several isothermal amplification methods, such as Nucleic Acid Sequence Based Amplification (NASBA), Strand Displacement Amplification (SDA), Isothermal Multiple Displacement Amplification (IMDA), Rolling Circle Amplification (RCA), Helicase-Dependent Amplification (HDA), Single Primer Isothermal Amplification (SPIA), signal-mediated amplification of RNA technology, circular helicase dependent amplification, Recombinase Polymerase Amplification (RPA), Polymerase Spiral Reaction (PSR) and Loop-mediated Isothermal Amplification (LAMP). These methods can be amplified at a constant temperature by a simple water bath or heating block without use of high cost equipment’s like thermal cyclers and detection systems. The isothermal methods have been used for the detection of nucleic acids, proteins, enzymes and cancer cells. In this article, we reviewed the important isothermal amplification techniques and their applications in diagnosis and molecular biology.

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is one of the most important pulse crops contributing a huge amount of protein to the human diet in Ethiopia. Though several improved varieties were released by research centers farmers still depend on low yielding indigenous crop varieties. Participatory variety selection is one of the methods used to evaluate varieties through involvement of users. The participatory chickpea variety selection was conducted during 2016/47 cropping season at konta and Tocha districts. Six varieties with were laid out in Randomized complete block design in three replications on model farmer field (grandmother trial) and single replication on farmer’s field (mother trial). Grain yield and farmer selection data were collected and analysed. From all the tested varieties, variety Teketay was superior in grain yield (3204.3 kg ha-1) and (2449.9 kg ha-1) at konta and Tocha, respectively. Whereas, the lowest grain yield was obtained from kutaye (1533.1 kg ha-1) variety at Tocha and (510.5 kg ha-1) at konta districts. In case of farmer preference Teketay score higher mean value (4.45) followed by Dalota (4.09) and least mean value was recorded from variety kutaye (3.23). Therefore, the varieties Teketay, Dalota and Minjar selected by researcher and farmer data were recommended for production in these areas.