Despite its importance in providing income and food for smallholder farmers, fodder for livestock, and improving soil fertility through biological nitrogen fixation, groundnut yields are lowest on farmers’ fields in Sub-Saharan Africa due to biotic and abiotic constraints. Foliar fungal diseases account for over 80% reduction in groundnut productivity in some parts of Ghana. Unfortunately, chemical control of these foliar diseases has not yielded the desired results. Meanwhile, advances in phenotyping for disease tolerance in other crops have established a strong relationship between stay-green trait and foliar disease tolerance. However, this relationship has not been explored in groundnut. This study was designed to determine the genetic control of the stay-green trait and its relationship with leaf spot disease severity in groundnut. Twenty-five advanced groundnut breeding lines with varying degrees of tolerance for leaf spot tolerance were evaluated under diseased and disease-free conditions, after which four were selected for genetic studies. Results showed significant (p<0.001) differences among the genotypes for early leaf spot (ELS), late leaf spot (LLS), leaf area under greenness (LAUG), SPAD chlorophyll meter readings (SCMR), and yield traits. Leaf spot diseases caused 4.95 t·ha⁻¹ (64.54%) pod yield reduction in CHINESE, the widely cultivated groundnut variety in Ghana. There was a strong correlation between LAUG and ELS (r = 0.82, p<0.001) and LLS (r = 0.63, p<0.001), and genotypes that were stay-green had tolerance to both diseases. Stay-green trait in groundnut was detected to be under the control of a single recessive gene and hence may be used to select for ELS and LLS resistance.

Forty common bean accessions of multiple genetic background trait attribution regarding drought tolerance were selected based on mean yield performance from an earlier field test evaluation conducted using augmented RCBD. The various bean genotypes were further evaluated with phosphorus and water treatment interactions at two different levels for each factor. The experiment was conducted in a 2 × 2 × 40 factorial using RCBD with three replications under screen-house conditions at the CSIR-Crops Research Institute, Kumasi-Ghana. The objective was to select drought- and low phosphorus-tolerant common bean genotypes; which are suitable for tropical climatic conditions. The results showed that common bean with drought and heat trait tolerance survived, developed flowers and podded with seeds to physiological maturity, whilst genotypes with no heat trait tolerance had impaired reproductive structural development and growth disruption; thus, flowers could not develop into pods with seeds. This reproductive developmental anomaly was due to prevailing average daytime and nighttime high temperatures of 35.45 °C and 29.95 °C, respectively, recorded during the growth period, which reduced pollen fertility. Among the 478 experimental bean plants (two plants were missing) analyzed, 141 (29.5%) did not flower, 168 (35.18%) had their pods dropped whilst 99 (20.7%) podded with seeds to achieve physiological maturity. The podded-seed bean genotypes were of the SEF-line pedigrees, which were shown to be heat and drought-tolerant. Meanwhile, bean accessions with SMC, SMN and SMR code prefixes did not pod into seed despite possessing drought-tolerant traits. The effects of interactions between phosphorus and water treatments on the root characteristics of drought-tolerant common bean were as follows: root length, root surface area, average root diameter and root volume growth extensions doubled dimensionally under optimum conditions (P₂W₂) compared to stressed conditions (P₁W₁). The results from the present study identified four SEF-bean genotypes, namely, SEF15, SEF 47, SEF 60 and SEF 62, as superior yield performers, even under low soil phosphorus and in extreme high temperature conditions. Therefore, breeding for the selection of drought- and low-P-tolerant common bean for tropical agro-ecological environments must also consider concomitant heat stress tolerance.

Twenty-two open-pollinated varieties (OPVs) of pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum) genotypes were tested in two locations for three seasons in Ghana to estimate the magnitude of genetic variability, heritability, and stability for grain yield and related traits and grain micronutrients among the varieties. General analysis of variance within and across locations and years revealed very highly significant variability ( $p<0.01$ ) among the genotypes. The additive main effects and multiplicative interaction (AMMI) analyses revealed significant genotype × environment interaction (GEI) that influenced the relative ranking of genotypes across the environments. Genotypic variance ( ${\sigma }^{2}g$ ) contributed a greater proportion of the phenotypic variance (σ2p) for plant height (530.31) and grain Fe content (34.72). Broad-sense heritability ( $h_{bs}^2$ ) varied widely from 24.82% for grain yield to 77.53% in days to flower. Phenotypic coefficient of variation (PCV) was higher than genotypic coefficient of variation (GCV) for all traits, indicating strong play of environment on trait expressions. 11 out of the 22 OPVs were stable for grain yield and micronutrients across environments for the three-year period and included GB 8735 and ICMV 221 Wbr and SOSAT-C88.

Pangenomics has been promoted to accelerate breeding of orphan crops, but smallholder farmers in developing nations have seen little benefit so far. To address this gap, we built a global pangenomic breeding network, integrating African breeding programs, U.S. land grant universities, and international nonprofit research organizations. Here we demonstrate that pangenomics, when integrated with local crop improvement knowledge and global scientific partnerships, can facilitate breeding of drought and pest resilient varieties for smallholders. To breed trait-enhanced sorghum varieties with lgs1-1 resistance to witchweed (Striga hermonthica) for smallholders in Niger, one of the world's least developed nations, we used population genomics across local and global scales to develop lgs1-1 Striga resistance markers, and deployed them for rapid introgression of resistance into locally-preferred varieties. Genomic characterization, along with controlled experiments in laboratory, pot, field stations, and smallholder farms, confirmed lgs1-1 resistance was introgressed without loss of essential local-preference traits. New pangenomic resources, including global resequencing and graph pangenomes, further accelerated design of broadly-applicable markers. Unlocking the potential of pangenomics for stress-resilience breeding depended on stakeholder input, strong inference, South-led decision support software, and a dense collaborative network. The experience of the network provides a scalable roadmap for collaborative pangenomic breeding of trait-enhanced varieties for the world's lowest-resourced farmers.