Our results support the hypothesis that increasing genetic diversity in host populations through deployment of cultivar mixtures can slow down the rate of evolution in pathogen populations.
Both theoretical and empirical studies have demonstrated that increasing genetic diversity in host populations through deployment of cultivar mixtures offers a promising approach to control plant diseases, with the advantages of lower input costs and a reduction in ecological damage compared to use of fungicides while also providing greater yield stability [ 12, 22, 56- 58].
Alongside the current campaign, researchers are also experimenting with other methods of controlling the mosquito population, including the deployment of genetically modified mosquitos and the introduction of Wolbachia, a naturally occurring bacterium which prevents disease transmission, into the local mosquito population.
After it first was found in the 1940s in a mutagenized barley population [ 15], deployment of loss-of-function mlo alleles in barley has resulted in PM resistant barley varieties.
We focused on unique exposures in this population related to deployment and the presence of mental health conditions as potential predictors for the development of new-onset diabetes in this cohort.
In west Africa, the tool has been applied to show emergence of highly related parasites including evidence of clonal parasite population structures with increased deployment of malaria-reducing interventions.
But with Britain's far smaller population and troop deployments, the latest deaths — from a force of 9,000 that makes Britain's the second-largest troop presence in Afghanistan after the United States' — have been as much of a shock here as the heavy American troop losses in Iraq at the height of that conflict were in the United States.
There is currently much interest in suppressing populations of the main malaria vectors in Africa via the release of radio-sterilized males and genetically-manipulated sterility-inducing males, or in replacing those populations through the deployment of genetically-modified mosquitoes unable to transmit malaria.
Our results advance an empirical understanding of how populations may adapt to local climate across many loci and should facilitate the screening of climatically relevant adaptive variation in natural, breeding and deployment populations, and to developing species-specific genetic resource management and conservation strategies.
Of these, changes in pathogen population structure following the deployment of novel cultivars with new resistance combinations are probably among the best examples of evolution in action.
