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Traditionally, the study of the relation between stratification and migration has been focusing on features such as origin, ethnicity or gender, paying special attention to migrants at the bottom of the stratification. Recent studies (Shachar, 2011, 2016; Shachar & Hirschl, 2013) have shifted this lens by proving that there are worldwide ways to facilitate access to citizenship to applicants having exceptional talents —in sports, in academia or in industry—, most of them privileged by discretional decisions. Much less attention has caught the relation between stratification and programmes fast-tracking the route to citizenship in exchange for economic transactions. These are usually called citizenship by investment programmes (CIPs) and come in different forms. Yet all of them have in common the factor that economic capacity of the applicant is the key to access citizenship. By facilitating and speeding up the acquisition of citizenship on grounds of economic capacity, CIPs entail stratification in accessing citizenship that is established de jure or by law. This stratification in naturalisation requires further investigation and raises several questions: Is it fair to remove some requirements, such as civic and language tests, for checkbook citizens while keeping them for other naturalisation applicants? Should money be accepted as the main requirement to grant citizenship? Are these policies arbitrary? This paper has three objectives. First, to present the phenomenon of CIPs, focusing on programmes established by EU member states. Second, to compare the requirements applied to general applicants and to applicants following CIPs in order to prove that the programmes entail a de jure stratification in the access to citizenship. Third, to argue that these practices may be considered arbitrary.Summary:1. Introduction. 2. CIPs: a fast route to bulky wallets. 3. CIPs in the European Union (EU). (a) Bulgarian CIP. (b) Cypriot CIP. (c) Maltese CIP. 4. Is the stratification entailed by talented and checkbook citizens akin? 5. Last remarks ; Tradicionalmente, los estudios centrados en las relaciones entre migración y estratificación han prestado especial atención a la influencia de características tales como el origen, la etnia o el género a la hora de determinar la posición dentro de la estratificación migratoria, interesándose, a su vez, particularmente por los inmigrantes que se encontraban en la base de dicha estratificación. Sin embargo, estudios recientes (Shachar, 2011, 2016; Shachar & Hirschl, 2013) han cambiado esta tendencia virando su interés hacia aquellos migrantes situados en la cúspide de la estratificación, beneficiados por la apertura de una vía exprés para la obtención de la ciudadanía en razón de sus excepcionales talentos en ámbitos tan diversos como el deporte, la academia o la industria. Esta nueva forma de acceso a lo alto de la estratificación migratoria, en expansión, existe en todo el mundo y suele darse normalmente de forma particularizada y discrecional. Menos atención han obtenido otro tipo de programas que igualmente facilitan el acceso a lo más alto de la estratificación migratoria, esta vez basándose en la condición económica del postulante. Me refiero a los citizenship by investment programs (CIPs por sus siglas en inglés), los cuales acortan la ruta a la ciudadanía a cambio de inversiones económicas, que se dan de formas altamente diversas dependiendo del país y del programa a la sazón. A pesar de la citada diversidad, aquello que caracteriza a los CIPs es que para estos la capacidad económica del postulante se convierte en la llave que da acceso a la ciudadanía del país que implanta el programa. Facilitando y acelerando la adquisición de la ciudadanía en razón de la capacidad económica, los CIPs conllevan así una estratificación en el acceso a la ciudadanía que es establecida de jure o por ley. Dicha estratificación en la naturalización requiere de una investigación ulterior y suscita diversas cuestiones de gran importancia: ¿es justo eliminar algunos requisitos, tales como los exámenes cívicos y de idioma, a los ciudadanos de chequera, mientras los mismos se mantienen para otros solicitantes de naturalización? ¿Debería la capacidad económica del postulante ser aceptada como el requisito principal a la hora de garantizar la ciudadanía? ¿Son dichas políticas arbitrarias? Este artículo tiene tres objetivos. En primer lugar, presentar el fenómeno de los CIPs, centrándose especialmente en aquellos programas establecidos entre los miembros de la Unión Europea. El interés principal de centrarse en dichos estados es que en su caso las decisiones unilaterales de otorgar la ciudadanía nacional a cambio de una inversión económica conllevan igualmente el otorgamiento de la ciudadanía europea, la cual garantiza derechos supranacionales e impone obligaciones a otros estados miembros. En segundo lugar, comparar los requisitos solicitados a los postulantes generales de naturalización y a aquellos que siguen la vía exprés abierta por los CIPs. Esto se hará a fin de probar que los CIPs comportan una severa estratificación, establecida y plasmada de jure en el acceso a la ciudadanía en favor de los solicitantes que siguen esta vía. Por último, ofrecer argumentos que despierten la sospecha sobre la posible arbitrariedad de dichas políticas de naturalización, arbitrariedad que no tiene cabida ni respaldo legal en el contexto del constitucionalismo contemporáneo.

Rispail, N. et al. ; Faba bean is an excellent candidate crop to provide nitrogen input into temperate agricultural systems. However, its growth is hampered by several factors including environmental stresses and the presence of anti-nutritional factors. To solve these limitations, breeding programs have been initiated that were successful for monogenic traits but not so for multigenic traits. The large genome size of faba bean has slowed down breeding processes. Several other legumes have emerged as model legumes including Medicago truncatula, Lotus japonicus, Glycine max and Pisum sativum. The establishment of these models has already boosted our understanding of important processes such as the nitrogen-fixing symbiotic interaction. The high level of synteny and collinearity existing between legumes makes possible the transfer of key knowledge from model legumes to faba bean. Here we review the most recent knowledge gained from model legumes on grain quality, resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses, nitrogen-fixing symbiosis and how this knowledge can be employed for faba bean breeding. © 2009 Elsevier B.V. ; This work was funded in part by the European Union Grain Legumes Integrated Project (FOOD-CT-2004-506223), the Spanish Ministry of Education (AGL2005-0274/AGR, AGL2008-01239/AGR), the Australian Research Council for Centre of Excellence funding, UQ for strategic funds from the VC, DVCR and BACS Faculty. ; Peer Reviewed

Oat (Avena sativa L.) crop constitutes a rich source of biologically active secondary metabolites. Most of these compounds act as chemical signals and defense metabolites and constitute a potential source for the development of control methods for specific diseases. Polyamines are low molecular organic cations involved in various physiological events, particularly those related to abiotic stress responses, albeit recently their potential in disease resistance has been investigated. In this work we monitored the polyamine content in leaves of both resistant and susceptible oat cultivars in response to Blumeria graminis f.sp. avenae (Bga, host interaction) and with Blumeria graminis f.sp. hordei (non-host interaction). Our results show significant differences between the resistant and susceptible cultivars for specific free polyamine levels, and also with respect to the non-host interaction at crucial stages of the infection process. In addition, polyamine degradation products, such as 1.3-diamino propane increased following pathogen challenge, suggesting a role for reactive oxygen species derived from this pathway in resistance. Exogenous application of polyamines to leaf surface increased penetration resistance of oat against Bga. Overall, data support both, a direct and indirect role for polyamines in resistance in host and non-host interactions, in responses of oat against appropriate and inappropriate powdery mildew formae speciales. © 2014 Phytochemical Society of Europe. ; This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation [AGL2010-15936/AGR], and regional government through the AGR-253 group, the European Regional and Social Development Funds and a JAE fellowship from the CSIC to [GMB]. ; Peer Reviewed

In this study, we find and characterize the sources of tolerance to drought amongst an oat (Avena sativa L.) germplasm collection of 174 landraces and cultivars. We used multivariate analysis, non-supervised principal component analyses (PCA) and supervised discriminant function analyses (DFA) to suggest the key mechanism/s responsible for coping with drought stress. Following initial assessment of drought symptoms and area under the drought progress curve, a subset of 14 accessions were selected for further analysis. The collection was assessed for relative water content (RWC), cell membrane stability, stomatal conductance (g 1), leaf temperature, water use efficiency (WUE), lipid peroxidation, lipoxygenase activity, chlorophyll levels and antioxidant capacity during a drought time course experiment. Without the use of multivariate approaches, it proved difficult to unequivocally link drought tolerance to specific physiological processes in the different resistant oat accessions. These approaches allowed the ranking of many supposed drought tolerance traits in the order of degree of importance within this crop, thereby highlighting those with a causal relationship to drought stress tolerance. Analyses of the loading vectors used to derive the PCA and DFA models indicated that two traits involved in water relations, temperature and RWC together with the area of drought curves, were important indicators of drought tolerance. However, other parameters involved in water use such as g 1 and WUE were less able to discriminate between the accessions. These observations validate our approach which should be seen as representing a cost-effective initial screen that could be subsequently employed to target drought tolerance in segregating populations. © 2012 Springer-Verlag. ; This work was supported by the Spanish Min- istry of Science and Innovation (AGL2010-15936/AGR) and the regional government through the AGR-253 group, the European Regional and Social Development Funds and an FPU fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation to (JSM). ; Peer reviewed

Trabajo presentado en el III Spanish Symposium on Physiology and Breeding of Cereals (III Simposio Español de Fisiología y Mejora de Cereales, SEFiMeC), celebrado online el 17 y 18 de noviembre de 2020. ; During the last years a wealth of genomic data regarding many plant species have been generated taking advance of the decline of the cost of sequencing, creating many new opportunities. However, at the same time, phenotyping has become the main bottleneck in plant breeding and fundamental plant science. This is particularly true for the assessment of plant diseases where, in addition to the time consuming evaluations, we have often to deal with the subjectivity of macroscopic visual assessments. In this work, we have developed an open script for semi-automated evaluation of rust disease. The script function under the free image software Fiji (developed from Image J), which is a well-recognized software among scientific community. The script allow the counting of the number of pustules in leaf segments by a color transformation tool, and provides three different automation modes. The script opens images sequentially and records infection frequency (pustules per area) (semi-)automatically for high-throughput analysis. Furthermore, it can manage several scanned leaf segments in the same image, consecutively selecting the desired segments. The script has been validated with nearly 900 samples from 80 oat genotypes ranging from resistant to susceptible and from very light to heavily infected leaves showing a high accuracy with a Lin's concordance correlation coefficient of 0.99. The analysis show a high repeatability as indicated by the low variation coefficients obtained when repeating the measurement of the same samples. The script also has optional steps for calibration and training to ensure accuracy, even in low-resolution images. This script can evaluate efficiently hundreds of leaves facilitating the screening of novel sources of resistance to this important cereal disease. ; This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation [PID2019-104518RB-I00], and regional government through the AGR-253 group.

Drought tolerance is a complex phenomenon comprising many physiological, biochemical and morphological changes at both aerial and below ground levels. We aim to reveal changes on root morphology that promote drought tolerance in oat in both seedling and adult plants. To this aim, we employed two oat genotypes, previously characterized as susceptible and tolerant to drought. Root phenotyping was carried out on young plants grown either in pots or in rhizotrons under controlled environments, and on adult plants grown in big containers under field conditions. Overall, the tolerant genotype showed an increased root length, branching rate, root surface, and length of fine roots, while coarse to fine ratio decreased as compared with the susceptible genotype. We also observed a high and significant correlation between various morphological root traits within and between experiments, identifying several of them as appropriate markers to identify drought tolerant oat genotypes. Stimulation of fine root growth was one of the most prominent responses to cope with gradual soil water depletion, in both seedlings and adult plants. Although seedling experiments did not exactly match the response of adult plants, they were similarly informative for discriminating between tolerant and susceptible genotypes. This might contribute to easier and faster phenotyping of large amount of plants. ; This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness [AGL2016-78965AGR], (AEI/FEDER, UE) and regional government through the AGR-253 group, the European Regional and Social Development Funds and the COST action FA1306. FC is holder of a FPI fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. ; Peer reviewed

Biotic and abiotic stresses cause significant yield losses in legumes and can significantly affect their productivity. Biotechnology tools such as marker-assisted breeding, tissue culture, in vitro mutagenesis and genetic transformation can contribute to solve or reduce some of these constraints. However, only limited success has been achieved so far. The emergence of "omic" technologies and the establishment of model legume plants such as Medicago truncatula and Lotus japonicus are promising strategies for understanding the molecular genetic basis of stress resistance, which is an important bottleneck for molecular breeding. Understanding the mechanisms that regulate the expression of stress-related genes is a fundamental issue in plant biology and will be necessary for the genetic improvement of legumes. In this review, we describe the current status of biotechnology approaches in relation to biotic and abiotic stresses in legumes and how these useful tools could be used to improve resistance to important constraints affecting legume crops. ; E. Prats is funded by an European Marie Curie Reintegration Grant, N. Rispail by (FP5) Eufaba project. Our work in this area is supported by Spanish CICYT project AGL-2002-03248 and European Union project FP6-2002-FOOD-1-506223. K. Singh's work in this area is supported in part by the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) and the Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST) in Australia. ; Peer reviewed

Stomatal dysfunction known as "locking" has been linked to the elicitation of a hypersensitive response (HR) following attack of fungal pathogens in cereals. We here assess how spatial and temporal patterns of different resistance mechanisms, such as HR and penetration resistance influence stomatal and photosynthetic parameters in oat (Avena sativa) and the possible involvement of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) in the dysfunctions observed. Four oat cultivars with differential resistance responses (i.e., penetration resistance, early and late HR) to powdery mildew (Blumeria graminis f. sp. avenae, Bga) were used. Results demonstrated that stomatal dysfunctions were genotype but not response-type dependent since genotypes with similar resistance responses when assessed histologically showed very different locking patterns. Maximum quantum yield (Fv/Fm) of photosystem II were compromised in most Bga–oat interactions and photoinhibition increased. However, the extent of the photosynthetic alterations was not directly related to the extent of HR. H2O2 generation is triggered during the execution of resistance responses and can influence stomatal function. Artificially increasing H2O2 by exposing plants to increased light intensity further reduced Fv/Fm ratios and augmented the patterns of stomatal dysfunctions previously observed. The latter results suggest that the observed dysfunctions and hence a cost of resistance may be linked with oxidative stress occurring during defense induced photosynthetic disruption. ; This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness [project AGL2013-48687-R and AGL2016-78965-R], and regional government through the AGR-253 group, the European Regional and Social Development Funds. ; Peer reviewed ; Peer Reviewed

Over the last decade nitric oxide (NO) has been shown to influence a range of processes in plants. However, when, where and even if NO production occurs is controversial in several physiological scenarios in plants. This arises from a series of causes: (a) doubts have arisen over the specificity of widely used 4,5-diaminofluorescein diacetate (DAF-2DA)/4-amino-5-methylamino-2,7-difluorofluorescein (DAF-FM) dyes for NO, (b) no plant nitric oxide synthase (NOS) has been cloned, so that the validity of using mammalian NOS inhibitors to demonstrate that NO is being measured is debatable, (c) the NO scavenger 2-(4-carboxyphenyl)-4,4,5,5-tetramethylimidazoline-l-oxyl-3-oxide (cPTIO) needs to be used with caution, and (d) some discrepancies between assays for in planta measurements and another based on sampling NO from the gas phase have been reported. This review will outline some commonly used methods to determine NO, attempt to reconcile differing results obtained by different laboratories and suggest appropriate approaches to unequivocally demonstrate the production of NO. © 2011 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. ; The work of LM is supported by the BBSRC and the EU-FP6-Infrastructures-5 program; project FP6-026183 'Life Science Trace Gas Facility'. EP is funded by Spanish government AGL2010-15936/AGR. ; Peer Reviewed

Trabajo presentado en el IV Symposium on Physiology and Breeding of Cereals, celebrado en Pamplona el 16 y 17 de diciembre de 2021. ; In this study, we investigated the efficiency of genomic prediction and training set optimization in a highly structured population of cultivars and landraces of cultivated oat (Avena sativa) from the Mediterranean basin, including white (subsp. sativa) and red (subsp. byzantina) oats, genotyped using genotype-by- sequencing markers and evaluated for agronomic traits in Southern Spain. For most traits, the predictive abilities were moderate to high with little differences between models, except for biomass for which Bayes-B showed a substantial gain compared to other models. The consistency between the structure of the training population and the population to be predicted was key to the predictive ability of genomic predictions. The predictive ability of inter-subspecies predictions was indeed much lower than that of intra-subspecies predictions for all traits. Regarding training set optimization, the linear mixed model optimization criteria (prediction error variance (PEVmean) and coefficient of determination (CDmean)) performed better than the heuristic approach "partitioning around medoids," even under high population structure. The superiority of CDmean and PEVmean could be explained by their ability to adapt the representation of each genetic group according to those represented in the population to be predicted. These results represent an important step towards the implementation of genomic prediction in oat breeding programs and address important issues faced by the genomic prediction community regarding population structure and training set optimization. ; This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation [PID2019-104518RB-I00], and regional government through the AGR-253 group.

Trabajo presentado en el III Spanish Symposium on Physiology and Breeding of Cereals (III Simposio Español de Fisiología y Mejora de Cereales), celebrado online el 17 y 18 de noviembre de 2020. ; Drought tolerance is a complex phenomenon comprising many physiological, biochemical and morphological changes at both aerial and below ground levels. In this work, we explore the strategy of two oat cultivars to cope with drought, over an imposed water deficit time course of 20 days, based on root morphological, anatomical, physiological and molecular studies. We observed that the susceptible genotype increased dramatically the abscisic acid, at a relative soil water content as high as 60% resulting in a reduction of stomatal conductance. Despite this, leaf water potential decreased simultaneously due to a decrease in root hydraulic conductivity (conductivity per root length) in this genotype that showed early drought symptoms. By contrast, the resistant genotype, showed a mild and slow increase in abscisic acid that allowed maintaining transpiration longer. This was associated with an increase in root hydraulic conductivity together with root architectural changes such as an increase in total root length and in the length of the thinnest roots. In addition, root anatomical changes facilitated hydraulic transport and a reduction of metabolic cost. This strategy allowed the resistance genotype to maintain higher water potential reducing drought symptoms and promoting growth under water deficit conditions. ; This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation [PID2019-104518RB-I00], and regional government through the AGR-253 group.

Oat crop is not particularly well adapted to hot and dry weather, as shown by a 3-fold yield reduction in Mediterranean compared to Northern regions. As a consequence, there is a need to identify more resilient oats adapted to current Mediterranean and future climate conditions. Here, we studied the performance of oat landraces under Mediterranean conditions, including the resistance to their most devastating disease, the crown rust. One hundred forty-one genetically characterized Spanish landraces were evaluated over two crop seasons at four contrasting locations in Spain and Egypt. Genotype-environment interactions were studied using heritability-adjusted genotype plus genotype-environment biplot analyses. The impact of climate variables on agronomic traits and the adaptation of particular landraces to environmental factors were inferred from non-metric multivariate scaling and canonical correspondence analyses. Results show an average oat landrace grain yield of 1500 kg/ha, which is similar to the mean yield of commercial varieties. Nonetheless, commercial varieties had 20% higher harvest index than landraces, which is explained by the higher biomass of landraces. Moreover, oat landraces showed high levels of rust resistance with mean values of the area under the disease curve of 2.58, which is approximately 25% lower than that of commercial varieties. Furthermore, several landraces carried a broad spectrum type of resistance which is expected to be more durable and efficient against different rust isolates. ; This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness [AGL2013-48687AGR] and regional government through the AGR-253 group, as well as the European Regional and Social Development Funds and Egyptian Academy of Scientific Research and Technology—ASRT through AECID program. JSM is holder of an FPU fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. NR is holder of a Ramón y Cajal Post-doctoral fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and competitiveness (MINECO). ; Peer reviewed

[Key message] Genomic analysis of Mediterranean oats reveals high genetic diversity and three loci for adaptation to this environment. This information together with phenotyping and passport data, gathered in an interactive map, will be a vital resource for oat genetic improvement. ; [Abstract] During the twentieth century, oat landraces have increasingly been replaced by modern cultivars, resulting in loss of genetic diversity. However, landraces have considerable potential to improve disease and abiotic stress tolerance and may outperform cultivars under low input systems. In this work, we assembled a panel of 669 oat landraces from Mediterranean rim and 40 cultivated oat varieties and performed the first large-scale population genetic analysis of both red and white oat types of Mediterranean origin. We created a public database associated with an interactive map to visualize information for each accession. The oat collection was genotyped with 17,288 single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) loci to evaluate population structure and linkage disequilibrium (LD); to perform a genome-wide association study (GWAs) for heading date, a key character closely correlated with performance in this drought-prone area. Population genetic analysis using both structure and PCA distinguished two main groups composed of the red and white oats, respectively. The white oat group was further divided into two subgroups. LD decay was slower within white lines in linkage groups Mrg01, 02, 04, 12, 13, 15, 23, 33, whereas it was slower within red lines in Mrg03, 05, 06, 11, 21, 24, and 28. Association analysis showed several significant markers associated with heading date on linkage group Mrg13 in white oats and on Mrg01 and Mrg08 in red oats. ; This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation [AGL2016-78965AGR, PID2019-104518RB-100], (AEI/FEDER, UE) and regional government through the AGR-253 group, the European Regional and Social Development Funds, and Mobility Grant (FPI) 2018 from Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness of the Government of Spain [EEBB-I-18–12824]. FJC is holder of a FPI fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness [BES-2014–071044]. TL and CJH were supported by BBSRC grant BBS/E/W/0012843B. ; Peer reviewed

Although oat cultivation around the Mediterranean basin is steadily increasing, its yield in these regions lags far behind those of Northern Europe. This results mainly from the poor adaptation of current oat cultivars to Mediterranean environments. Local landraces may act as reservoirs of favorable traits that could contribute to increase oat resilience in this region. To aid selection of suitable agro-climate adapted genotypes we integrated genome-wide association approaches with analysis of field assessed phenotypes of genetic variants and of the weight of associated markers across different environmental variables. Association models accounting for oat population structure were applied on either arithmetic means or best linear unbiased prediction (BLUPs) to ensure robust identification of associations with the agronomic traits evaluated. The meta-analysis of the six joint environments (mega-environment) identified several markers associated with several agronomic traits and crown rust severity. Five of these associated markers were located within expressed genes. These associations were only mildly influenced by climatic variables indicating that these markers are good candidates to improve the genetic potential of oat under Mediterranean conditions. The models also highlighted several marker-trait associations, strongly affected by particular climatic variables including high rain pre- or post-heading dates and high temperatures, revealing strong potential for oat adaptation to specific agro-climatic conditions. These results will contribute to increase oat resilience for particular climatic conditions and facilitate breeding for plant adaptation to a wider range of climatic conditions in the current scenario of climate change. ; This work was funded by the Spanish MINECO (AGL2016-78965AGR), supported by FEDER funds and by the regional government through the AGR-253 group. FJCC is the holder of a FPI fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and competitiveness. NR is the holder of a Ramon y Cajal postdoctoral position from MINECO. CH and TL were supported by BBSRC BB/CSP1730/1.

Parasitic weeds pose severe constraint on major agricultural crops. Varying levels of resistance have been identified and exploited in the breeding programmes of several crops. However, the level of protection achieved to date is either incomplete or ephemeral. Resistance is mainly determined by the coexistence of several mechanisms controlled by multigenic and quantitative systems. Efficient control of the parasite requires a better understanding of the interaction and their associated resistance mechanisms at the histological, genetic and molecular levels. Application of postgenomic technologies and the use of model plants should improve the understanding of the plant–parasitic plant interaction and drive not only breeding programmes through either marker-assisted selection (MAS) or transgenesis but also the development of alternative methods to control the parasite. This review presents the current approaches targeting the characterization of resistance mechanisms and explores their potentiality to control parasitic plants. ; Our work in this area is supported by Spanish CICYT project AGL-2005–01781 and European Union project FP6-2002-FOOD-1-506223. ; Peer reviewed