Scientist develops disease-yam hybrids
A Nigerian plant geneticist, Femi Oyedoyin, has developed six novel yam hybrids with putative resistance to the devastating Yam Mosaic Virus (YMV), a disease responsible for over 50% yield losses in the staple white Guinea yam (Dioscorea rotundata). Oyedoyin, an award-winning STEM educator, in his pioneer research that led to the development, described it as […]
A Nigerian plant geneticist, Femi Oyedoyin, has developed six novel yam hybrids with putative resistance to the devastating Yam Mosaic Virus (YMV), a disease responsible for over 50% yield losses in the staple white Guinea yam (Dioscorea rotundata).
Oyedoyin, an award-winning STEM educator, in his pioneer research that led to the development, described it as a major scientific breakthrough that could transform Africa’s food security landscape.
Daily Trust reports that Oyedoyin, during his PhD programme at the University of Ibadan, in the Department of Botany–Plant Genetics and Molecular Biology, set out to tackle one of the continent’s most persistent agricultural challenges.
He had previously conducted groundbreaking studies on the genetic resources of wild yam species (including D. abyssinica and D. praehensilis), identifying their disease-resistance traits for use in yam crop improvement programs.
Speaking on why he focused on the yam, he said, “I wanted to help the millions of farmers who depend on yams for their livelihood, so we went into the forest to collect wild yam accessions that had survived generations of disease pressure.
“Using molecular, biotechnological, and phenotypic approaches, we created new hybrids that showed putative resistance to the YMV.”
According to him, the results were groundbreaking: six interspecific yam genotypes that consistently demonstrated putative resistance across field, molecular, and biotechnological evaluations.
These findings, according to him, were published in the journal Euphytica (Springer Nature, 2025) with the title “Integrated assessment of yam mosaic virus (YMV) resistance in wild-yam (Dioscorea spp.) . interspecific cross progenies using field phenotyping, molecular, and biotechnological approaches.”