Paternity Assignment in White Guinea Yam (Dioscorea Rotundata) Half-Sib Progenies from Polycross Mating Design Using SNP Markers

White Guinea yam is mostly a dioecious outcrossing crop with male and female flowers produced on distinct plants. Fertile parents produce high fruit set in an open pollination polycross block, which is a cost-effective and convenient way of generating variability in yam breeding. However, the pollen parent of progeny from polycross mating is usually unknown. This study aimed to determine paternity in white Guinea yam half-sib progenies from polycross mating design. A total of 394 half-sib progenies from random open pollination involving nine female and three male parents was genotyped with 6602 SNP markers from DArTSeq platform to recover full pedigree. A higher proportion of expected heterozygosity, allelic richness, and evenness were observed in the half-sib progenies. A complete pedigree was established for all progenies from two families (TDr1685 and TDr1688) with 100% accuracy, while in the remaining families, paternity was assigned successfully only for 56 to 98% of the progenies. Our results indicated unequal paternal contribution under natural open pollination in yam, suggesting unequal pollen migrations or gene flow among the crossing parents. A total of 3.8% of progenies lacking paternal identity due to foreign pollen contamination outside the polycross block was observed. This study established the efficient determination of parental reconstruction and allelic contributions in the white Guinea yam half-sib progenies generated from open pollination polycross using SNP markers. Findings are useful for parental reconstruction, accurate dissection of the genetic effects, and selection in white Guinea yam breeding program utilizing polycross mating design.

Orphaned Fathers in Contemporary French Literature: Writing Child Loss from a Paternal Perspective

In light of a growing number of trauma narratives about child death authored from a paternal perspective within the scope of contemporary French literature, this article explores the récits de deuil of four lesser-studied orphaned fathers: Alain Thiesse's Elle s'appelait Emma (2014), Philippe Delaroche's La Gloire d'Inès (2016), Michel Rostain's Le Fils (2011), and Bernard Chambaz's À tombeau ouvert (2016). This article considers the insight these texts provide into a father's experience of surviving his child and what this means for his altered identity, for his new role in life, and for the ways in which he turns to literature to voice grief. As we reflect on this changed paternal identity as articulated in these examples, we focus on each author's objective(s) in giving sorrow words as well as the choice of literary modalities of these works. A common thread running throughout these varied examples is the topos of voice: an angry scream and a cry for justice, a belated address, and imagined conversations which traverse the present and the afterlife. We discuss the discursive strategies in these grief narratives and three separate aspects of narrative construction with which they engage. First, we consider the father's cry and the strategies of citation in the témoignage Elle s'appelait Emma. Second, we survey the implications of life writing and the ethical imperative with which they coincide in a father's belated address to his deceased daughter in La Gloire d'Inès. Finally, we investigate how modes of fiction restructure and reconceptualize father-son transmission and filiation in Le Fils and À tombeau ouvert. For mothers and fathers alike, the récit de deuil confronts the paradoxical bind of mourning testimony. The crisis of meaning that losing a child sets in motion impels these fathers to make sense of the unthinkable in the process of writing.