Fungi belong to Serendiptaceae are well-known fungal endophytes that have proven beneficial for many crop plants. Besides environmental and ecological factors, inoculum density has a crucial role in the fate of the interaction. This manuscript describes a qPCR assay for quantitatively assessing the correlation between the inoculum concentration and colonisation density of the rapeseed roots by Sereinipita indica as one the most important prerequisites for developing sustainable interactions between the crop plants and the endophyte.

Fennel has been commonly used as a traditional food and medicine; however, characterisation of worldwide collections is poorly understood. In this study, 33 different fennel accessions (genotypes) from 11 countries were evaluated in the field using phytochemical and morphological characters over 4 years. The large variation found in the studied germplasm may be utilised to select useful and stable lines for medicinal and other purposes.

There is little information on black oat (Avena strigosa Schreb.) response to gypsum and its interaction with nitrogen, especially in long-term no-till areas. In our study, we observed that 4-year-old gypsum application, and nitrogen topdressing increased forage yield, nutrient concentrations and contents, but solely nitrogen improved forage bromatological attributes. High forage yield was achieved with rates of 3 and 6 Mg ha⁻¹ of gypsum, with which an additive effect was achieved equally from 50 and 100 kg N ha⁻¹, in two growing seasons.

We provide the first large-scale development of intron-length polymorphic (ILP) markers in common vetch. The common vetch ILP markers exhibited relatively high levels of transferability to leguminous and non-leguminous species. The developed common vetch ILP markers will be valuable for assessment of genetic relationships, comparative genomic studies, and marker-assisted breeding for leguminous and non-leguminous species.