This study investigated the extent to which explicit and implicit instruction improve L1-Arabic speakers’ articulation of English words whose cognates were acquired earlier in their L2 French. Sixty-eight secondary school students, explicit (n=35) and implicit (n=33), participated in a programme incorporating focus-on-pronunciation activities, comprising three 45-minute sessions. Their learning motivation was first rated using an adapted version of Attitude/Motivation Test Battery (AMTB). Their pronunciation improvement was assessed through an oral-reading task. Ten new words were included in the post-test to see if they would generalize the instructed knowledge analogically. Results indicated that both explicit and implicit instruction had a positive impact on the students’ pronunciation advancement. However, the explicit group outperformed the implicit group with both the targeted and untaught words. There was insignificant interaction effect between instructional method and students’ motivation level, with higher motivation uniformly enhancing the effect of instruction. Nevertheless, motivation played a more crucial role in the learnt knowledge transferability when instruction was of implicit.

It is necessary to carry out a risk assessment to determine the consequences of releasing a particular plant species containing specific transgenes before transgenic plants can be grown under filed conditions. Gene flow from transgenic plants to wild closely related species has raised concern recently. Since transgenic crops were released in 1996, the global area of transgenic crops has been increasing rapidly. The transgene introgression from transgenic crops to their wild relatives is unavoidable in some species. Transgene introgression is of concern because the crop–wild plant hybrids might be conferred with a selection advantage to increase their performance, which could result in negative ecological consequences to natural ecosystems. The genus Brassica has 159 species, including a number of wild species that are of great importance to the economy. Most transgenic Brassica gene flow research has focused on the most successful cross between transgenic oilseed rape Brassica napus and its wild relatives Brassica rapa, a widely distributed weed in the farming system in Europe and America, since the hybridization can spontaneously happen and the generations can backcross to B. rapa easily in the wild conditions. In this study, we aimed to characterize transgene introgression, segregation, and expression in backcrossed generations between tramsgenic B. napus and B. rapa. These results will contribute to the environmental risk assessment and assist in biosafety management.

The genus Vicia comprises 166 annual or perennial species distributed mainly in Europe, Asia, and North America, also extending to the temperate regions of South America and tropical. However, utilization of SSR markers have not been investigated extensively in Vicia species as compared to other crop species. Here, we have assessed the potential for transferability (cross-species amplification) of cDNA microsatellites markers developed from common vetch (Vicia sativa subsp. sativa). In total, 226 alleles were detected in 36 microsatellite loci. The number of alleles per marker ranged from one to 20, with an average of 6.3. The gene diversity and polymorphism information content value averaged 0.540 and 0.503, with a range of 0–0.85 and 0–0.84 respectively. For transferability of the SSRs, amplification was carried out with selected from two to 8 accessions of 22 different Vicia species. For individual species, the successful amplification rate ranged from 32.6% in V. ervilia to 81.9% in V. sativa subsp. nigra, with average of 48.8%. As the rate of successful amplification of microsatellite markers generally correlates with genetic distance, these SSR markers are potentially useful in the analysis of genetic relationships between or within Vicia species.

The genus Allium which is one of the biggest plant genera comprises around 750 species that show the various morphological and ecological diversity with various taxonomic and geographical groups. The species of genus Allium has not been clearly distinguished because of extraordinary large amount of variation. We developed 8 simple sequence repeat markers (SSRs) which showed polymorphism within A. sativum accessions, but it was insufficient in transferability analysis of other Allium species. In this regard, we finally selected 50 primer pairs which was applicable to other Allium species adding to 8 primer pairs. According to results from application of 50 SSR markers to 9 Allium species, the average number of alleles ranged from 1.400 (A. porrum) to 1.889 (A. tuberrosum) and A. tuberosum (2n=32) has maximum 9 alleles. The lowest transferability value was 42.0% ( A. cepa and A. chinense) while A. sativum showed 96.7%. The A. porrum conceived to be close relationship to A. sativum as Allium subgenera revealed higher transferability (73%) rather than other Allium species. According to PCA analysis, three groups were divergent, and the A. fistulosum and A. sativum revealed the distinct groups and the rest 7 species formed another group.