Search

Anthracnose (ANT) and angular leaf spot (ALS) are significant diseases in common bean, leading to considerable yield losses under specific environmental conditions. The California Dark Red Kidney (CDRK) bean cultivar is known for its resistance to multiple races of both pathogens. Previous studies have identified the CoPv01CDRK/PhgPv01CDRK resistance loci on chromosome Pv01. Here, we evaluated the expression levels of ten candidate genes near the CoPv01CDRK/PhgPv01CDRK loci and plant defense genes using quantitative real-time PCR in CDRK cultivar inoculated with races 73 of Colletotrichum lindemuthianum and 63-39 of Pseudocercospora griseola. Gene expression analysis revealed that the Phvul.001G246300 gene exhibited the most elevated levels, showing remarkable 7.8-fold and 8.5-fold increases for ANT and ALS, respectively. The Phvul.001G246300 gene encodes an abscisic acid (ABA) receptor with pyrabactin resistance, PYR1-like (PYL) protein, which plays a central role in the crosstalk between ABA and jasmonic acid responses. Interestingly, our results also showed that the other defense genes were initially activated. These findings provide critical insights into the molecular mechanisms underlying plant defense against these diseases and could contribute to the development of more effective disease management strategies in the future.

Covariate-related response variables that are measured on the unit interval frequently arise in diverse studies when index and proportion data are of interest. A regression on the mean is commonly used to model this relationship. Instead of relying on the mean, which is sensitive to atypical data and less general, we can estimate such a relation using fractile regression. A fractile is a point on a probability density curve such that the area under the curve between that point and the origin is equal to a specified fraction. Fractile or quantile regression modeling has been considered for some statistical distributions. Our objective in the present article is to formulate a novel quantile regression model which is based on a parametric distribution. Our fractile regression is developed reparameterizing the initial distribution. Then, we introduce a functional form based on regression through a link function. The main features of the new distribution, as well as the density, distribution, and quantile functions, are obtained. We consider a brand-new distribution to model the fractiles of a continuous dependent variable (response) bounded to the interval (0, 1). We discuss an R package with random number generators and functions for probability density, cumulative distribution, and quantile, in addition to estimation and model checking. Instead of the original distribution-free quantile regression, parametric fractile regression has lately been employed in several investigations. We use the R package to fit the model and apply it to two case studies using COVID-19 and medical data from Brazil and the United States for illustration.

The Vasicek distribution is a two-parameter probability model with bounded support on the open unit interval. This distribution allows for different and flexible shapes and plays an important role in many statistical applications, especially for modeling default rates in the field of finance. Although its probability density function resembles some well-known distributions, such as the beta and Kumaraswamy models, the Vasicek distribution has not been considered to analyze data on the unit interval, especially when we have, in addition to a response variable, one or more covariates. In this paper, we propose to estimate quantiles or means, conditional on covariates, assuming that the response variable is Vasicek distributed. Through appropriate link functions, two Vasicek regression models for data on the unit interval are formulated: one considers a quantile parameterization and another one its original parameterization. Monte Carlo simulations are provided to assess the statistical properties of the maximum likelihood estimators, as well as the coverage probability. An R package developed by the authors, named vasicekreg, makes available the results of the present investigation. Applications with two real data sets are conducted for illustrative purposes: in one of them, the unit Vasicek quantile regression outperforms the models based on the Johnson-SB, Kumaraswamy, unit-logistic, and unit-Weibull distributions, whereas in the second one, the unit Vasicek mean regression outperforms the fits obtained by the beta and simplex distributions. Our investigation suggests that unit Vasicek quantile and mean regressions can be of practical usage as alternatives to some well-known models for analyzing data on the unit interval.

Quantile regression provides a framework for modeling the relationship between a response variable and covariates using the quantile function. This work proposes a regression model for continuous variables bounded to the unit interval based on the unit Birnbaum–Saunders distribution as an alternative to the existing quantile regression models. By parameterizing the unit Birnbaum–Saunders distribution in terms of its quantile function allows us to model the effect of covariates across the entire response distribution, rather than only at the mean. Our proposal, especially useful for modeling quantiles using covariates, in general outperforms the other competing models available in the literature. These findings are supported by Monte Carlo simulations and applications using two real data sets. An R package, including parameter estimation, model checking as well as density, cumulative distribution, quantile and random number generating functions of the unit Birnbaum–Saunders distribution was developed and can be readily used to assess the suitability of our proposal.