It is, no doubt, a truism that in the relations of states treaties are matters of importance and frequent occurrence. The law of treaties, therefore, rightly occupies a central position in international law. Within this branch of the law, three large categories of rules may easily be distinguished relating, respectively, to the conclusion, to the interpretation, and to the termination of treaties. It is with some aspects of the first of these categories that the present study is exclusively concerned. In order that a treaty may be validly concluded on behalf of a state, two requirements are of fundamental importance: the first is that expressions of consent must have occurred; the second, that these expressions shall emanate from persons who are competent to give them. The original plan of the present study envisaged a full treatment of the rules of international law governing the two requirements referred to above. As the work proceeded, however, it became clear that no more than one of the topics could be treated within the framework of a thesis. Accordingly, the writer decided not to discuss the rules of international law relating to what constitutes an expression of consent to a treaty. The result of the writer's inquiry into the question whether, in cases of doubt, the signature of a treaty constitutes an irrevocable expression of consent, or ratification is required, is found in a published article, appended to the present study as Annex I. An inquiry into a cognate problem, namely, the need for unanimity in the revision of multilateral treaties, is also attached to this thesis as Annex II. Consequently, the present study is restricted to a systematic examination of those rules of international law which relate to the identification of those authorities in the state who are competent to express the final consent of the state to a treaty. The questions of the representation in contractual and treaty matters of subjects other than states, however, is not discussed. The present work deals with two distinct but interrelated problems. The first is that of the conditions under which the expressions of consent to a treaty of an authority or person are imputed to the state on whose behalf the authority or person purports to act. This is the question of identifying the competent treaty-making organ. The other problem is that of the conditions under which the expression of consent given to a treaty by an individual may be imputed to the treaty-making organ whose agent the individual purports to be. Both problems are of considerable difficulty. In the case of the second problem, the competence of agents, the difficulties are caused, chiefly, by the scant attention which the question has attracted. Material relevant to it has not been easily accessible, and the doctrinal discussion of the matter has hitherto been so limited that the present study may probably claim to be the first full treatment of the topic. By contrast, many of the difficulties relating to the problem of the competence of treaty-making organs, have been caused by the prolific treatment which it has been accorded at the hands of publicists. In order, therefore, to make some fresh contribution to this subject, the emphasis of this study has been placed on the investigation and discussion of the practice of states and the decisions of tribunals, both municipal and international. One consequence of this approach is to expose to criticism many of the views hitherto expressed on this subject; and it has, therefore, become necessary to attempt the formulation of a theory that is less contradicted by the practice of states than most existing theories seem to be. The study falls into three parts. Part I contains an examination of the problem of the competence of agents of treaty-making organs. Part II takes up the question of the competence of treaty-making organs generally. In Part III the same question is examined with special reference to states possessing constitutional regulations governing their treaty-making activities.

La Convention de l’UNESCO sur la protection et la promotion de la diversité des expressionsculturelles a été adoptée à Paris le 20 octobre 2005 et entrée en vigueur le 18 mars 2007. L’intérêt dela présente Convention est essentiellement culturel. La protection des biens et services, voire desactivités culturelles, résume l’essentiel de ses défis. Son objectif est de contenir les effets du principede la libéralisation des échanges commerciaux sur la diversité culturelle. La valeur de la diversitéculturelle est indéniable parce qu’elle se rapporte à l’identité humaine. La diversité culturelle faitl’objet d’une reconnaissance constante dans le paysage juridique international. De nombreux textes dedroits nationaux et internationaux consacrent directement ou indirectement la culture, comme unevaleur inhérente à l’être humain. Elle est donc perçue comme un droit ou un aspect fondamental desdroits de l’homme. Ainsi, les biens et services ou activités culturelles, revêtent une double naturecommerciale et culturelle et devraient, compte tenu de cette spécificité, faire l’objet d’une protectionparticulière. Cette mission de protection est désormais assurée par la Convention UNESCO 2005.La détermination de son effectivité est la préoccupation centrale de cette thèse. Elle a principalementpour centre d’intérêt, la contribution au renforcement de la capacité de la présente Convention àrépondre de ses défis. Accessoirement, elle participe à la vulgarisation d’un nouveau droitinternational de protection et de promotion de la diversité des expressions culturelles. La ConventionUNESCO 2005 est dans les tous débuts de sa phase de mise en oeuvre. Il s’avère donc prématuré,compte tenu de la jeunesse de cette nouvelle Convention, de prétendre à déterminer son effectivité surla base d’un bilan élogieux d’application pratique. Cependant, la fréquence croissante de son processusd’application, semble plutôt rassurante et présage la tendance vers un instrument juridiqueinternational effectif et efficace de protection et de promotion de la diversité des expressionsculturelles. / The UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressionsadopted in Paris on 20 October 2005 and entered into force on 17 March 2007. The interest of thisConvention is essentially cultural. Protection of goods and services, or cultural activities, summarizesthe key challenges. Its objective is to contain the effects of the principle of trade liberalization oncultural diversity. The value of cultural diversity is undeniable because it relates to human identity.Cultural diversity is the subject of constant recognition in the international legal landscape. Many textsdevoted national and international rights directly or indirectly culture as an inherent value to humans.It is therefore seen as a right or a fundamental aspect of human rights. Thus, goods or services andcultural activities, are a dual commercial and cultural should, given the specificity to be specialprotection. The mission of protection is now provided by the UNESCO Convention 2005.Determining its effectiveness is the central concern of this thesis. Its main focus, the contribution tocapacity building of the present Convention to meet its challenges. Incidentally, it contributes to thepopularization of a new international law to protect and promote the diversity of cultural expressions.UNESCO 2005 Convention is in all his early phase of implementation. It is therefore premature, giventhe youth of this new Convention, entitled to determine its effectiveness on the basis of a laudatoryreview of practical application. However, the increasing frequency of the application process seemsreassuring. It presages the trend towards an international legal instrument effective and efficientprotection and promotion of the diversity of cultural expressions.

Elever kan ibland uppleva svårigheter med representationsformer och därför är studiens syfte att undersöka hur lärare arbetar med olika representationsformer samt hur lärare arbetar för att påvisa samband mellan representationsformer. Studien grundar sig i variationsteoretiska principer. Studiens empiri består av observationer om sex olika lärares helklassgenomgångar av eget valt ämnesinnehåll som har analyserats med hjälp av Ekdahls, Venkats och Runessons teoretiska ramverk (2016). Resultatet av studien visar att lärare använder representationsformen ”skrivna symboler” mest i undervisningen, samt att representationsformerna varierar beroende på vilket ämnesområde lärare undervisar i. Resultatet visar även att lärare använder gester och verbala uttryck för att tydliggöra sambanden mellan representationsformerna.  Slutsatsen är att lärare använder olika representationsformer i undervisningen samt att lärare tenderar att använda olika linking actions i matematikundervisningen för att synliggöra sambanden mellan representationsformer. / Students experience problems regarding representations in mathematics. Therefore the purpose of this study is to examine how teachers’ work with different representations and how they clarify the connections between representations. The study is based on the principles of variation theory. The data, consisting of observations of six different teachers whole class introductions, have been analysed using Ekdahl, Venkat and Runessons theoretical framework (2016). The study shows that teachers use the representation called “written symbols” most frequent and that the representation vary depending of the subject. The result also shows that teachers use gestures and their verbal expression to clarify the relationship between representations. The conclusion is that teachers use different representations in teaching, and that teachers tend to use different linking actions in mathematics to make the connection between representations visible.

In this thesis we present novel methods for constructing and fitting 2d models of shape and appearance which are used for analysing human faces. The first contribution builds on previous work on discriminative fitting strategies for active appearance models (AAMs) in which regression models are trained to predict the location of shapes based on texture samples. In particular, we investigate non-parametric regression methods including random forests and Gaussian processes which are used together with gradient-like features for shape model fitting. We then develop two training algorithms which combine such models into sequences, and systematically compare their performance to existing linear generative AAM algorithms. Inspired by the performance of the Gaussian process-based regression methods, we investigate a group of non-linear latent variable models known as Gaussian process latent variable models (GPLVM). We discuss how such models may be used to develop a generative active appearance model algorithm whose texture model component is non-linear, and show how this leads to lower-dimensional models which are capable of generating more natural-looking images of faces when compared to equivalent linear models. We conclude by describing a novel supervised non-linear latent variable model based on Gaussian processes which we apply to the problem of recognising emotions from facial expressions.

This essay presents a study of retention of idioms delving into a pedagogical approach by presenting them to a group of lower secondary students. The study also explores students’ memory retention whilst concurrently investigating if certain types of idioms are retained to a greater extent than others. For the sake of assessing memory retention in relation to these various types of idiomatic transparency, the selected idioms have been divided into three separate categories; transparent, semi-transparent and opaque depending on their literal and figurative meaning. This essay argues that opaque idioms are retained to a lesser extent in memory due to their non-transparent metaphorical meaning. In fact, the most striking finding is that idioms pertaining to the opaque category are indeed more difficult for students to learn and are also forgotten the fastest. Previous research has put emphasis on the complex structure of idioms and opinions seem divided regarding to what extent the teaching of idioms should be implemented together with other vocabulary items in a classroom setting. On the other hand, the same research emphasizes the great value of idioms; potentially expanding student vocabulary and making the English language more nuanced and native-like.

Community expressions-specifically, annual events manifested by groups other than official organizations-can be sites for transmission of crucial understandings of the past that have not achieved representation in formal archives. In this dissertation, to locate the minor narratives of history I analyze a community expression with my focus honed on the ephemeral matter used within it, to imitate and question the reliance in archives on evidence, and explore ephemera as important focus points for the transmission of collective memory. The ephemerally embodied event I studied as an "archive" was the All Souls Procession, a grassroots annual celebration and parade in honor of the dead in Tucson, Arizona. To convey and interpret perspectives from the community enacting and participating in this event through engagement with ephemera, I have used three questions as my guide: How are ephemera used in All Souls Procession events as commemorative community expressions? How has the history of the All Souls Procession been shaped around the commemorative use of ephemera in relationship with recorded documents? And, What are the implications for archives of this case of commemoration through ephemeral community expression? Through qualitative methods of data collection including participant observation, document analysis, and unstructured interviews with thirteen current and former All Souls Procession organizers, I have found two overarching themes in the discourse around ephemeral commemoration in this event: processing the past and softening community boundaries. I found that through these themes of use, ephemera in the All Souls Procession anchor collective memory while constituting community boundaries, meeting a growing need to define and connect "members" of a rapidly expanding "community." With community membership defined as volunteerism in ASP events, ephemera function as iconic draws toward this event, attracting people to a unified theme and then engaging them in constructing it anew, as its ephemeral building blocks must be regularly recreated. Ephemera in this study were also found to help claim ownership and authority for the All Souls community, through occupation of space and memory. Concluding this work are three propositions: First, that in such community expressions, competing "archives" may face off against one another in the online arena, which is both ephemeral and enduring; Second, the use of ephemera as commemorative matter may give a community leverage in controlling records about the past, yet in increasingly transparent ways. Third, as they adapt to the model of participatory archives seen increasingly in the digital archival landscape, users can deploy strategies-forging alliances and "communities" that result in effacements and master narratives, the latter of which are then celebrated as community histories through new cycles of ephemeral commemoration. I ultimately retheorize the archive as collective action to construct, efface, and build community around history, supporting the notion that the more collective, or massive, or spectacular the telling of a story, the better it competes to become a history.

This work investigates the feasibility of assessing fun from only the computational analysis of facial images captured from low-cost webcams. The study and development was based on a set of videos recorded from the faces of voluntary participants as they played three different popular independent games (horror, action/platform and puzzle). The participants also self-reported on their levels of frustration, immersion and fun in a discrete range [0,4], and answered the reputed Game Experience Questionnaire (GEQ). The faces were found on the videos collected by a face tracking system, developed with existing implementations of the Viola-Jones algorithm for face detection and a variation of the Active Appearance Model (AAM) algorithm for tracking the facial landmarks. Fun was represented in terms of the prototypic emotions and the levels of frustration and immersion. The prototypic emotions were detected with a Support Vector Machine (SVM) trained from existing datasets, and the frustration, immersion and fun levels were detected with a Structured Perceptron trained from the collected data and the self reported levels of each affect, as well as estimations of the gradient of the distance between the face and the camera and the blink rate measured in blinks per minute. The evaluation was supported by a comparison of the self-reported levels of each affect and the answers to GEQ, and performed with measurements of precision and recall obtained in cross-validation tests. The frustration classifier could not obtain a precision above chance, mainly because the collected data didn\'t have enough variability in the reported levels of this affect. The immersion classifier obtained better precision particularly when trained with the estimated blink rate, with a median value of 0.42 and an Interquartile Range (IQR) varying from 0.12 to 0.73. The fun classifier, trained with the detected prototypic emotions and the reported levels of frustration and immersion, obtained the best precision scores, with a median of 0.58 and IQR varying from 0.28 to 0.84. All classifiers suffered from low recall, what was caused by difficulties in the tracking of landmarks and the fact that the emotion classifier was unbalanced due to existing datasets having more samples of neutral and happiness expressions. Nonetheless, a strong indication of the feasibility of assessing fun from recorded videos is in the pattern of variation of the levels predicted. Apart from the frustration classifier, the immersion and the fun classifier were able to predict the increases and decreases of the respective affect levels with an average error margin close to 1. / Este trabalho investiga a viabilidade de medir a diversão apenas a partir da análise computacional de imagens faciais capturadas de webcams de baixo custo. O estudo e desenvolvimento se baseou em vídeos gravados com as faces de voluntários enquanto jogavam três diferentes jogos populares e independentes (horror, ação/plataforma e puzzle). Os participantes também reportaram seus níveis de frustração, imersão e diversão no intervalo discreto [0, 4], e responderam ao renomado Game Experience Questionnaire (GEQ). Faces foram encontradas nos vídeos coletados utilizando um sistema desenvolvido com implementações existentes do algoritmo de Viola-Jones para a detecção da face e uma variação do algoritmo Active Appearance Model (AAM) para o rastreamento das marcas faciais. A diversão foi representada em termos das emoções prototípicas e dos níveis de frustração e imersão. As emoções prototípicas foram detectadas com uma Máquina de Vetores de Suporte (SVM) treinada com bases de dados existentes, e os níveis de frustração, imersão e diversão foram detectados com um Perceptron Estruturado treinado com os dados coletados e os níveis reportados de cada afeto, com o gradiente da distância entre a face e a câmera, e com a taxa de piscadas por minuto. A avaliação foi apoiada pela comparação dos níveis reportados com as respostas ao GEQ, e executada com métricas de precisão e revocação (recall) obtidas em testes de validação cruzada. O classificador de frustração não obteve uma precisão acima de chance, principalmente porque os dados coletados não tiveram variabilidade suficiente nos níveis reportados desse afeto. O classificador de imersão obteve uma precisão melhor particularmente quando treinado com a taxa de piscadas, com uma média de 0.42 e uma Amplitude Interquartil (IQR) entre 0.12 e 0.73. O classificador de diversão, treinado com as emoções prototípicas e os níveis reportados de frustração e imersão, obteve a melhor precisão, com média de 0.58 e IQR entre 0.28 e 0.84. Todos os classificadores sofreram de baixa revocação, causada por dificuldades no rastreamento das marcas faciais e pelo desbalanceamento do classificador de emoções, cujos dados de treinamento continham mais exemplos de expressões neutras e de felicidade. Ainda assim, um forte indicador da viabilidade de medir diversão a partir de vídeos está nos padrões de variação dos níveis previstos. Com exceção da frustração, os classificadores de imersão e de diversão foram capazes de prever os aumentos e reduções dos níveis dos respectivos afetos com uma margem de erro média próxima de 1.

Dans une approche stylistique, mêlant linguistique de l’énonciation, pragmatique et linguistique textuelle, cette thèse explore l’œuvre romanesque de Boris Vian en interrogeant les relations qu’entretiennent le potentiel imageant du langage et la création de l’univers fictionnel vianesque. En dépassant la perspective qui conçoit le plus souvent la fictionnalisation comme une mise en fiction du réel, ce travail propose un élargissement du concept, également entendu comme création de fiction. Le corpus, volontairement restreint à un genre littéraire (le genre romanesque) et à un auteur particulier, rassemble les six romans signés Boris Vian (production qui s’étend de 1942 à 1953). Ce choix tient à la volonté de caractériser l’œuvre romanesque dans son ensemble tout en mettant en évidence les spécificités de l’évolution du style vianesque. À partir de différents pôles d’analyses, cette étude cherche à comprendre la particularité des fictions vianesques, apportant un éclairage inédit sur le style et l’esthétique de l’auteur. L’étude des procédés langagiers à l’œuvre dans la fictionnalisation, au cœur de ce travail, s’attache progressivement à l’observation des lieux textuels d’entrée et de sortie de la fiction, des jeux langagiers et des figures du discours. Cette recherche examine ainsi les outils récurrents permettant le passage du monde de référence du lecteur vers celui de la fiction.Par un jeu constant avec les normes (que celles-ci soient d’ordre langagiers ou littéraires), le texte vianesque présente un monde souvent déroutant pour le lecteur qui doit alors le « décoder » pour comprendre les nouvelles lois régissant cet univers. Ce travail de thèse propose une nouvelle grille d’analyse pour appréhender la fiction vianesque. / This thesis explores the novelistic work of Boris Vian from a stylistic perspective at the intersection of the linguistics of enunciation, pragmatics and textual linguistics. It focuses on the relations between the imaging potential of language and the Vianian creation of a fictional universe. It broadens the traditional perspective that conceives of fictionalization as putting reality in fiction by considering fictionalization as the creation of fiction. The corpus is restricted to one literary genre (novels) and one author. It includes the six novels written under the name Boris Vian (between 1942 and 1953). This choice is motivated by a willingness to characterize both the Vianian novelistic œuvre in its totality and the specificity of the evolution of the Vianian style. This study uses different analytical perspectives to understand the peculiarities of Vianian fiction and to highlight the style and aesthetics of the author in an original way. The study of the linguistic processes at play in Vianian fictionalization, which is at the center of this thesis, seeks to gradually observe the places in the text where fiction enters and exits, plays on words, and figures of speech. This research scrutinizes the recurring tools which allow going from the reader’s world of reference to the world of fiction. The Vianian text often presents a world that baffles the reader because it constantly plays with various (linguistic or literary) norms. Hence the reader needs to “decode” that world to understand the new laws by which it abides. This dissertation therefore proposes a new analytical perspective to further our understanding of Vianian fiction.

The present study is an exploratory cross-sectional study of interlanguage pragmatic development of expressions of gratitude, specifically, gratitude after receiving a favor. Expressing gratitude is a speech act that is taught at an early age and is commonly performed by native speakers of most languages. It is, thus, often assumed that learners can successfully say thank you in the target language. However, studies show that even advanced learners have difficulty adequately expressing gratitude. The objectives of the present study are: (a) to investigate how native speakers of Chinese and native speakers of English express gratitude as defined by length of speech and use of strategies; (b) to examine whether there is evidence of pragmatic development in the speech act behavior of expressions of gratitude among Chinese learners of English with the increase of the length of residence in the United States; and (c) to examine whether there is evidence of pragmatic influence from L1 Chinese in English expressions of gratitude among Chinese learners of English. The data were collected through a discourse completion task questionnaire. Subjects' responses were classified into eight thanking strategies. Descriptive and t-test analyses were conducted to identify the pragmatic differences that distinguished the behavior of the three English learner groups, which varied according to their length of stay in the United States, from that of Chinese and English native speakers. The results show that Chinese and English native speakers have different preferences for thanking strategies in the eight situations. They are significantly different in the length of speech and use of strategies. In addition, there is a positive effect of the length of residence in the United States on English learners' pragmatic development. The results also show evidence of pragmatic influence from L1 Chinese. Moreover, contextual variables, social status, familiarity and imposition, have a significant influence on the length of speech and the use of strategies for all subject groups.

Sorghum crop has become attractive to breeders due to its drought tolerance, and many uses including a human food source, animal feed, industrial fibre and bioenergy crop. Sorghum, like any other plant, is a host to a variety of microbes that can have neutral, negative or positive effects on the plant. While the majority of microorganisms are beneficial, pathogens colonize plant tissues and overwhelm its defence mechanisms. This colonization is a direct threat to the sorghum productivity. The development of microbiome-based approaches for sustainable crop productivity and yield is hindered by a lack of understanding of the main biotic factors affecting the crop microbiome. Metabarcoding has proven to be a valuable tool which has been widely used for characterizing the microbial diversity and composition of different environments and has been utilized in many research endeavours. This study analyses the relationship between the microbiota and their response to natural pathogen infection in sorghum disease groups (R, MR, S and HS) and identifies the most dominant pathogen in the highly susceptible disease group. The study also, assesses the spore viability through the use of the automated cell counter and confirms Fusarium graminearum (dominant pathogen linked to the HS disease group) through sequencing of the marker genes, to subsequently characterize pathways likely to be involved in pathogen infection resistance. To achieve the objectives, a combination of 16S rRNA (V3/V4 regions) and ITS (ITS1/ITS4) of the internal transcribed spacer regions were amplified and sequenced using NGS technologies to study the microbiota in response to natural infection. Additionally, comparative transcriptional analysis of sorghum RILs in response to Fusarium graminearum infection was conducted through RNA-Seq. Upon natural infection, the foliar symptoms assessment of the RILs was conducted and four disease groups; resistant (R), moderately resistant (MR), susceptible (S) and highly susceptible (HS) were designated. The results of the present metabarcoding study indicate that resistant sorghum leaves (R group) supported a large diversity of fungal and bacterial microbes. The genera Methylorubrum, Enterobacter and Sphingomonas with reported plant growth promoting traits were more abundant and highly enriched in the R and MR group, with members of the latter genus significantly enriched in the R group. The resistant fungal group had a majority of OTUs showing similarity to well-known plant growth-promoting fungal genus including Papiliotrema (Tremellaceae family), which are known biocontrol agents. The yeast Hannaella was also highly linked with the resistant plants. Some Hannaella species are known to produce indole acetic acid (IAA) for promoting plant growth. Metabarcoding was also used to assess the major potential disease-causing taxa associated with the highly diseased group. It identified fungal pathogenic species, that have not previously been identified as pathogens of sorghum such as Ascochyta paspali and Ustilago kamerunensis (which are known pathogenic fungi of grass species) and were associated with the susceptible disease groups (S and HS). These analyses revealed the potential sorghum fungal pathogen Epicoccum sorghinum, and was highly linked with the S disease group. It further expanded the identification of a reportedly economically importance species causing sorghum related diseases Fusarium graminearum (anamorph Gibberella zeae). This species has also been identified in this study to be highly associated with the RILs showing major disease symptoms. Fusarium graminearum a significant pathogen in winter cereals and maize has been associated with stalk rot of sorghum and sorghum grain mould. The presence of Fusarium graminearum in sorghum can be a toxicological risk, since this species has the potential to produce mycotoxins. It was further shown that natural pathogen infection results in distinct foliar microbial communities in sorghum RILs. The co-occurrence taxa represented by Tremellomycetes and Dothiomycetes fungal classes and Bacillaceae and Sphingomonadaceae bacterial family had more central roles in the network. The modules which are located centrally on the network have been expected to play important ‘topological roles’ in interconnecting pairs of other fungal and bacterial taxa in the symbiont–symbiont co-occurrence network. These taxa having a central role, are considered to be keystone microbes, and have been suggested to be drivers of microbiome structure and functioning. The results of bacterial and fungal community composition, community co-occurrences further suggested the importance of keystone taxa which may disproportionately shape the structure of foliar microbiomes. The foliar disease symptom assessments revealed that sorghum RIL 131 was highly diseased and RIL 103 did not show any visible disease symptoms and were subsequently used for transcriptomic analysis. Gene expression patterns were studied between the identified RIL that did not show visible symptoms (resistant RIL no 103) and the RIL that showed major disease symptoms (susceptible RIL no 131). Fusarium graminearum the dominant potential pathogen found in this study to be associated with the highly susceptible plants was used to inoculate RILs at seedling stage in a greenhouse and samples were collected in triplicates at 24 hours post infection (hpi), 48 hpi, 7 days post infection (dpi) and 14 dpi. Prior to that, ITS and UBC genes confirmed the identity of Fusarium graminearum, and the automated haemocytometer confirmed the cell/spore viability. Using RNA-Seq analysis it was shown that the resistant RIL had defence related pathways from early response (24- 48 hpi) to late response (7-14 dpi). And the more the infection progressed, the more the defence related genes were up-regulated in terms of fragments per kilobase of exon model per million reads mapped (FPKM) and False Discovery Rate (FDR ≤ 0.05) values. Transcriptome time series expression profiling was used to characterize the plant response to Fusarium graminearum with the Dirichlet Process Gaussian Process mixture model software (DPGP) in susceptible and resistant RILs. The susceptible RIL (number 131) transcriptional response upon Fusarium graminearum infection presented differences of the closely related clustered expression profiles across all timepoints in both RILs. Group 2 exclusively clustered the genes encoding the sesquiterpene metabolism pathway, which is one of the major physiological change occurring in response to fungal infection and has been previously reported to produce the mycotoxins associated with Fusarium head blight (FHB) of cereals. This pathway presented an increase from the initial infection phase to the late infection phase in group 4, the genes encoding starch sucrose, metabolism and cyanoamino acid pathways presented a pattern that had a sharp decline from 48 hpi -14 dpi (at a later stage of infection). This could suggest that, as the time progresses in the susceptible RIL the pathways which are important in plant defence declines at a late infection stage. Group 3 presented a pattern increase of the 5-lipoxygenase (LOX 5) gene expressed from 48 hpi-14 dpi timepoints. The loss and silencing of LOX5 function have in the past described to be linked with enhanced disease resistance. In this study the LOX5 was expressed and this could suggest that LOX5 might have a function as a susceptibility factor in disease caused by Fusarium graminearum in sorghum RILs. CBL-interacting protein kinase 6 (CIPK6) gene was also associated with this group. This gene has been associated with negative regulation of immune response to Pseudomonas syringae in Arabidopsis as plants overexpressing CIPK6 were more susceptible to Pseudomonas syringae. Transcriptional response of a resistant RIL (number 103) to infection with Fusarium graminearum presented an increase in genes encoding metabolic and biosynthesis of metabolites pathways in group 1 and group 4 at early infection phase and a sharp decline in the late infection phase. An increase in the genes encoding pathways in earlier infection state could suggest the establishment of a beneficial energy balance for defence. Additionally, genes encoding phenylpropanoid (PAL), galactose and glycolysis pathway were amongst the genes increased at early stages of infection in group 1. Sugar can play a significant role in resistance to fungal pathogens through phenylpropanoid metabolism stimulation, and previous studies showed that the phenylpropanoid pathway could play a role in resistance of wheat to Fusarium graminearum and deoxynivalenol. Overall, this study represents a first step in understanding the molecular mechanisms involved in resistance to Fusarium graminearum. This analysis has also identified the reported beneficial microbes and defence related genes and pathways. Together, the current findings suggest that different ‘resident’ consortia found in naturally infected and uninfected sorghum plants may be viable biocontrol and plant-growth promoting targets. Cultivation studies may shed light on the nature of the putative symbiotic relationships between bacteria and fungi. These results have consequences for crop breeding, and the analysis of microbial diversity and community composition can be useful biomarkers for assessing disease status in plants. The transcriptome and metabarcoding data generated will help guide further research to develop novel strategies for management of disease in sorghum RILs through the integrative approach considering both beneficial microbes and defence related genes. This provides the baseline information and will positively impact in the development of Fusarium graminearum resistant genotypes in future through the integration/incorporation of beneficial microorganisms (bacteria and fungi) and resistant genes in breeding strategies. / Life and Consumer Sciences / D. Phil. (Life Sciences)