AGENT · Ancient genetics (AGENT): Capturing signatures of nutrient stress tolerance from extant landraces to unlock the production potential of marginal lands
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2020-08-03 → 2022-09-06
- EU contribution
- €224,934
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Ancient genetics (AGENT): Capturing signatures of nutrient stress tolerance from extant landraces to unlock the production potential of marginal lands
Recent work has demonstrated a superior capacity of Northern European barley landraces, adapted to marginal soils, to acquire and allocate essential micronutrients, particularly manganese. Based on the striking phenotypic contrast, crosses between these landrace ‘Bere’ barleys to elite cultivars were developed which segregate for manganese uptake efficiency. A two-pronged strategy, employing classical biparental F2 mapping and Bulk Segregant Analysis (BSA) were taken to identify candidate regions and genes associated with the trait. A population of 288 F2s were genotyped with over 44,000 gene-based SNP markers and the pooled bulks of high and low manganese efficiency were sequenced. Over 209,000 SNPs discriminated between bulks and a strong candidate chromosome region on 6H was identified.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
The goal of this project is to exploit ancient Northern European landraces and improve the ability of the important cereal, barley, to acquire and utilize nutrients from the soil more efficiently. Climate change pressures and degradation of arable lands are expected to increase the need to produce feed and food even in unfavorable environments, such as marginal soils with inherent nutrient limitations. Thus, it will be a major breeding focus to select traits associated with enhanced crop robustness in order to secure the future demand for plant products. In this context, recent work has demonstrated a superior capacity of Northern European barley landraces, adapted to marginal soils, to acquire and allocate essential micronutrients. This project aims to advance our knowledge of adaptive traits conferring nutrient use efficiency. This will be achieved by bridging disciplines of plant genetics and plant nutrition, not only by unravelling functions of individual genes, but also by capturing the compensatory adjustments at the transcriptome and molecular physiology levels, preserved in landraces but seemingly lost from modern elite cultivars. The overall scientific objective is to identify the genetic control of nutrient stress tolerance, and specifically to: (i) use exome capture sequencing to identify candidate genes involved in nutrient deficiency tolerance; (ii) study the transcriptional responses of these genes under nutrient stress and their dynamics with time after stress recovery; (iii) describe in detail the physiological responses contributing to improved nutrient stress tolerance of major cereal crops. The proposed project will deliver quantitative information and a predictive understanding of nutrient stress tolerance and will provide new breeding material. The findings will act as an exemplar for other major cereals to expand cultivation and stabilize yields in marginal previously unproductive land.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- THE JAMES HUTTON INSTITUTE · InvergowrieCoordinatorUnited Kingdom
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union