Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SUPERTEFF (A new paradigm in boosting orphan crops to super grains: Linking metabolomics and gene editing to improve Teff for global food security and sustainable agriculture)
Reporting period: 2020-03-25 to 2022-03-24
With increasing urbanization and climate change it is predicted that there will be a global crisis in the future agricultural systems by 2050 due to the increase in demand for staple food crops. To reduce the gap between the food supply and demand, sustainable agriculture and food security is one of the targeted priorities. Over the past decade’s improvement strategies are focused on staple crops like wheat, rice and maize. But this will not be an effective solution to meet the future requirements of the growing global population where different parts of the world have different growing conditions and needs. Considering this, one strategy to alleviate these pressures is through the diversification of minor or "orphan crops”. These crops have the advantages that they are nutritious and are more responsive to a rapidly changing environment with more productivity but often they have received less attention from the research community.
Major calorie consumption of human diet comes from the cereals and of the many edible cereals there are a category of niche crops (millets and Teff), where they have been exploited only for their nutritional benefits and is being gaining demand as functional foods in the Western countries at the same time there is a need to tackle the malnutrition in Africa and Asia by improving their staple food crops.
This current project targets an emerging Ethiopian cereal, Teff that has received less research attention. Teff is a tiny-seeded Ethiopian crop and serve as a staple food for over 50 million people in the Horn of Africa. It is recently gaining prominence in the food market because of its gluten-free nature and high-levels of proteins, minerals (iron and calcium), flavonoids (antioxidants) vitamins and slow-digestible starch and is an alternative for people suffering from gluten intolerance and type 2 diabetes. Tef is found to thrive in a wide range of environmental conditions such as drought and water logging. Despite its nutritional and resilience nature, tef has lower yield due to lack of sustained research and development efforts that limits its contribution towards global food and nutrition security.
The characteristics of teff make it an excellent candidate for bio-fortification and crop improvement and to further develop this under-utilized/studied species as a sustainable crop for research led agricultural growth. Overall aim of SUPERTEFF project is to augment the value of this neglected crop into a 'super grain' by applying various high-throughput omics approaches. This involves the novel application of phenomics and metabolomics based studies followed by the implementation of the Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) system in exploring the potential of this crop for human food and animal feed. Taking this forward, for the first time, a large collection of teff varieties will be screened using wide range of genome and metabolite approaches.The proposed study will identify elite teff lines with better yield and nutritional quality which will further help the Ethiopian farmers and breeders in their tef breeding and improvement programmes.
Major calorie consumption of human diet comes from the cereals and of the many edible cereals there are a category of niche crops (millets and Teff), where they have been exploited only for their nutritional benefits and is being gaining demand as functional foods in the Western countries at the same time there is a need to tackle the malnutrition in Africa and Asia by improving their staple food crops.
This current project targets an emerging Ethiopian cereal, Teff that has received less research attention. Teff is a tiny-seeded Ethiopian crop and serve as a staple food for over 50 million people in the Horn of Africa. It is recently gaining prominence in the food market because of its gluten-free nature and high-levels of proteins, minerals (iron and calcium), flavonoids (antioxidants) vitamins and slow-digestible starch and is an alternative for people suffering from gluten intolerance and type 2 diabetes. Tef is found to thrive in a wide range of environmental conditions such as drought and water logging. Despite its nutritional and resilience nature, tef has lower yield due to lack of sustained research and development efforts that limits its contribution towards global food and nutrition security.
The characteristics of teff make it an excellent candidate for bio-fortification and crop improvement and to further develop this under-utilized/studied species as a sustainable crop for research led agricultural growth. Overall aim of SUPERTEFF project is to augment the value of this neglected crop into a 'super grain' by applying various high-throughput omics approaches. This involves the novel application of phenomics and metabolomics based studies followed by the implementation of the Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) system in exploring the potential of this crop for human food and animal feed. Taking this forward, for the first time, a large collection of teff varieties will be screened using wide range of genome and metabolite approaches.The proposed study will identify elite teff lines with better yield and nutritional quality which will further help the Ethiopian farmers and breeders in their tef breeding and improvement programmes.
SUPERTEFF project is divided into four work packages (WP). The first three work packages is to understand the diversity within in the teff population using phenolics metabolomics and genomics approaches. WP1 was focused on identifying teff germplasm rich in agronomically important traits and also to understand the natural variation by phenomic imaging. This included screening of 350 teff accessions under the controlled environmental conditions using a non-destructive automatic phenotyping platform at National Plant Phenomics centre in Aberystwyth University. Following this various plant tissues (leaves, stem and grains) were sampled for performing untargeted and targeted metabolite profiling using Flow Infusion Electrospray Ionization High Resolution Mass Spectrometry (FIE-HRMS) and HPLC to identify traits associated with nutrition, lodging and genetic diversity.
WP4 is designed to address the major constraint in Teff using CRISPR-gene editing system. This was one of the challenging objective as there was no research done in Teff using gene editing. This was achieved by several trial and error methods and finally an efficient tissue culture and plant transformation protocol was developed which can be used for implementing future gene editing trials in Teff.
Apart from this, impact of drought in teff was also explored thorough SUPERTEFF project. Teff is a climate-resilient crop and understanding the drought adaptive mechanism would benefit to improve the drought resilience properties in teff and other cereal crops.From the preliminary study, by screening teff seedling under drought has suggested that high levels of flavonoids could contribute drought tolerance.Tef is rich in phenols and flavonoids and being an orphan crop the molecular basis of high levels of flavonoid content in drought tolerance remains poorly unknown. The output of this study provides insights into the regulatory role of flavonoids towards drought stress and could provide potential breeding targets for teff.
WP4 is designed to address the major constraint in Teff using CRISPR-gene editing system. This was one of the challenging objective as there was no research done in Teff using gene editing. This was achieved by several trial and error methods and finally an efficient tissue culture and plant transformation protocol was developed which can be used for implementing future gene editing trials in Teff.
Apart from this, impact of drought in teff was also explored thorough SUPERTEFF project. Teff is a climate-resilient crop and understanding the drought adaptive mechanism would benefit to improve the drought resilience properties in teff and other cereal crops.From the preliminary study, by screening teff seedling under drought has suggested that high levels of flavonoids could contribute drought tolerance.Tef is rich in phenols and flavonoids and being an orphan crop the molecular basis of high levels of flavonoid content in drought tolerance remains poorly unknown. The output of this study provides insights into the regulatory role of flavonoids towards drought stress and could provide potential breeding targets for teff.
Developing genomic resources : Through SUPERTEFF project we aimed to build more resources that could be benefited for teff breeders and farmers for initiating further research and development. To this end, we have done the full-genome sequencing of a white Teff variety along with a wild relative Eragrostis pilosa. Comparing the teff genome with wild relative will provide in-depth understanding ofteff evolution, agronomic and nutrient traits that could be used for the selection of targets in teff breeding.
Socio-eonomic impact: Apart from the primary SUPERTEFF objectives we accomplished in bringing active participation of other partners. One of the potential collaboration that was established through this project was with John Innes Centre, UK and Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR).Through the ongoing MSCA activities we were also involved in the transfer of metabolomics expertise to take part together in the GWAS studies by JIC and thereby helping both the institutes (JIC and EIAR). We have also volunteered to contribute about 13 teff genome towards pangenome project. Combining all these efforts from genomics to metabolomics will lead to the enrichment and generation of teff resources that will be shared through high-impact scientific journals to the wider scientific community.
Bringing in SME partners: Teff research in IBERS as part of MSCA activities has also received attention from SME partners in UK. Recently, the CEO of https://birkuta.co.uk/ has shown their interest in collaborating with us and we are initiating joint discussions to further establish this network mainly for using teff for food applications for future.
Contributing to COST actions: There is a rise in the demand for gluten free food and drinks in UK and in the Western world due to change in dietary habits. Along with Germany and Netherlands, UK is also a major player in the gluten-free market. For this we are participating in an existing COST ACTION Promoting Innovation of ferMENTed fOods (PIMENTO) which is focused on promoting fermented foods.
Building on these teams will contribute new knowledge to the field of forgotten crop research thereby developing a continent-wide networking research activity between UK, Europe Ethiopia and Africa.
Socio-eonomic impact: Apart from the primary SUPERTEFF objectives we accomplished in bringing active participation of other partners. One of the potential collaboration that was established through this project was with John Innes Centre, UK and Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR).Through the ongoing MSCA activities we were also involved in the transfer of metabolomics expertise to take part together in the GWAS studies by JIC and thereby helping both the institutes (JIC and EIAR). We have also volunteered to contribute about 13 teff genome towards pangenome project. Combining all these efforts from genomics to metabolomics will lead to the enrichment and generation of teff resources that will be shared through high-impact scientific journals to the wider scientific community.
Bringing in SME partners: Teff research in IBERS as part of MSCA activities has also received attention from SME partners in UK. Recently, the CEO of https://birkuta.co.uk/ has shown their interest in collaborating with us and we are initiating joint discussions to further establish this network mainly for using teff for food applications for future.
Contributing to COST actions: There is a rise in the demand for gluten free food and drinks in UK and in the Western world due to change in dietary habits. Along with Germany and Netherlands, UK is also a major player in the gluten-free market. For this we are participating in an existing COST ACTION Promoting Innovation of ferMENTed fOods (PIMENTO) which is focused on promoting fermented foods.
Building on these teams will contribute new knowledge to the field of forgotten crop research thereby developing a continent-wide networking research activity between UK, Europe Ethiopia and Africa.