Periodic Reporting for period 3 - dcPolyWheat (Dominant cis-regulatory variation to improve quantitative traits in polyploid wheat)
Période du rapport: 2023-10-01 au 2025-03-31
Crop production must increase to meet the food, feed, and fuel demands of a global population estimated to exceed nine billion by 2050. Currently, one in nine people live under food insecurity. With limited opportunity to expand agriculture on existing land, increasing yields could significantly reduce the number of people at risk of hunger. Despite the need for a 50% increase in crop production by 2050, our current rates of yield increase are insufficient to reach this goal. It is therefore critical and urgent that we identify innovative ways to increase crop productivity. However, improving these productivity traits is quite difficult due to that they are often controlled by multiple genes. In species such as wheat, the study of these agronomic traits is further confounded by the fact that most genes are present as two or three copies with overlapping functions. As a result, variation at single loci is often masked by redundancy with the other copies.
In recent years, there have been significant breakthroughs in genomic technologies in major crops such as wheat. Our project builds from our biological understanding of major productivity traits, the recent genomic advances in crops, alongside gene editing approaches, to develop innovative strategies to overcome the perennial problem of functional redundancy in major crops such as wheat. Using genome editing approaches, we are developing variation that should result in novel and enhanced variation, with the potential to improve productivity traits. We are developing publicly-accessible germplasm with unique and novel variation that will enhance wheat productivity traits beyond what is traditionally possible. This project paves the way to apply similar approaches to other crops and will demonstrate the transformational impact of innovative genetic solutions towards addressing food security.
In recent years, there have been significant breakthroughs in genomic technologies in major crops such as wheat. Our project builds from our biological understanding of major productivity traits, the recent genomic advances in crops, alongside gene editing approaches, to develop innovative strategies to overcome the perennial problem of functional redundancy in major crops such as wheat. Using genome editing approaches, we are developing variation that should result in novel and enhanced variation, with the potential to improve productivity traits. We are developing publicly-accessible germplasm with unique and novel variation that will enhance wheat productivity traits beyond what is traditionally possible. This project paves the way to apply similar approaches to other crops and will demonstrate the transformational impact of innovative genetic solutions towards addressing food security.
During the first half of the project our aims were to (1) generate the data required for our analysis of wheat floral and grain development, (2) identify regions of the genome which could be amenable to genome editing to improve productivity traits, and (3) develop proof-of-concept studies for the strategy. For the first aim, we have generated rich datasets of how genes are expressed during the development of wheat flowers and the early stages of grain development. This has allowed us to identify which genes are important for the development of these organs which ultimately define the yield, nutrition and quality of wheat grains. We have collaborated with multiple labs to identify regions in the genome which are amenable to genome editing with the potential to improve productivity traits. In our initial proof of concept experiments, we have found that genome edits in regions of the genome which affect the expression of genes can enhance productivity traits, such as grain size and weight. These initial experiments were conducted in glasshouses and we have now sown out the first genome edited wheat trial in Europe to test how the plants behave in the field.
Our initial work has highlighted the complexity of gene expression profiles within wheat flowers and early developing grains. This insight has meant that we have to focus on specific cell types within these developing tissues to further understand how they work and hence ultimately breed to improve productivity traits. We have developed new open-access methods and protocols to make best use of the available genomic resources and to help understand the biology of early developing wheat flowers and grains. With these methods we have identified master regulators of gene expression in wheat which we will now aim to tweak with the use of genome editing approaches. The new regulatory landscape in the UK means that we can also tests these lines in the field for enhanced performance. We expect that these experiments will allow us to identify novel genetic variation which improves our biological understanding of fundamental processes central to food and nutrition security, while at the same time having the potential to be used within breeding programmes worldwide.