Genetic improvement of maize to enhance food safety by introducing resistance to fusarium moniliforme

Objective

World wide maize is contaminated by mycotoxins produced by the post-harvestpathogen Fusarium moniliforme which not only reduces crop yield but is also toxicto humans and animals consuming the infected grain. The project objective is to address food safety by developing maize with durable resistance to F moniliformeusing two parallel approaches, namely selection for conventional resistance as well as molecular genetic techniques. Field and glasshouse screening methods will be developed to select resistant genotypes adapted to both Europe and Africa. Concomitantly, maize will be engineered with four available plant anti-fungal genes and the resultant transgenic maize evaluated in field trials. In addition, improvement of a plant anti-fungal gene will be carried out by in vitro directed evolution.

Programme(s)

• FP5-INCO 2 - Programme for research, technological development and demonstration on "Confirming the international role of Community research,1998-2002"

Funding Scheme

Coordinator

Participants (6)