PFI-TT: High-Throughput Plant Genetics Platform

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The broader impact/commercial potential of this Partnerships for Innovation - Technology Translation (PFI-TT) project is in improving the breeding of agricultural crops. Measuring the inheritance of genetic variations is a critical component of modern plant breeding. Companies individually perform hundreds of thousands of genetic measurements each day during peak season as they work to breed the most productive, most resilient, and most appetizing crops. The proposed technology is expected to facilitate the performance of very large numbers of parallel, low cost of plant genetics measurements. This strategy will allow highly information-rich breeding strategies to be broadly employed in a way that has not previously been possible due to the higher cost and slower processing of current approaches. The proposed system is anticipated to have applications in both agriculture and healthcare.The proposed project will leverage a technology recently invented at the NSF IUCRC Center for Advanced Design and Manufacturing of Integrated Microfluidics (CADMIM, NSF Award IIP-1841509) that enables the formulation of large arrays of genetic measurements through the use of detailed networks of miniaturized plumbing. This PFI team has previously demonstrated that the proposed system is capable of performing the distribution and mixing operations required to prepare the targeted genetic measurement reactions. However, the reactions themselves have yet to be demonstrated. This PFI project will transition the technology to a new material platform that will be faster to manufacture and more conducive to performing the required biochemical reactions. The error rate of the genetic measurements will also be characterized, and the manufacturing processes will be tuned to improve accuracy. Finally, the number of genetic measurements per device will be scaled up, with a target of performing about 6000 measurements simultaneously on each device. The expected technical endpoint of this project will be a fully functional prototype ready for testing by different companies in the plant agriculture industry.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.