The genetic control of morphological and ionomic adaptation during the colonisation of India by grain amaranth

气候变化和人口快速增长对作物生产构成重大挑战。具有高营养价值的小作物，如籽粒阿马兰斯，有可能促进未来的粮食安全。一种作物要想在其原生范围之外扩展，就需要迅速适应新的环境。要了解适应是如何进行的，需要详细了解遗传多样性和适应性特征。这种性状适应包括形态性状和内在性状，如植物离子组。最近一种作物在地球仪上的传播是理解适应新环境的一个理想模型。即使是像籽粒阿马兰斯这样的次要作物，在过去的几千年里也已经传播到了它们的驯化中心之外。在世界各地传播之前，三种籽粒苋在6000多年前在美洲被驯化，后来被引入印度。在过去的400年里，当地的地方品种已经适应了独特的印度气候。我们的初步研究结果表明，所有三种籽粒阿马兰斯都有助于作物适应新的环境。此外，良好适应的本地野生近缘种可能有助于适应性遗传变异的作物，并促进殖民化。在这个项目中，我们将结合联合收割机群体遗传学、数量遗传学和分子遗传学来理解作物扩展到新环境的潜在遗传变化。使用阿马兰斯引入印度作为最近作物扩展的模型，我们将分析形态学、遗传学和基因组信号，以理解适应性和适应性遗传变异的来源，使籽粒阿马兰斯成功地在印度殖民。此外，我们的目标是了解籽粒阿马兰斯的农艺和品质性状的分子基础。我们的目标是通过表达分析和基因组编辑来验证关键候选基因的功能。德国-印度合作将作物育种研究与田间设施和生物学专业知识结合起来，与进化基因组学，群体遗传学和分子专业知识结合起来。该团队是解决拟议研究问题的理想选择。我们将在三种不同的环境中测试300粒阿马兰斯，并采用全基因组测序来追踪适应性变异，并绘制我们将进行分子验证的致病基因。通过比较该作物和本地野生近缘种的遗传变异，将有助于阐明它们对印度阿马兰斯地方品种适应性的贡献。通过这项合作项目，我们将有助于了解作物如何适应新环境以及适应性遗传变异的来源。我们希望能够找到调节营养价值性状的基因，从而在未来提高作物质量和产量。

Changing climate and rapid population growth pose major challenges to crop production. Minor crops with high nutritional values, such as grain amaranth have the potential to contribute to future food security. The expansion of a crop beyond its native range requires rapid adaptation to the new environment. To understand how adaptation proceeds, detailed knowledge about the genetic diversity and adaptive traits is required. Such trait adaptation includes morphological traits and intrinsic traits such as the plant ionome. The recent spread of a crop across the globe is an ideal model to understand adaptation to new environments.Even minor crops like grain amaranth have spread outside their center of domestication over the last millennia. Before spreading around the world, three grain amaranth species were domesticated over 6000 years ago in the Americas and were later introduced to India. Within the last 400 years local landraces have adapted to distinct Indian climates. Our preliminary results suggest that all three grain amaranth species have contributed to adapt the crop to their new environment. In addition, well adapted native wild relatives potentially contributed adaptive genetic variation to the crop and facilitated the colonization. In this project we will combine population, quantitative and molecular genetics to understand the underlying genetic changes of crop expansion to new environments.Using the introduction of amaranth to India as a model of recent crop expansion, we will analyze morphological, ionomic and genomic signals to understand the adaptations and the sources of adaptive genetic variation that allowed grain amaranth to successfully colonize India. In addition, we aim to understand the molecular basis of agronomic and quality traits of grain amaranth. We aim to validate the function of key candidate genes through expression analysis and genome editing.The German-Indian collaboration brings together crop breeding research with field facilities and expertise in ionomics, with the evolutionary genomics, population genetics and molecular expertise.The team is ideal to address the proposed research questions. We will test 300 grain amaranth accession in three different environments and employ whole genome sequencing to trace adaptive variation and map causal genes that we will molecularly validate. The comparison of genetic variation of the crop and native wild relatives will allow to elucidate their contribution to the adaptation of Indian amaranth landraces.Through this collaborative project, we will help to understand how crops adapt to new environment and the sources of genetic variation for adaptation. We hope to identify genes regulating traits of nutritional value that allow to improve crop quality and production in the future