Turning over a new leaf: Use of state-of-the-art phenotyping and genomics to breed for plant architecture in strawberry

上级品种对英国草莓的可持续生产至关重要。生产成本的增长远远超过了所生产水果的价格，这意味着新品种必须更便宜，更容易种植，以保持生产盈利。植物结构（草莓植物生长的方式），包括植物产生多少叶子，叶子如何定位以及水果和花朵如何展示，对于盈利生产至关重要。植物结构对生产多少浆果和这些浆果的甜度有重要影响。它还影响植物患病或虫害的容易程度（树冠越密，情况越糟），它还影响采摘者获得果实的容易程度，浓密的植物使采摘浆果的速度慢得多。据估计，具有良好平衡架构的工厂可以将生产成本降低10%以上，使生产利润显著提高，每年在整个英国节省约2000万英镑。因此，植物育种家试图培育具有良好植物结构的新品种，但由于性状复杂，这一过程很困难。该项目旨在开发分子标记，以帮助培育新的草莓品种。它将使用最先进的机器学习技术来捕获植物结构的数据，并使用这些数据，沿着有关草莓植物DNA的信息，以开发工具，以传统的方式（不使用转基因技术）培育具有更好植物结构的草莓。该项目的成果将导致为英国开发上级、更可持续的草莓品种，使种植者保持盈利。

Superior varieties are crucial for sustainable strawberry production in the UK. Production costs have increased far more than the price of the fruit produced, meaning new varieties must be cheaper and easier to grow to keep their production profitable. Plant architecture (the way the strawberry plant grows), including how many leaves the plant produces, how the leaves are positioned and how the fruit and flowers are displayed, is critical for profitable production. Plant architecture has important effects on how many berries are produced and how sweet those berries are. It also affects how easily plants will get diseased or infested with pests (the denser the canopy, the worse), and it affects how easily pickers can access the fruit, with very bushy plants making picking berries much slower. It has been estimated that plants with well-balanced architecture could reduce production costs by more than 10%, making production significantly more profitable and saving an estimated £20 million across the whole of the UK every year. Plant breeders have therefore tried to breed new varieties with good plant architecture, but the process is difficult because the traits are complex. This project will aim to develop molecular markers to help breed new strawberry varieties. It will use cutting edge machine-learning technologies to capture data on plant architecture and use this, along with information about the DNA of the strawberry plants to develop tools to breed strawberries with better plant architecture in a classical way (without the use of GM technology). The project outcomes will lead to the development of superior, more sustainable strawberry varieties for the UK that will keep the growers profitable.