Improving water use and accelerating breeding pipelines in Mexican avocado

改善墨西哥鳄梨的用水并加速培育管道

• 批准号: BB/S012850/1
• 负责人: Stuart Casson
• 金额: $ 68.94万
• 依托单位: University of Sheffield
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2019 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=BB%2FS012850%2F1
• 关键词: Improving; water; use; accelerating; breeding

Mexico is the world's leading avocado producer and Jalisco is the second largest avocado producing state. The global trade in this fruit makes avocado Mexico's most valuable agricultural product and this has a major impact on the the quality of life of thousands of farmers and workers employed in its cultivation and supply chain. Water availability has a major impact on avocado growth and yield, which is of major concern given the growing water crisis facing Mexico. Water demand is so great that ground water supplies are being depleted and droughts are frequent, with large areas of Jalisco being affected by severe drought. Given the economic importance of this crop to Mexico, it is therefore vital that breeding programs focus on improving the resilience of avocado to water stress and improve the amount of crop per drop. This has been recognized by policy makers in the Mexican Agri-Food Agenda, determining that the generation of varieties of avocado adaptable to different agro-ecological conditions is a priority issue. Avocado has a wealth of genetic resources that could be used to achieve this aim yet major barriers exists to utilising these resources. This is because avocado is a perennial species with a prolonged juvenile stage, meaning that it can take years to segregate outstanding characteristics in germplasm with commercial characteristics by traditional breeding. Further, whilst there are significant genetic resources in terms of different accessions, this is poorly supported by genomics resources. For example, as yet there is no genome sequence and limited gene expression data. This project aims to address these barriers and provide a platform for advancing avocado breeding programs. As improved resilience against water stress is a key trait and aim for breeders, as a case-study, we will focus on improving water use efficiency (WUE) and drought tolerance using knowledge gained from work with other plants. To address these issues, our project has three objectives. The first is focused on reducing the time that is required for avocado trees to flower. As a proof of concept, we will utilise biotechnology to increase the expression of a positive regulator of flowering with the future aim of developing non-transgenic approaches to achieve this. Our second objective is focused on identifying and then characterising avocado accessions with improved water use. Here, we will generate a number of genomic resources, in order to enable molecular research in this area, which is currently limited due to a lack of sequence information. Finally, we will focus on facilitating the use of gene editing technologies in avocado, which when coupled to our goal of faster flowering, should significantly accelerate the breeding pipelines of avocado. This research and the resources it develops will be made publicly available to the avocado research and breeding community and will be valuable for advancing breeding steps. This will enable targeted improvement of this Mexican crop and through improved water use, should also reduce the water requirements of this crop, and so reduce pressure on Mexico's freshwater supplies.

墨西哥是世界领先的鳄梨生产国，哈利斯科是第二大鳄梨生产州。这种水果的全球贸易使鳄梨成为墨西哥最有价值的农产品，这对种植和供应链中雇用的数千名农民和工人的生活质量产生了重大影响。水的供应对鳄梨的生长和产量有重大影响，考虑到墨西哥面临的日益严重的水危机，这是一个主要问题。水的需求如此之大，以致地下水供应正在枯竭，干旱频繁，哈利斯科的大片地区受到严重干旱的影响。考虑到这种作物对墨西哥的经济重要性，因此育种计划的重点是提高鳄梨对水分胁迫的适应能力，并提高每滴鳄梨的产量。墨西哥农业食品议程的政策制定者已经认识到这一点，确定生产适应不同农业生态条件的鳄梨品种是一个优先问题。鳄梨拥有丰富的遗传资源，可用于实现这一目标，但利用这些资源存在重大障碍。这是因为鳄梨是一种多年生物种，具有较长的幼年期，这意味着通过传统育种可能需要数年时间才能分离出具有商业特征的种质中的突出特征。此外，虽然在不同的加入方面有重要的遗传资源，但基因组学资源的支持很差。例如，至今没有基因组序列和有限的基因表达数据。该项目旨在解决这些障碍，并为推进鳄梨育种计划提供平台。由于提高对水分胁迫的适应能力是育种者的一个关键性状和目标，作为一个案例研究，我们将利用从其他植物的工作中获得的知识，重点提高水分利用效率（WUE）和耐旱性。为了解决这些问题，我们的项目有三个目标。第一个重点是减少鳄梨树开花所需的时间。作为概念验证，我们将利用生物技术来增加开花的正调控因子的表达，未来的目标是开发非转基因方法来实现这一目标。我们的第二个目标是重点确定，然后表征鳄梨加入改善用水。在这里，我们将产生一些基因组资源，以使这一领域的分子研究，这是目前有限的，由于缺乏序列信息。最后，我们将专注于促进在鳄梨中使用基因编辑技术，这与我们更快开花的目标相结合，应该会大大加快鳄梨的育种管道。这项研究及其开发的资源将公开提供给鳄梨研究和育种界，并将对推进育种步骤有价值。这将有助于有针对性地改善墨西哥的这一作物，并通过改善用水，也应该减少这一作物的用水需求，从而减轻墨西哥淡水供应的压力。

项目成果

Old and new horizons on Persea americana transformation techniques and applications

• DOI: 10.1007/s11240-022-02268-7
• 发表时间: 2022-03
• 期刊: Plant Cell, Tissue and Organ Culture (PCTOC)
• 作者: Diana Isabel Tamayo-Ramos;J. A. Salazar-González;S. Casson;Rafael Urrea-López

In-planta transient transformation of avocado (Persea americana) by vacuum agroinfiltration of aerial plant parts

• DOI: 10.1007/s11240-022-02436-9
• 发表时间: 2023-01-15
• 期刊: PLANT CELL TISSUE AND ORGAN CULTURE
• 影响因子: 3
• 作者: Salazar-Gonzalez，Jorge Alberto;Castro-Medina，Manuela;Urrea-Lopez，Rafael
• 通讯作者: Urrea-Lopez，Rafael

Stomatal Development and Gene Expression in Rice Florets.

水稻小花的气孔发育和基因表达。

• DOI: 10.1093/pcp/pcac120
• 发表时间: 2022
• 期刊: Plant & cell physiology
• 影响因子: 4.9
• 作者: Bertolino LT

Leaf wounding and jasmonic acid act synergistically to enable efficient Agrobacterium-mediated transient transformation of Persea americana

叶伤和茉莉酸协同作用，使农杆菌介导的美洲鲈有效瞬时转化

• DOI: 10.21203/rs.3.rs-1631178/v1
• 发表时间: 2022
• 作者: Salazar-González J