Brassica Rapeseed And Vegetable Optimisation

农业正面临着使作物生产力适应气候变化的严峻挑战。更多变的天气模式要求发展能够在更广泛的环境条件下表现得更强劲的作物。与此同时，气候变化也为增加英国蔬菜生长季的长度和通过减少冬季新鲜农产品的进口来提高粮食安全提供了新的机遇，但这需要培育能够在一年中的不同时间旺盛生产的新品种。Bravo财团旨在通过学术界和工业界的密切互动来应对这些挑战。为了实现这一目标，我们汇集了来自英国境内研究机构和大学的拟南芥和油菜植物繁殖方面的世界领先专家。由于联盟成员和油菜和蔬菜油菜行业的利益攸关方举行了一系列会议，优化开花和协调高质量种子生产的发展过渡被确定为重要的共同目标。在植物繁殖过程中发生的这些转变，如开花、受精、花序生长、种子生产、扩散和随后的种子表现，现在已知是由环境响应基因网络管理的，这些基因网络建立在共同成分的基础上，最初描述的是它们控制开花时间的能力。Bravo的目标是从机制上理解开花时间基因网络在控制甘蓝生殖发育转变中的作用，从营养生长到种子生产和种子活力。因为这些网络控制环境响应性，所以可以利用这些知识来增加油籽和蔬菜甘蓝性能的稳健性。一个关键的挑战是，当相同的开花时间基因网络经过数百万年的进化而优化了多种功能时，如何优化个体性状，其中每一种功能对作物表现都很重要。在这项建议中，我们将结合基因组学和表型组学技术，结合发育遗传学和数学建模的方法，将基因型与表型联系起来，以掌握甘蓝生殖发育过程中关键转变的调控因素。通过对现有遗传资源的开发，我们将揭示甘蓝开花时间基因网络的结构，以及植物育种者过去如何对其进行修改，以导致性状变异、生活史变异和气候适应。这将使我们能够开发一个预测框架，用于设计在不损害其他作物特性的情况下改变特定作物特性的策略，并产生和测试新的遗传变异，在未来的性状改良中具有潜在的用途。同时，我们将建立和开发基因表达图谱和定向基因干扰等资源，使油菜研究和育种团体能够扩大重要生物学过程的知识，并共同利用Bravo的成果来改善油菜的作物表现。只有通过对生物过程的基本了解，才能实现长期改善和可持续的Brassica作物表现。BRAVO联盟的组成使得在油菜研究方面的卓越表现与来自密切相关的拟南芥模式物种的知识转移相结合。该项目通过项目监事会的行业成员身份、行业参与和案例研究的实际参与、频繁的财团会议和年度利益相关者活动，建立并扩大了学术界和行业的互动。我们相信，该项目提供了一个独特的机会，使行业优先事项与优秀的基础研究计划保持一致，以帮助确保英国和世界范围内甘蓝作物的未来产量。

Agriculture is facing the crucial challenge of adapting crop productivity to changes in the climate. More variable weather patterns require the development of crops that are able to perform more robustly under a wider range of environmental conditions. At the same time, climate change also provides new opportunities for increasing the length of the UK vegetable growing season and increasing food security by reducing imports of fresh produce during the winter, but this requires breeding new varieties that are able to produce robustly at different times of year.The BRAVO consortium aims to meet these challenges through close interactions between academia and industry. To achieve this goal, we have brought together world-leading experts in both Arabidopsis and Brassica plant reproduction from research institutes and universities within the UK. As the result of a series of meetings between consortium members and stakeholders from the oilseed rape and vegetable Brassica industries, optimisation of flowering and coordination of developmental transitions in the production of high-quality seeds were identified as important common targets. These transitions that occur during plant reproduction such as to flowering, fertilisation, inflorescence growth, seed production, dispersal, and subsequent seed performance are now known to be managed by environmentally responsive gene networks built on a foundation of common components first described for their ability to control flowering time.The goal of BRAVO is to provide a mechanistic understanding of the role of flowering time gene networks in the control of Brassica reproductive developmental transitions from vegetative growth through to seed production and seed vigour. Because these networks control environmental responsiveness, this knowledge can be exploited to increase robustness in the performance of oilseed and vegetable Brassicas. A key challenge is how to optimise individual traits when the same flowering time gene network has been optimised by evolution over millions of years for multiple functions, each of which is important for crop performance. In this proposal, we will combine genomics and phenomics technologies with approaches in developmental genetics and mathematical modelling to link genotype to phenotype for master regulators of key transitions during Brassica reproductive development. Through exploitation of available genetic resources, we will reveal the architecture of flowering time gene networks in Brassicas and how they have been modified in the past by plant breeders to cause trait variation, life history variation and climate adaptation. This will allow us to develop a predictive framework for designing strategies to vary specific crop characteristics without harming others, and to generate and test novel genetic variation with potential uses in future trait enhancement.In parallel we will establish and exploit resources such as a gene expression atlas and targeted gene disruption which will allow the Brassica research and breeding communities to expand knowledge on important biological processes and use the outputs form BRAVO collectively to improve Brassica crop performance. Long-term improved and sustainable Brassica crop performance can only be achieved through fundamental understanding of biological processes. The composition of the BRAVO consortium allows the combination of excellence in Brassica research with knowledge transfer from the closely related Arabidopsis model species. The project builds on and expands academia-industry interactions through industrial membership on the project's Supervisory Board, industry engagement and practical involvement in case studies, frequent consortium meetings and annual stakeholder events.We believe this project provides a unique opportunity to align industry priorities with excellent fundamental research programmes in order to help secure the future yield of Brassica crops in the UK and worldwide.