Developing extreme climate-resilient canola varieties

通过这项提案，我们的目标是确定耐旱性背后的分子机制，并产生上级油菜品种，这些品种能够耐受每年造成重大收入损失的极端天气条件。油菜是加拿大的主要经济作物，为加拿大经济贡献了约193亿美元。近年来，由于全球变暖引起的天气模式的极端变化，油菜作物不断遭受严重干旱，导致收入损失超过20-30%。除此之外，早季和晚季的极端霜冻条件也分别影响幼苗的建立和适当的结实。因此，工程新的油菜性状，使不可预测的温度波动的弹性是必要的，以维持油菜产量在不断变化的气候条件下。我们最近发现，降低内源性类固醇植物激素水平的结果增加耐旱性的模式植物拟南芥（油菜的近亲）。我们建议同时使用转基因和非转基因方法来培育对加拿大最佳生长条件下很少遇到的天气条件有适应力的油菜植物。从长远来看，这项技术将与已经在实验室中进行的抗冻油菜平台相结合，以创造新的油菜品种。该提案直接与战略研究主题“生物技术/气候变化适应性植物的产生”下的“环境与农业”目标领域保持一致。我们的支持组织Siniazo Biotech Inc.该公司拥有一套专有分子遗传技术的独家许可权，这些技术赋予了目前业内无与伦比的模式作物耐旱性。Siniazo Biotech将积极参与提案的制定，研究目标，并在项目期间继续提供定期指导，以产生具有可商业化的气候适应性特征的油菜品种。实现该项目的目标将导致开发一种新的适应气候的油菜品种，使其能够在具有挑战性的条件下持续高产，并为加拿大生产者提供巨大的经济和社会经济效益。

Through this proposal we aim to identify molecular mechanisms behind drought tolerance and generate superior canola varieties that are tolerant to extreme weather conditions that inflict significant losses in revenue on an annual basis. Canola is the major cash crop in Canada and contributes ~19.3 billion dollars to the Canadian economy. In recent years, due to extreme changes in weather patterns observed due to global warming, canola crop is constantly exposed to severe drought conditions that result in more than 20-30% loss in revenue. In addition to this, early and late season extreme frost conditions also affect seedling establishment and proper seed set respectively. Thus, engineering novel canola traits that allow resilience to unpredictable temperature fluctuations is imperative to sustain canola yield under changing climatic conditions. We have recently uncovered that reducing endogenous levels of a steroid plant hormone results in increased drought tolerance in the model plant Arabidopsis (close relative of canola). We propose to use both GM and non-GM approaches to generate canola plants that are resilient to weather conditions that were seldom encountered under optimal growing conditions in Canada. In the long-term, this technology will be combined with the frost-tolerant canola platform that is already in progress in the lab to create novel canola varieties. This proposal is directly aligned with the 'Environment and Agriculture' target area under the strategic research topic 'Biotechnology/generation of climate-change-resilient plants'. Our supporting organization Siniazo Biotech Inc. owns exclusive licensed rights to the suite of proprietary molecular genetic technologies that confer drought tolerance in model crops that is currently unparalleled in the industry. Siniazo Biotech will be actively involved in development of the proposal, research goals and continue to provide regular guidance during the project to generate canola varieties with climate-resilient traits that can be commercialized. Achieving the objectives of this project will result in development of a new climate-resilient canola traits that will allow sustained yield under challenging conditions and provide great economic and socio-economic benefits to Canadian producers.