Category: Breeding

Posted on

Tracking down those sodium exclusion genes in wheat: Part 2

The story thus far: Our plucky heroes have traced Triticum monococcum C68-101, the wild parent of a tetraploid wheat (Line 149) with interesting salinity tolerance genes, to the University of Sydney. Maybe. Kinda. Sort of. But they keep digging, and their perseverance is not long in being rewarded. We hear again from Ray Hare.

You may remember that you asked me back in March to track down the source details of the T. monococcum used as the donor of the sodium exclusion genes Nax1 and 2. At last after some detective work I have a fairly good set of identifiers that match up.

The original seed, that was obtained by the University of Sydney, came as part of a collection of monococcums from Dr Ralph Riley of the Plant Breeding Institute, Cambridge. Prof. Eldrid Baker assembled this collection of Triticum species back in the 1960’s. C68-101 is an accession identifier in the University of Sydney Wheat register with the accession number NS 3637. It is also known as “Triticum aegilopoides – 3″. All of the entries in the University species collection have now been lodged with the Australian Winter Cereals Collection where this monococcum accession has the AUS number 98382.

I have not been able to trace the original collection location. It is likely to be Israel or a neighbouring country. PBI Cambridge had links with the Hebrew University. I have seen no shortage of all manner of Triticum species in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Israel.

I would be fairly confident that other monococcums have these Nax genes. We checked out two others from this set and each one showed Na exclusion activity. We simply had to select one accession to conduct our studies.

As I said before, the A genome diploids remain rather under researched. Who knows what may come from this ploidy level. It is quite possible that few diploids were involved in the original formation of the progenitor tetraploids and some of this A genome variation has been lost in the formation of the hexaploids. The total variation in the A genome in hexaploids is likely to be small when referenced back to that in the monococcums. I have seen good isozyme variation evidence that clearly supports this belief, in the order of a few orders of magnitude.

I am happy to be of additional assistance.

Posted on

Nibbles: Esquinas-Alcázar, Legumes, Neolithic, FAO data, Fisheries, Fish pix, Another old goat, Kew campaign, Bees

  • Pepe gets a prize from a queen.
  • The Princess of the Pea gives no prizes, though.
  • Oldest farming village in a Mediterranean island found on Cyprus. No royalty, alas.
  • The Emperor of Agricultural Statistical Handbooks is out. Oh, and the online source of the raw data has just got some new clothes.
  • Fish are in trouble. Well, not all. Kingfish, queenfish, king mackerel and emperor angelfish all unavailable for comment.
  • No royalty connected with these beautiful pictures of Asian fish either. Does a former Dutch consul count?
  • Quite a crown on this wild goat.
  • The Royal (geddit?) Botanic Gardens Kew’s Breathing Planet Campaign: The Video.
  • ICIMOD on the role bees (including, presumably, their queens) in mountain agriculture.
Posted on

Nibbles: Quinoa, Chilean landraces, Planetary sculptors, Offal, Eels, Grand Challenges in Global Health, ILRI strategy, Artemisia, Monticello, Greek food, Barley, Rain

  • The commodisation of quinoa: the good and the bad. Ah, that pesky Law of Unintended Consequences, why can we not just repeal it?
  • No doubt there are some varieties of quinoa in Chile’s new catalog of traditional seeds. Yep, there are!
  • Well, such a catalog is all well and good, but “[o]ne of the greatest databases ever created is the collection of massively diverse food genomes that have domesticated us around the world. This collection represents generation after generation of open source biohacking by hobbyists, farmers and more recently proprietary biohacking by agronomists and biologists.”
  • What’s the genome of a spleen sandwich, I wonder?
  • And this “marine snow” food for eels sounds like biohacking to me, in spades.
  • But I think this is more what they had in mind. Grand Challenges in Global Health has awarded Explorations Grants, and some of them are in agriculture.
  • Wanna help ILRI with its biohacking? Well go on then.
  • Digging up ancient Chinese malarial biohacking.
  • Digging up Thomas Jefferson’s garden. Remember Pawnee corn? I suppose it’s all organic?
  • The Mediterranean diet used to be based on the acorn. Well I’m glad we biohacked away from that.
  • How barley copes with extreme day length at high latitudes. Here comes the freaky biohacking science.
  • Why working out what is the world’s rainiest place is not as easy as it sounds. But now that we know, surely there’s some biohacking to be done with the crops there?
Posted on

Rewarding excellence in Indian rice breeding

India’s Directorate of Rice Research has just recognized the Paddy Breeding Station of Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU) as the best rice breeding station among India’s 107. The Vice-Chancellor of the university said that:

“The landmark varieties that have been developed through Pure Line Selection by this station triggered the growth of rice production in the State. The first variety — GEB 24 (Kichili Samba) — released during 1921 played a significant role in the development of rice cultivars over the years, not only in India, but world-wide.”

With help from the irrepressible Nik and his local version of IRRI’s all-knowing germplasm database we can actually kind of quantify that. It turns out that out of the 11 IRRI releases in 2011 (IR155-165), only IR157 (an irrigated japonica) doesn’t have GEB 24 in its pedigree. Just for that, it would seem to be a very well-deserved award. But I’m also told they helped IRRI build up its collection in the early days.

What about the other direction of use, though? Well, IR8 starts to feature, by itself, in the pedigrees of TNAU varieties in the early 70s (e.g. in CO38 and CO40), then by the early 80s there are 5 IRRI lines involved in the development of CO43. But by the 90s there are a couple dozen IRRI lines in the pedigree of CO47. So the flow of germplasm has been two-way.

In more ways than one. Apparently, IRRI are in the process of restoring to TNAU some of their CO varieties, which they had lost for one reason or another, but had taken the precaution of sending to Los Baños. Good collaboration all around. Great to see the achievements recognized in the popular press, if not necessarily the collaboration. But then that’s what we’re here for.

LATER: Further delving into the database by our friends at IRRI reveals that TNAU sent material quite regularly to IRRI from 1961 to 1987, with a peak of 952 accessions in 1978. But “only 40% of TNAU’s CO varieties conserved in the IRRI genebank came directly from TNAU. 30% came via CRRI and 30% via other organizations. TNAU obviously shared their material widely.”