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Building Resilience to Climate Change: Enhancing Biodiversity in Annual and Perennial Crops with Nuclear Innovations

Open for proposals

Project Type

Coordinated Research Project

Project Code

D24018

CRP

2482

Approved Date

13 May 2025

Status

New - Collecting or Evaluating proposals

Description

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Climate change poses a significant threat to global food security by disrupting crop production through unpredictable weather patterns, declining yields, and increased vulnerability to biotic and abiotic stresses. The limited availability of climate-resilient, nutritionally diverse crop varieties restricts the food system’s ability to adapt to changing conditions and access to diverse, sustainable and nutritious diets to growing populations.
Focusing on research that contributes to the improvement and adaptation of vegetatively propagated crops is essential for several reasons. Vegetatively propagated crops (VPCs), annuals such as cassava and taro; and perennials such as citrus and avocado are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change due to their genetic uniformity, making them highly susceptible to disease outbreaks and stresses.
This new CRP project is aimed at developing key technologies for crop improvement of vegetatively propagated crops (cassava, taro, citrus, and avocado) including nuclear-based induced genetic diversity (using radiation to create mutations and expand variability), effective micropropagation methods, rapid generation advance (RGA) to accelerate breeding cycles, and advanced phenotyping tools that will contribute to identify superior mutant lines with enhanced tolerance/resistance to abiotic stresses, as well as improved nutritional quality.
Inducing mutations to create heritable variations has been a longstanding method for enhancing various traits in numerous crops, including those that are vegetatively propagated. However, most mutant varieties are seed propagated with reduced applications in vegetatively propagated crops due to the requirement of well-established micropropagation methods. Therefore, mutation breeding using?in vitro?cultured clones shows significant potential for further diversifying the genetic base of crops such as cassava, taro, citrus, and avocado.
The application of Rapid Generation Advancement (RGA) in vegetatively propagated crops presents a new promising strategy to shorten breeding cycles through physiological interventions such as modified lighting, temperature control, and the use of induced mutagenesis to obtain early, profuse and/or synchronous flowering clones. This approach is particularly relevant for crops like taro and cassava with limited and inconsistent flowering hampers crossbreeding efforts for trait transferring as well as the development of M2/M3 mutant populations for trait evaluation in the progenies. In citrus and avocado, the breeding process is further constrained by long juvenile periods, early flowering varieties would contribute to faster breeding schemes. Avocado poses additional challenges due to its asynchronous flowering behavior—where male and female phases occur at different times—complicating both controlled pollination for breeding and fruit production. RGA using physiological methods and mutagenesis can significantly reduce the time required to develop and release improved, climate-resilient, and high-yielding crop varieties.?
Vegetatively propagated crops are vital for nutritious and diverse diets, but their qualities vary widely. Improving these crops involves enhancing nutritional profiles and reducing antinutrients. Near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy and other spectroscopy methods are key technologies that allow rapid, non-destructive analysis of nutritional components as well as antinutrients. Once adequate calibrations have been conducted, these technologies support high-throughput phenotyping in breeding programs.
Rapid, reliable, and affordable methods of screening for abiotic stress tolerance. Imaging methods can contribute to accelerating the evaluation of crops to determine the variation in their response to stresses and identify outstanding mutant lines. The protocol developed may use rating/scoring methods, as well as quantitative measurements of physiological variables, among other methods.

Objectives

General objective:
To develop technologies that will enhance diversity of local varieties of annual and perennial vegetatively propagated crops by making them more nutritious and resilient to climate-related challenges. It focuses on introducing new genetic diversity through induced mutations and rapid generation advance technologies, strengthen the crops' ability to adapt to changing environmental conditions, ultimately increasing their resilience to climate change without compromising their nutritional value.

Specific objectives:
1. To establish and optimise protocols for micropropagation and mutation induction in target crops.
2. To develop protocols for rapid generation advance (RGA).
3. To establish and optimise rapid and easy to apply protocols to screen for adaptation to abiotic stresses (drought, salinity, etc.).
4. To develop and optimise protocols for screening quality traits (nutritional/antinutritional, cooking, health promoting, etc.).

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