Breeders can now connect individual genes in oats to desirable traits like water-use efficiency and beta-glucan in the grain
Canadian oat breeders could be entering a new era of innovation.
Oats were lagging behind other cereal crops when it comes to genomic information, but the work of researchers from Canada, Australia, Europe, the United States and elsewhere is paying off.
A global team of scientists have developed a reference genome for oats, which should speed up the breeding process.
“This discovery puts a powerful new tool into the hands of plant breeders, who can use it to speed up the development of new and improved oat varieties,” said an Agriculture Canada document from this fall, highlighting the research.
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Three Ag Canada scientists contributed to the oat reference genome — Nicholas Tinker, Wubishet Bekele, Yong-Bi Fu — who work at Ag Canada research centres in Ottawa, Brandon and Saskatoon.
The scientists published the oat reference genome in the journal Nature, in May 2022.
“A reference genome is a high-quality, complete DNA sequence of the entire genome which includes gene annotations (coordinates that show where genes are located),” Bekele said.
“(It) complements the linkage map, which shows approximate locations of genes that have measurable effects on crop performance. By putting the two together, oat scientists finally have a template to discover, select, or even edit the specific DNA sequences that are responsible for crop performance.”
For oat breeders and eventually oat growers, the advancements mean it’s now possible to connect individual genes in oats to desirable traits like water-use efficiency.
As another example, breeders can now pinpoint genes that are related to healthier and more nutritious oats.
“We find strong and significant associations between the positions of candidate genes… that influence the concentrations of oil and β-glucan (beta-glucan) in the grain,” said the companion paper published on nature.com, authored by Tinker and others.
Beta glucan is a soluble fibre found in oats linked to lower cholesterol and heart health.
Tinker and other Ag Canada researchers are part of a broader project called PanOat, studying the genomes of oat varieties from around the world.
“The level of genome diversity that we can now see in cultivated and wild oat is beyond what we expected. Together with an international team of scientists, we are now knee-deep in analyzing 30 wild and cultivated oat genomes,” said Tinker, who retired from Ag Canada in January but has stayed on as an honorary research associate.
One that work is done, oat breeders can draw upon the genetic data to design new oat varieties with specific traits, said Chengdao Li, from Murdoch University in Australia.
“Essentially, breeders will be able to go prospecting for new traits and introduce new genetic diversity in breeding programs using the pan-genome information.”
