University of Saskatchewan re-searchers have landed federal funding worth more than $37 million to develop revolutionary new plant breeding tools.
Officials in Ottawa announced July 29 that the Designing Crops for Global Food Security initiative at the U of S’s Global Institute for Food Security will receive $37.2 million over seven years through the Canada First Research Excellence Fund.
It is a $1.5 billion federal research fund that supports large-scale projects.
The food security initiative will comprise plant scientists, computer scientists, engineers and social scientists from the U of S and other Canadian universities and research institutes.
Read Also
Factors that can cause heavy rainfall
There are several factors that can contribute to an extreme rainfall event, the first is atmospheric moisture.
One expected outcome is the creation of an information database known as the Phenotyping and Imaging Research Centre.
The database will collect detailed plant phenotype data using specialized imaging equipment, such as the synchrotron at Canadian Light Source in Saskatoon.
Eventually, the database will contain images and phenotype data taken from plants that have specific characteristics such as enhanced growth, increased productivity, improved drought resistance, enhanced nutrient uptake, better disease tolerance and resistance to yield damaging insects.
The database will then be used to identify links between plant traits that are valued by plant breeders and genomic information contained in existing databases.
Maurice Moloney, the food security institute’s executive director, said the project is unlike any other.
If it proves successful, the initiative could eventually allow plant breeders to identify valuable genetic resources more quickly based on plant performance and characteristics observed in the field.
Plant breeders will eventually be able to produce beneficial plant varieties more quickly and more efficiently.
“The fundamental goal of the project is essentially to bring plant breeding into the high performance computing age,” said Moloney.
He said current plant breeding work is laborious and subjective in that it is based on the observations of the breeders.
“However, it is possible to automate some of those activities and to build a database of images from all of the test plants that we have in a field trial, for example, in order to determine characteristics of those plants that are indicators of very high performance.”
Moloney said a phenotype imaging database would also allow scientists to cross reference phenotype data with complementary information contained in existing genomic databases.
He compared the concept to the use of facial recognition systems used by law enforcement agencies to sort through hundreds of thousands of images in seconds to identify a suspect or person of interest.
The introduction of a similar system for plant breeders would automate the selection of promising plant lines using computer based selection models.
Breeders could use computer systems to examine thousands of experimental plants in a short period.
“In essence, we can design a very fast track breeding program that concentrates the maximum number of important genes into the breeding material that eventually becomes a plant variety.”
Moloney said the food security institute hopes that a model or prototype system can be established in three years.
From there, several years of additional work and collaboration would likely be required before such a system could be applied but organizers hope to have the Phenotyping and Imaging Research Centre operating by 2022.
The grant is the single largest federal grant ever received by the university.
The National Research Council and Agriculture Canada are key partners in the project.
