USDA-ARS University of Wisconsin-Madison Plant Breeders Receive Specialty Crop Grants to Improve Important Vegetable Traits

October 31, 2008 at 11:32 am · Filed under News

The USDA Specialty Crop Research Initiative (SCRI) was designed to address critical industry issues in specialty crops, including fruits and vegetables.  In October, the SCRI awarded more than $28 million to fund research projects that fit into five focus areas addressing specialty crops needs.  Two USDA-ARS University of Wisconsin researchers, Professors Michael Havey and Philipp Simon, were each awarded a grant to work on pests affecting important vegetable crops.  Both Havey and Simon are also graduate trainers in the Univ. Wisconsin’s Plant Breeding & Plant Genetics program (www.wisconsinplantbreeding.com).

Simon (Univ. Wisc. and ARS) and colleague Philip Roberts (Univ. Calif. - Riverside) received a $371,845 (not including matching funds) grant for their project entitled: “Deployment of Nutrient-Rich Nematode-Resistant Carrots to Benefit Growers, Consumers, and the Environment”.  One of their primary objectives is to continue breeding for root-knot nematode resistance, which affects three-quarters of the US carrot crop.  They have identified several sources of resistance (to both M. javanica and M. incognita) and will work towards combining these resistances, developing a carrot which will benefit carrot growers and the environment.  The nematode resistance will also be combined with quality traits that are of interest to the consumer, particularly taste and nutritional value.  This will lead to nutritional orange, yellow and purple carrots that are resistant to root-knot nematode.

In the second funded project, Professor Havey (Univ. Wisc. and ARS) will lead a project entitled: “Ensuring U.S. Onion Sustainability: Breeding and Genomics to Control Thrips and Iris Yellow Spot Virus”.  This research will utilize translational genomics to solve two of the most severe threats to US onion production: thrips and the thrip-vectored Iris yellow spot virus (IYSV).  This project, spearheaded by the University of Wisconsin, includes a team of co-directors and collaborators from four other US institutions.  Other members of this project include Foo Cheung and Christopher D. Town (The J. Craig Venter Institute), Christopher S. Cramer and Jerry M. Hawkes (New Mexico State University), Hanu Pappu (Washington State University), and Howard F. Schwartz and Whitney Cranshaw (Colorado State University).  The goals of this $998,957 (not including matching funds) project are to:

1.) Build a high density SNP map for association mapping approaches to tag pest resistances

2.) Cooperatively evaluate and select germplasm for thrip and IYSV resistance and further characterize IYSV

3.) Develop outreach material for sustainable management of thrips and IYSV

Written by Chad Kramer (cckramer@wisc.edu)

Monsanto Supports UW Plant Breeding with $1 Million Fellowship Gift

September 18, 2008 at 11:38 am · Filed under News

Monsanto Co. has made a $1 million gift to support plant breeding and genetics in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences (CALS) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The Monsanto Graduate Fellowship in Plant Breeding will help fund Ph.D.-level graduate students in the plant breeding and plant genetics program, a UW System Center of Excellence, in CALS.

“Plant breeding defines an activity that will be an essential component of our planetary stewardship as we feed our growing population through the coming century,” says CALS Dean Molly Jahn. “This gift from Monsanto will allow us to explore revolutionary approaches toward improved agricultural productivity and environmental stewardship while we train the next generation of plant breeders.

“Our partnerships with the private sector are principled relationships designed to protect our public sector missions while we train the next generation of agricultural scientists,” she says.

Monsanto sees the UW-Madison program as a strong partner. “The University of Wisconsin-Madison has a long history of training outstanding plant breeders through its interdisciplinary graduate training program,” says Bob Reiter, vice president of Breeding Technology for Monsanto.

“This record of achievement combined with the diversity of research opportunities for students in row and vegetable crops makes the university an attractive partner in Monsanto’s efforts to support the training of the next generation plant breeders and biometricians,” Reiter says.

The UW-Madison Plant Breeding and Plant Genetics graduate training program is one of the leading such ventures in the world. At UW-Madison, graduate training is research based and emphasizes critical thinking and analytical skills. Students in the program generally take courses in quantitative genetics, statistics, experimental design and molecular genetics.

“Over the past 20 years, no program in the country has trained more plant breeding and plant genetics PhD students than ours,” Jahn says. “We have an outstanding faculty who are respected not only for their top-flight research but for their ability to prepare students to excel in both academic and industry settings all around the world. One of the real strengths of our program is its interdisciplinary nature. Our students are part of a very active community that welcomes global scientific leaders to campus, and they get broad exposure to the most important issues in the field.”

Professor Irwin Goldman is a vice dean in CALS, and he has a long history with the plant breeding and plant genetics program. “This support from Monsanto demonstrates a real partnership with an incredibly successful private sector company that depends on the kind of top-quality graduates that Wisconsin can produce,” he says.

“We can make use of the outstanding faculty and staff at UW-Madison, along with our research infrastructure, our colleagues in supporting disciplines and the premier atmosphere for graduate training on our campus while helping to educate students who will be the workforce that Monsanto and others will want to hire in the future,” Goldman says. “In a sense, both parties are bringing key resources and expertise to the table, and in the end we will both benefit from this partnership.”

Gifts such as Monsanto’s not only help the graduate students and the University’s programs. They boost the people and economy of Wisconsin, he says.

“These top-flight graduate students help bring the excellence to our research programs,” he says. “They are the ones who do the work that allows us to apply for competitive funding and produce high-impact publications. They help leverage funding for research from a variety of sources, due to the high quality of their work and the determination and dedication that is a hallmark of graduate students at the University. The impact of their work is magnified by the systems and channels established by our college, state and UW System.”

Monsanto is a leading global provider of technology-based solutions and agricultural products that improve farm productivity and food quality. Monsanto remains focused on enabling both small-holder and large-scale farmers to produce more from their land while conserving more of our world’s natural resources such as water and energy.

Source:  www.wisc.edu and www.monsanto.com; written by Chris DuPre (chris.dupre@uwfoundation.wisc.edu)

UW-Madison Plant Breeders Contribute to Newly Awarded DOE Bioenergy Grant

March 17, 2008 at 11:50 am · Filed under News

The Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC), led by the University of Wisconsin-Madison and in close partnership with Michigan State University, was recently selected by the DOE as one of three research centers for bioenergy.  With an award of $125 million in funding over five years, the new GLBRC facility is part of the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus and involves more than 50 UW-Madison researchers.  The mission of the GLBRC is to explore scientifically diverse approaches for converting sunlight and various plant feedstocks-agricultural residues, wood chips, and grasses-into biofuels.  In addition to its broad range of scientific research projects, the GLBRC is collaborating with agricultural researchers and producers to help develop the most economically viable and environmentally sustainable practices for bioenergy production.

GLBRC scientific research is organized into five focus areas:

1. Improving Plant Biomass

2. Improving Biomass Processing

3. Improving Biomass Conversion

4. Fostering Sustainable Bioenergy Practices

5. Creating Technologies to Enable More Advanced Bioenergy Research

As part of the GLBRC, three faculty members from the Department of Agronomy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are working to increase maize biomass accumulation and improve digestibility for bioenergy conversion.  As members of the interdepartmental Plant Breeding & Plant Genetics program, Natalia de Leon, Shawn Kaeppler and Heidi Kaeppler are expanding upon previous efforts of the UW corn research program (developed by retired professor James Coors).  The UW corn research program represents the only public improvement effort for silage breeding in the U.S. and has traditionally studied the breeding and genetics of maize germplasm for ruminant nutrition.  The researchers have found that similar traits may be important for improving feedstock for energy bioconversion.

The research of de Leon and Kaeppler aims to use association analysis to identify natural quantitative variation for composition and digestibility of cellulosic biomass.  Complementing their traditional field breeding programs, the researchers also intend to develop rapid-flowering, small-statured maize varieties for high-throughput genetic and molecular analysis of biomass related traits.  This “mini-maize” would be of particular importance for other researchers in GLBRC who do not have access to agronomic production fields.  Through the creation of dominant-negative mutations for genes involved in lignin and cell wall synthesis, they will also identify loci which modify or interact with these genes, leading to a better understanding of the metabolic networks involved.  This research will lead to improved maize germplasm for bioenergy conversion and develop maize as a model system for future advances in other closely related biomass crops.

More information about the GLBRC can be found at www.greatlakesbioenergy.org

Written by Chad Kramer (cckramer@wisc.edu) and Margaret Broeren (mbroeren@glbrc.wisc.edu)