March 24, 2003

Western Australian Department of Agriculture geneticist Michael Francki and Murdoch University Professor Rudi Appels are collaborating on using the rice genome for cereal improvement. The project is being funded by the Cooperative Research Centre for Molecular Plant Breeding, the Value Added Wheat Cooperative Research Centre and the Grains Research and Development Corporation.

"The large information being generated from crop genomes allows us to use this information in current research programs," said Dr Francki.

"Although genome similarity between rice, wheat, barley and maize has been well documented, the availability of a vast resource of public information from other cereal genomes enables the use of this information from rice to wheat," he said.

The rice genome is being used to define the linear order of genes in wheat and, in some cases, chromosomes have been shown to be extensively colinear. In other cases, there is a mixture of gene order between rice and wheat. The information is valuable to develop molecular tools for cereal improvement.

"For example, the chromosomal position of gene sequences in rice may be used to identify similar genes in wheat and barley, increasing the capabilities to identify candidate genes controlling specific traits," Dr Francki said.

"This will enable us to screen lines with specific gene combinations that give rise to a particular characteristic. This approach is being investigated in current projects in marker-trait associations for quality and disease resistance attributes and the development of 'perfect' molecular markers for the WA breeding program," he said.

"Diagnostic testing has been used in the medical field for some time to test family members and determine whether they have inherited a specific disease based on gene detection."

Dr Francki and Professor Appels are using the same principle in conventional plant breeding to determine whether a line inherits a characteristic based on DNA detection of particular gene combinations.