A joint University of Saskatchewan–Swedish team has been awarded $273,000 from a Swedish foundation to study development of the endosperm in wheat and barley. This structure contains much of the starch, protein and fat in the seed and is the most important component when determining crop quality.

Ravindra Chibbar, Canada Research Chair in Crop Quality, and plant science professor Brian Fowler will work with plant molecular biology professor Christer Jansson from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) in Uppsala.

“We look forward to collaborating with Professor Jansson and combining our expertise and resources,” Chibbar says. “I’m also very excited about the unique opportunity this funding provides to graduate students both at the U of S and SLU to work at each of our laboratories and enrich their graduate training.”

The funds for the four-year project were awarded through an institutional grant from STINT, the Swedish Foundation for International Co-operation in Research and Higher Education. Its institutional grants are intended to foster long-term co-operative projects between Swedish researchers and international institutions.

"I'm very pleased with this opportunity to collaborate with Dr. Chibbar,” Jansson says. “Our overlapping interests in cereal endosperm development promise to significantly further our understanding of this biologically and economically important process.”

The co-operative project entitled “Functional Genomics of the Cereal Endosperm” will build on U of S infrastructure and expertise assembled as a result of the large-scale Genome Prairie/Genome Canada project launched in 2001. (See “Saskatoon Researchers to Receive $8 M from Genome Canada for Two Projects” at http://www.usask.ca/events/news/articles/20010405-1.html).

Professor Jansson will visit the Chibbar lab this fall to work out the details of the program.