Aberystwyth, United Kingdom
June 20, 2007
A £1million plus grant awarded to
the Institute of Grassland
and Environmental Research (IGER), at Aberystwyth will allow
scientists to develop superior plant varieties that are able to
adapt to the challenge of climate change.
The work being funded by the grant will facilitate the
identification of genes that control target traits, i.e.
characters that are important for developing new plant varieties
that are able to meet the demands of sustainable agriculture,
climate change and biorenewables.
This information can then be used in conventional breeding
programmes to breed new superior plant varieties. For instance,
this strategy has been successfully undertaken for a “staygreen”
gene that prevents grass from turning yellow.
Professor Ian King who heads the research team at the
Aberystwyth based station says that “a key driver of IGER's
research will be the development of plant varieties that are
able to meet the demand for increased output coupled with the
need to adapt to global warming and sustainable farm practices.
“This award (1) will allow us to undertake research that will
enable the transfer of information on the genetic control of
traits across the monocot species, such as wheat, barley, grass
and the sequenced rice genome. In layman's terms this allows the
species to “talk” to one another.
“A target trait for sustainable agriculture is increased
nitrogen uptake where you can put less fertiliser on the crop
thereby reducing pollution. Examples of climate change traits
are drought tolerance or changing the flowering time of plant so
that flowering occurs in cooler periods.
“It is extremely important that we develop new species of plants
that are able to withstand stress such as drought brought about
by environmental change, and which require lower fertiliser
inputs thus lowering pollution and carbon outputs.
“In addition to conventional agricultural use grass also has the
potential to be exploited for the development of environmentally
friendly biofuels and platform chemicals. Biorenewable traits
would include fermentability to increase the amout of ethanol
you can extract from grass.”
IGER since the days of the old Welsh Plant Breeding Station has
pioneered new strains of grasses which have benefited grassland
management worldwide, and are world leaders in grassland related
research such as breeding and genomics. While grassland is the
predominant crop in Wales , it also accounts for more than 50%
of the land area and 70% of all agricultural use in the UK. (2)
Prof. Mervyn Humphreys, Director of IGER said, “These are
exciting times for scientists at IGER. While the centres of
excellence in research and breeding in the UK for barley and
wheat are located in Scotland and England respectively, the
centre of excellence for grassland research is located at IGER
Aberystwyth.
“There are four major grassland bioscience research programmes
currently undertaken by IGER Aberystwyth and this substantial
award made by the Biotechnology and Biological Science Research
Council again recognises the expertise of the Ceredigion based
scientists in grassland research and reaffirms the Institute's
importance as a centre for excellence.”
(1) The research will be undertaken in collaboration with
scientists at the John Innes Institute, Norwich , and the
Scottish Crop Research Institute at Dundee belonging to a
research consortium called “Monogram. The research will also
involve collaboration throughout Europe (e.g. Norway , Denmark ,
France , Germany , the Czech Republic), the US (Missouri, USDA,
Cornell University ) and New Zealand via Vialactia, an Auckland,
New Zealand based company.
(2) The agricultural economic value of grassland compares well
with other monocot crops within the UK e.g the farm gate value
of grassland measured by its end products, meat and milk, is
valued at £6billion per annum, while the farm gate value of all
cereals (wheat, barley and oats) is £2.36billion per annum
[“Agriculture in the UK” – DEFRA]. Furthermore, meat consumption
has been predicted to increase annually by 7% over the next
decade. |
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