IGER research to
meet climate change challenge
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 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 amount 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 .
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.”
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