Introgressions of novel diseases resistance genes from Miscanthus into energycane
- Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL (United States); University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL (United States)
- US Dept. of Agriculture (USDA), Canal Point, FL (United States). Agricultural Research Service (ARS)
- Hokkaido Univ., Sapporo (Japan)
Sugarcane (Saccharum) is among the world’s leading bioenergy crops. However, modern sugarcane cultivars are derived from a relatively small set of founder genotypes, which has contributed to cultivar susceptibility to diseases. Miscanthus is a close relative of sugarcane that is genetically diverse and a potential source of genes for improving sugarcane. We found that Miscanthus is a source of resistance to four major diseases of sugarcane and we crossed these disease-resistance genes into a predominantly sugarcane genetic background (BC1 generation). Additionally, we found that Miscanthus could also confer genes for chilling-tolerant photosynthesis to sugarcane, which would be highly advantageous for production of energycane in subtropical environments, like the southern coastal plain of the US. Using advanced modeling techniques, we found that standard marker-assisted selection could be effective for breeding resistance conferred by a small number of genes each with large effect (i.e. vertical resistance), but to breed for many genes each of small effect (i.e. horizontal resistance), genomic selection would be the better strategy. Lastly, we learned that Miscanthus can be induced to flower sooner by giving the plants short days (long nights) but that the ideal day length for a given accession depends on its adaptation to its latitude of origin, with tropical accessions requiring shorter days to flower than accessions from high latitudes. This information will facilitate plant breeders’ ability to make crosses between Miscanthus and sugarcane, and enable greater use of Miscanthus as a genetic resource to improve sugarcane.
- Research Organization:
- Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
- DOE Contract Number:
- SC0016264
- OSTI ID:
- 2267546
- Report Number(s):
- UIUC--SC0016264
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English