Progress 10/01/11 to 09/30/16
Outputs
Target Audience:Members of the target audience included sorghum breeders, growers, and geneticists. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?An undergraduate Crop Science student with a biotechnology concentration was trained in DNA extraction, PCR, and genotyping. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Results were disseminated at the Sorghum Improvement Conference of North America (SICNA) meeting. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Biparental populations were generated between Tx623 and 58M (segregating for Ma1 and ma3R) and between Tx623 and Tx2909 (segregating for Ma1, Ma5, and Ma6). F2 populations were genotyped and phenotyped, and photoperiod-insensitive individuals were identified for backcrossing to Tx623.
Publications
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Progress 10/01/14 to 09/30/15
Outputs
Target Audience:Our target audience includes sorghum breeders and industry, as well as plant physiologists, crop modelers, and other scientists studying the impact of biomass/bioenergy crops. Specifically, we have authored papers and have ongoing collaborations with USDA-ARS sorghum researchers in Lubbock, Texas, and with Chromatin, Inc., a private company involved in sorghum breeding. Changes/Problems:As the project has progressed, we have focussed more on screening sorghum diversity and genetic improvement for biomass yield, and less on the construction of genetic stocks that allow the generation of photoperiod-sensitive hybrids from photoperiod-insensitive inbreds. One reason is that sorghum breeding companies (as well as a prominent group at Texas A&M) are already doing this, whereas there are no other groups that are conducting biomass sorghum trials with the size and scope that we have. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?This project has provided field and laboratory training for two graduate students, 1 postdoc, and one technician. In addition, the two graduate students participated inseveral winter sessions at the Tucson Plant Breeding Institute. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?I delivered an oral presentationat the Center for Sorghum Improvement Seminar Series at Kansas State University in Manhattan, KS. Graduate students presented posters atthe Maize Genetics Conference and the American Seed Trade Association Corn and Sorghum Seed Research Conference. I deliveredguest lectures on UIUC campus for ACES 501: Advanced Bioenergy Seminars, on sorghum for bioenergy,and for CPSC 454: Plant Breeding Methods, on sorghum breeding.I give tours of our biomass sorghum fieldattheannual Energy Farm field day that attracts several hundred visitors. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?I am particularly excited about several new aspects of our biomass sorghum research planned for 2016: 1. More accurate yield and moisture measurements enabled by the purchase of a subsampler/NIR mounted on our harvester, funded through the ARPA-E robotics grant. 2. High-throughput phenotyping of our biomass sorghum fields (eg: measure height every day!) enabled by robotics. 3. Evaluation of new F3 families derived from crosses between superior lines.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Our biomass field trials expanded in size this year (from 480plots to 880 plots, each plot 9m2) and we added a second location near campus. The second location was adversely affected by early season flooding, but approximately two thirds of this location was still harvested. As a direct result of the continued funding for this Hatch project, we were also successful in obtaining two new federal grants focussed on biomass sorghum, for a total of three federal grants so far that relate to this project (last year we obtained a DOE Feedstock Genomics grant). The two new grants are both from ARPA-E and focus on high-throughput robotic phenotyping and water use efficiency in biomass sorghum, respectively. Akey component enablingthe success of all of these grants is the many years of screening potential of biomass sorghum lines for photoperiod-sensitivity and lodging, which is being conducted as part of this Hatch project.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2015
Citation:
Burks, P., Kaiser, C., Hawkins, E.M. and Brown, P.J. 2015.Genome-wide association for sugar yield in sweet sorghum. Crop Science 55(5):2138-2148.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Accepted
Year Published:
2015
Citation:
Brown, P.J. 2015. Exploiting sorghum diversity for production of grain, forage, and bioenergy. Center for Sorghum Improvement seminar series, Manhattan, KS, March, 2015.
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Progress 10/01/13 to 09/30/14
Outputs
Target Audience: Our target audience includes sorghum breeders and industry. Specifically, portions of the sorghum molecular dataset we have created as part of this project have been shared with breeders at USDA-ARS Lubbock and employees of Chromatin, Incorporated. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? Several postdocs, graduate students, and technicians have had the opportunity to learn how to generate and analyze genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS) datasets in sorghum. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? The results have been disseminated to USDA-ARS sorghum breeders and to sorghum breeders at Chromatin. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Flowering time data will be collected from the winter nursery in early 2016, and from the biomass trial in summer 2016. Comparing long-day and short-day flowering time data will help us distinguish between photoperiod-sensitivity and constitutive late flowering.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Another year of phenotypic data on flowering time/maturity/photoperiod response was collected in summer 2014. In winter 2015 (this year's winter nursery) we will collect plant height and flowering time data that will help distinguish between photoperiod-sensitivity and constitutive late flowering. We observed that a subset of lines flowered much earlier in 2013 and 2014 compared to 2011 and 2012, and hypothesize that this was caused by abnormally low night temperatures (<50F) in these years. Previous reports indicate that cold-induced acceleration of flowering requires a functional Ma1 allele. This phenomenon is mechanistically similar to vernalization in cool-season grasses, and we hypothesize that it may involve some common molecular circuitry. We will collect one additional season of flowering data in the summer of 2016.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Awaiting Publication
Year Published:
2015
Citation:
Hayes, C.M., Burow, G.B., Brown, P.J., Thurber, C., Xin, Z. and Burke, J.J. Natural variation in synthesis and catabolism genes influences dhurrin content in sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L. Moench). The Plant Genome.
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Progress 01/01/13 to 09/30/13
Outputs
Target Audience: The target audience reached by our research efforts includes sorghum breeders and producers as well as researchers involved in using C4 grasses for bioenergy. Our research was disseminated through oral presentations and posters at meetings including the Sorghum Improvement Conference of North America in 2012 and the American Seed Trade Association's Corn and Sorghum Seed Research Conference in 2011, 2012, and 2013. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?
Nothing Reported
How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? We have disseminated our results through invited oral presentations at the 2012 Sorghum Improvement Conference of North Americaand the 2012 American Seed Trade Association'sannual Expo, and through posters at the 2013 ASTA Expo and the 2013 Plant and Animal GenomeConference. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? We have two manuscripts in preparation for goals 1.a) and 1.b) above. We are producing seed in the greenhouse this winter for summer 2014 evaluation to assess our progress on goal 2.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
1.a) Weperformed a genome-wide association study of the flowering time trait separately in three panels of sorghum lines: i) grain sorghum; ii) exotic sorghum; and iii) grain + exotic sorghum. In i) we discovered a novel QTL on chromosome 9. In ii) we discovered a QTL on chromosome 6 that represents Ma6/Ghd7, a locus important for temperate adaptation in rice and maize. In iii) we discovered the two previous QTL, as well as the previously-cloned locus Ma1, which is apparently fixed for loss-of-function alleles in grain sorghum and is not detected in the grain and exotic (i and ii) panels separately. A manuscript presenting these results is in preparation. 1. b) We performed QTL analysis for flowering time on two biparental populations believed to be segregating for Ma5 and Ma6: (Tx623-ms3 x Tx2909) and (Tx623-ms3 x Tx2910). Surprisingly, the genetic architecture of the photoperiod-sensitivity response appears to differ between these two populations. The first population (x Tx2909) shows the expected complimentary dominant photoperiod-sensitivity, but it is between Ma6 and Ma7 (on chr1) instead of between Ma6 and Ma5 (on chr2). Photoperiod-sensitivity in the second population does not show complimentary dominance, and appears to be conditioned by Ma1 instead of Ma6. This suggests there may be several different allelic combinations that can be exploited for the production of photoperiod-sensitive hybrids from two photoperiod-insensitive parents. The lack of detected effect for Ma5 could be due to differences in latitude or temperature between Illinois and Texas, where these QTL were originally discovered. A manuscript presenting these results is in preparation. 2. We have selfed photoperiod-insensitive F4 selections (F5 seed) from the two biparental populations described in 1.b) that are predicted to generate photoperiod-sensitive hybrids with most sorghum germplasm; this remains to be tested.
Publications
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2013
Citation:
Genetic Architecture of the Photoperiod Response in Sorghum (invited oral presentation), XV National Congress of Plant Biochemistry and Molecular Biology & VII Symposium Mexico/USA.
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Progress 01/01/12 to 12/31/12
Outputs
OUTPUTS: 1. Over 1000 sorghum inbreds genotyped at ~40,000 single nucleotide polymorphisms. 2. Flowering time data scored on ~3000 plots in summer 2012 in Illinois. 3. F2 and F3 seed generated for a cross between Ma5/ma6 and ma5/Ma6 parents. PARTICIPANTS: Three graduate students assisted with this project: Race Higgins - MA student; Elizabeth Hawkins - MA student; and Payne Burks - PhD student. TARGET AUDIENCES: Target audience includes sorghum seed companies and growers. I presented our results at the American Seed Trade Association meeting in Chicago in December 2012. PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: Nothing significant to report during this reporting period.
Impacts
Flowering time phenotypes were associated with genotypes to discover regions of the genome that control the photoperiod-sensitive response in sorghum. We already knew about one gene on chromosome 6(Ma1) that controls this response. Based on our results we now believe there are 1-2 more loci/regions on chromosome 6 that control this response.
Publications
- No publications reported this period
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