Progress 01/15/21 to 01/14/25
Outputs
Target Audience:The target audiences for this research were composed of the general plant breeding program interested in germplasm diversity and evaluation and how best to evaluate this diversity across different breeding program within a crop species. Specifically, this research focused on grain sorghum and how to assess genetic diversity both within and across breeding programs. It is of interest to most applied sorghum breeding programs in boththe public and private sector. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?This study formed the basis for the doctoral research of one Ph.D. graduate student and partial support for a second Ph.D. student. This project provided these studentswith the opportunity to manage large-scale multi-environment trials while furthering their knowledge of quantitative genetics and plant breeding. In addition, it provided opportunities to educate and train many undergraduate students throughout the project in topics such as test crossing, quantitative genetics, and note collection. In addition to the direct involvement of these two students during the life of this project, there will be longer term impacts of the information and samples generated from this project. Currently at least two additional graduate students are using information generated in further analyses and study with application to sorghum breeding and improvement. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Several studies were published early on that were associated with this project. The bulk of these the publications are now being submitted or written. We anticipate at least four additional peer-reviewed publications will be produced from this research (although they are not yet published at this time). In addition to the peer reviewed publications, results from the study will be disseminated to the public in the form of a doctoral dissertations.Results from this study have also been presented at professional meetings for the Crop Science Society of America as well as the Sorghum Improvement Conference of North America. Finally, the dataset generated from this study will continue to be utilized by graduate students with the results being disseminated in the form of graduate theses and peer-reviewed publications. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Sorghum in the United States has a rich history of public sector improvement. However, the discovery of cytoplasmic male sterility and the ability to make hybrids mostly privatized sorghum seed production and sales. Despite this, public breeding programs like the Texas A&M AgriLife program in College Station, TX, the USDA-ARS program in Lubbock, TX, and the Kansas State University program in Hays, KS continue to breed sorghum and produce improved material for use in the United States. Despite this, adoption of public sector material by companies tends to be limited due to licensing costs with no guarantee that the public material will benefit their program. The aim of this project was to demonstrate that public sector material could be of use to private sector companies by making hybrids between and within private and public sector breeding programs. The four breeding programs in this study (Texas A&M AgriLife in College Station, TX, the USDA-ARS program in Lubbock, TX, the Kansas State University program in Hays, KS, and the S&W Seed Company in Lubbock, TX) all make selections under different conditions and have had different breeding goals over time. This makes it reasonable to assume that they have been fixing different alleles in their material and across program hybrids may benefit from this. The goal was to demonstrate that there is value in making hybrids across breeding programs from improved agronomic performance and improved stability and adaptation while increasing genetic diversity. A further goal of this project was for hybrids made between the public and private programs to be made commercially available if any could be identified as superior to other commercial checks. The primary goal of this project to demonstrate value of making across program hybrids and the benefit of including public sector material in a private sector breeding program was successful. It was found that the Texas A&M and USDA-ARS breeding programs showed improved performance in the South Texas growing region of the United States especially when in combination with S&W parents. While the S&W parents performed the strongest in the High Plains growing region of the United States, there were parents discovered in both the Texas A&M and USDA-ARS program that were competitive with the private sector material and could contribute to improving genetic diversity without hurting overall performance. In addition, licensing agreements are in progress for material from the public programs to be incorporated into the S&W breeding program to make these hybrids available to American farmers. In addition to the primary goals of this project being met, the project provided opportunities for further research to be conducted on genomic prediction, remote sensing from satellite imagery, and high-throughput phenotyping from unmanned aerial systems to further these fields for sorghum breeding and plant breeding in general.
Publications
- Type:
Peer Reviewed Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2024
Citation:
Leon, F., Harvey, L., & Rooney, W. L. (2024). Historical multi-environmental trials reveal trends in hybrid grain sorghum performance from 1970 to 2021 in Texas. Crop Science, 64, 3014-3027. https://doi.org/10.1002/csc2.21343
- Type:
Theses/Dissertations
Status:
Accepted
Year Published:
2025
Citation:
Winans, Noah D. Enhancing Productivity of Grain Sorghum Combining Public and Private Germplasm Using Genomic and Enviromic Data in Predictive Modeling, Ph.D. Dissertation, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas
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Progress 01/15/23 to 01/14/24
Outputs
Target Audience:The target audience of this project are sorghum researchers and sorghum breeders in both the public and private sector. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?This project supportedan average of two graduate students completing advanced degrees in Plant Breeding and/or Genetics. In addition, this projectemployed3undergraduates annually to assist in field and lab activities related to breeding and genetics. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Results of this project are disseminated via research publications (journal articles, abstracts, book chapters), presentations atstate, national and international meeting (posters, oral presentations and invited presentations), interactions with producerand commodity groups and interactions with seed industry personnel. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We plan to continue with modification of the breeding process to integrate genomic selection. In addition, we have collected UAV data for many environments will be analyzed.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
The following research goals were addressed in the following ways 1. Evaluation of sorghum hybrids produced from four different breeding programs reveals diversity within and among theseed parents and pollinator parents in different programs. Further the work indicated that public sector germplasm can be effectively used to produce agronomically competitive commercial hybrids and that the location of selection does influence the adaptation and effectiveness of selection. 2. While beyond the project, all germplasm was genotyped with the intent to develop genomic prediction models for different sorghum germplasm sets were developed and integrated into the breeding pipeline.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2023
Citation:
Kent, MA, Fonseca, JMO, Klein, PE, Klein, RR, Hayes, CM, & Rooney, WL 2023. Assessing the agronomic potential of sorghum B-lines using genomic prediction. Crop Science, 115. https://doi.org/10.1002/csc2.21107
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2023
Citation:
Kent, M. A., Fonseca, J. M.O., Klein, P. E., Klein, R. R., Hayes, C. M., & Rooney,W. L. 2023. Use of genomic prediction to screen sorghum B-lines in hybrid testcrosses.The Plant Genome, e20369.https://doi.org/10.1002/tpg2.20369
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2023
Citation:
Crozier, D., Leon, F., Fonseca, J. M. O., Klein, P. E., Klein, R. R., & Rooney, W. L. 2023. Inbred phenotypic data and non-additive effects can enhance genomic prediction models for hybrid grain sorghum. Crop Science, 63, 11831196. https://doi.org/10.1002/csc2.20927
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Progress 01/15/22 to 01/14/23
Outputs
Target Audience:The goal of this proposal entitled "CULTIVAR DEVELOPMENT: Enhancing Productivity by Developing Grain Sorghum Hybrids Using Public and Private Sector Germplasm" is to develop a collaborative public and private research program to improve the productivity and adaptation of grain sorghum hybrids for U.S. producers. The specific objectives are to 1) identify commercially competitive sorghum hybrid cultivars that result from combination of parents from different programs; 2) provide a direct path for the commercialization of these elite hybrids through private industry partner and 3) develop long-term improvement and sustainable commercialization activities by the public sector. In this proposal, we initiate joint efforts of public (Texas A&M Agrilife Research, Texas, Kansas State University and USDA) and private (S&W Seed Company Co.) sectors to develop high yielding sorghum hybrids by combining the available potential diversified parental lines from each breeding program. This program allows the U.S. sorghum industry and sorghum producers to increase the yield and profitability and helps the private sector to deliver seed-based technologies to the sorghum growing community. These complementarity activities would help meet the target of reaching the national average yield of 100 bushels per acre. This proposal is submitted to the USDA AFRI Foundational and Applied Science Program Area: Plant Health and Production and Plant Products, Priority Area: Plant Breeding for Agricultural Production (Priority Code A1141) and specifically responsive the Later Stages of Cultivar Development. Changes/Problems:There are no major changes to the core objectives of this project. We are using this project to build a large database that can be used for studies long beyond the life of this project. These include genomic data on the parents and hybrids for genomic selection projects and phenomic data from UAV imagery for trait measurement studies and phenomic selection. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?While the specific work in this project is subdivided amongst the participants for trial management, there are currently three graduate students and one post-doctoral research associate who are working on this project. Two Ph.D. students at Texas A&M are coordinating the field trials across the project. In addition, they are complementing the basic work by completing genetic analyses of the parental lines and phenomic data by taking UAV imagery of most of the field trials in this study. The UAV is further supplmental by a USDA-ARS post-doctoral research associate. A third graduate student at Kansas State University is using germplasm developed in this study to assess chilling tolerance in a subset of these hybrids as well. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Information from this project has been presented to the National Grain Sorghum Producers (August 2022), at the Sorghum Improvement Conference of America held in Dallas Texas in March 2022. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?In the final year, we will complete a second year of field testing of the core set of hybrids. In addition, we will identify elite hybrids from the first year of testing for further evaluation and potential commercial licensing of any lines contributing to them.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
In year 1, a set of ~1200 hybrids were made in a factorial design using 48 seed parents (12 lines from each of the four collaborating agencies) and 48 pollinator parents (12 lines from each of the four collaborating agencies). In year 2 (2022), hybrid evaluations were conducted in 15 different sorghum production enviornments in Texas and Kansas. Each hybrid was placed in six of the 15 environments. At each location an augmented design with primary and secondary checks was used. Agronomic data and grain sampling was completed over the season and preliminary analysis was completed in December 2022. Of the 15 environments, the quality of the data varies depending on trait. For example, the quality of yield data was acceptable at 11 of the 15 environments whereas maturity and plant height data was good from 14 of 15 environments. Further data analytics will be completed in January to aid in selection of specific hybrids for commercial application as well as to plan for the 2023 season as the yield trialing is to be repeated in the final year.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2022
Citation:
Fonseca, Jales Mendes Oliveira, Ramasamy Perumal, Patricia E. Klein, Robert R. Klein, William L. Rooney. 2022. Mega?environment analysis to assess adaptability, stability, and genomic predictions in grain sorghum hybrids. Euphytica 218:128 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10681-022-03075-z
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2021
Citation:
Fonseca, J. M. O., Perumal, R., Klein, P. E., Klein, R. R., & Rooney, W. L. 2021. Combining abilities and elite germplasm enhancement across U.S. public sorghum breeding programs. Crop Science, 2021;114. https://doi.org/10.1002/csc2.20624
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Progress 01/15/21 to 01/14/22
Outputs
Target Audience:The target audience of this research is primarily the sorghum breeding community. Any group with an active sorghum breedingprogram should be able to extract information, insight and perspective on the different approaches to integrating adapted, elitebut diverse sorghum parent lines into a breeding program to increase yield potential, heterosis and adaptation. Plant breedingin general should be able to use the information generated herein to consider different approaches for crop improvement,especially in hybrid crops. Changes/Problems:The project is moving forward with only minor adjustments to the projectas proposed but with several additional activities that were not described in the original project. The primary modification to the project as proposed is an adjustment in the experimental design in each environment. Originally, we were planning to evaluate 500 hybrids in 13 environments; however, we produced substantially more hybrids (~1200) and we want to evaluate them all. So, we have switched from a simple lattice design to an augmented design and added two additional environments. This will accomodate the extra numbers and still allow for each hybrid to be evaluated in at least 5 of the 15 environments.In addition, we aregenotyping the inbred lines from the public programs in this project. This will eventually facilitate genomic prediction models for these programs. We planto collect UAV imaging at 10 of 15 environments to use for the development of data processing and data extraction to predict traits. Finally, we will be collecting environment and soil moisture data in the 10 UAV sites to characterize the environment; that data is for modeling and genomic prediction modeling. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?In the first year of the project, activities focused on producing hybrid seed for testing in 2022. In that time, approximately 1200 hybrids were produced by the four groups working on this project. In the three public programs, seed production activities were coordinated by project leadership in collaboration with graduate or undergraduate student assistance. Beginning at the end of year 1, day-to-day activities of the program is now coordinated by a graduate student at Texas A&M who will be using the data from this project for a Ph.D. dissertation. In addition, at least two additional graduate students will be using these tests to collect data for graduate degrees (at Texas A&M and Kansas State). How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?While it is too early to disseminate relative results from this project, projects that provide the basis from this program are now being published. The publications were not funded by this project but provide a roadmap for the approaches in this project. Fonseca, J. M. O., Perumal, R., Klein, P. E., Klein, R. R., & Rooney, W. L. 2021. Combining abilities and elite germplasm enhancement across U.S. public sorghum breeding programs. Crop Science, 2021;1-14. https://doi.org/10.1002/csc2.20624 Fonseca, JMO, Klein, PE, Crossa, J, Pacheco, A, Perez-Rodriguez, P, Ramasamy, P, Klein, R, & Rooney, WL. Assessingcombining abilities, genomic data, and genotype × environment interactions to predict hybrid grain sorghum performance. Plant Genome. 2021; e20127. https://doi.org/10.1002/tpg2.20127 What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?In year 2, full-scale testing will be completed. Currentlly, trials will be planted in 15 locations across Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas. These locations were selected to represent the general sorghum production areas across the U.S. Five of these locations are designated as CORE locations and other 10 are SATELLITE environments. In core locations, a larger number of hybrids will evaluated and more agronomic data collected than in the SATELLITE. Our goal is to build a dataset to identify the best hybrids in regions as well to facilitate genomic and phenomic prediction models for agronomic and grain quality traits in grain sorghum.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
In this proposal, we have initiated joint efforts of public (Texas A&MAgrilife Research, Texas, Kansas State University and USDA) and private (S&W Seed Company Co.) sectors to develop high yielding sorghum hybrids by combining the available potential diversified parental lines from each breeding program. Thisprogram allows the U.S. sorghum industry and sorghum producers to increase the yield and profitability and helps the privatesector to deliver seed-based technologies to the sorghum growing community. These complementarity activities would helpmeet the target of reaching the national average yield of 100 bushels per acre. This proposal is submitted to the USDA AFRIFoundational and Applied Science Program Area: Plant Health and Production and Plant Products, Priority Area: Plant Breedingfor Agricultural Production (Priority Code A1141) and specifically responsive the Later Stages of Cultivar Development.
Publications
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