Recipient Organization
TENNESSEE STATE UNIVERSITY
3500 JOHN A. MERRITT BLVD
NASHVILLE,TN 37209
Performing Department
Agricultural and Environmental Sciences
Non Technical Summary
Problem statement and importance to agriculture and rural life in Tennessee: A lack of crop diversity in the agricultural systems of the Southeastern United States increase the threats of disease epidemics, insect pest outbreaks or crop failure due to abiotic stresses. Good crop rotation practices, on the other hand, can increase system stability and adaptation to climate variability. Tennessee is in the mid-South transition region between the Mid-west and the Southeast; where summers can vary from mild and rainy to hot and dry. Given climate fluctuations in Tennessee (droughts, summer heat waves, warm winters), continued productivity in Tennessee will require ´new crops that are heat and drought adapted during the summer months. However, the cultivars and alternative crops for future productive systems usually do not exist or are not being addressed by public or private sector breeding programs. Increased breeding efforts are required to target the new row crops needed by farms facing the multiple stresses of severe droughts, heat waves, low diversity monocropping and volatile international markets.Reasons for doing this work now: Our goal in this project is to develop new grain crops for Tennessee and the Mid-South region based on species that we have analyzed for adaptation in previous work. The use of new crops and better-adapted cultivars will be the key to facing the challenges of the future but will require a re-doubling of efforts in breeding programs. Many plant breeding programs in southeastern universities have been abandoned due to limited funding and prioritization of other areas of agriculture. Currently, southeastern agriculture is dominated by a few industrial crops (cotton, corn, and soybean); however, the region of middle Tennessee has specialized in crops for small stakeholders (feed hay, hemp, indigo, and vegetables). We believe that given the economics of farming the smaller farms in this part of the state, mega-crops will be substituted by specialized crops. At the same time, new scientific tools such as genomics, gene editing and phenomics have become available to bring new crops to full fledged variety status in shorter time. Applying these tools to grain amaranths and grain legumes is a novel area of study because these crops are understudied compared to corn and soy.Ways in which public welfare will be enhanced: New and re-discovered crops such as summer, TN-adapted grain amaranths and grain legumes for direct human consumption bring agronomic and nutritional benefits that enhance public welfare. For example, legumes are rotation crops from a different plant family than cereals and vegetables, breaking the infestation and infection cycles of many pests and pathogens found in monocrop corn or limiting production to high value tomato or tobacco. Grain amaranths, like their more famous cousins the quinoas; bring diversity to diets and much higher levels of proteins and well-balanced amino acids for vegan/vegetarian people. Grain legumes are of wide popularity in Africa and Asia and could become more important in the United States due to economic difficulties which encourage people to seek out economical but nutritious foods.Ways in which scientific knowledge will be advanced: More sustainable and localized production of food crops will require the pre-breeding of germplasm and breeding of varieties and multiple crops to withstand climate variation. An obvious mechanism for achieving this goal is the evaluation of photosynthetic efficiency and biomass production, a phenomic approach. Underlying this analysis is the evaluation of sequence based single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) or insertion-deletions (in-dels) between varieties with genetic variability, a genomics approach. Biomass accumulation is also limited by fertility constraints, so part of this project will be agronomic in nature. Grain amaranth fertilizer requirements have not been analyzed on local soils to our knowledge and are a requirement for adoption of the crop and production of high yields. Similarly, mung bean has not been analyzed for nitrogen fixation and limits to photosynthesis and productivity compared to the more-widely grown grain legumes. The analysis of gene expression using RNA sequencing under low fertility may reveal the reason why grain amaranths have a higher fertilizer requirement than other dicot crops but are still more abiotic stress adapted than corn as a high-nitrogen feeding crop. Similarly, for grain legumes the nitrogen fixation can be enhanced by phosphorus fertilizer and RNAseq can be used to discover adaptation to abiotic stresses and differences in productivity between species such as mung bean and field pea. The proposed research will help establish TSU as a leading institution for integrating molecular and traditional breeding disciplines for resolving genetic issues for new crops in the USA. This project will strengthen and expand current Tennessee State University (TSU) research efforts and scope of its contribution to the new crops research community. The methods developed in this research will be of value for genomics and phenomics of many crops for the Southeast region.
Animal Health Component
60%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
30%
Applied
60%
Developmental
10%
Goals / Objectives
Our main goal is to conduct a set of experiments evaluating the effects of fertilization and photosynthetic rates on the grain amaranths and legumes, respectively, along with high throughput sequencing of mRNA from relevant tissues. Specifically, our efforts will be directed toward the following objectives: (1) release of one or two grain amaranth varieties (2) release of one or two grain legume varieties especially mung bean for which a genome is available (3) fertilizer and photosynthesis evaluation trials of grain amaranth and grain legumes, respectively (4) sequencing of root tip cDNAs of the two grain species and identification of differentially expressed genes under abiotic stress and control conditions. (5) Provide hands-on experiential and collaborative trainings in plant breeding, plant physiology and molecular genetics techniques at Tennessee State University for undergraduate and graduate students as well as extension and promotion materials for New Crops.?
Project Methods
The working plans and methods used to attain each of the stated objectives are described below and follow the same order given the Objectives section:Objective 1. Selections made in grain amaranth from our previous research will be grown out and multiplied for fresh seed, which will be used for multi-location testing. All plantings have been done in Nashville AREC to the first trial in Ashland City AREC will be evaluated. This will be a repeat of a fertilizer trial harvested once giving a multi-year results to the variety testing. The selections are from major sources as plant introduction (PI) entries from USDA and genebank accessions from SSE. Statistical analysis of the grain amaranth experiments will be based on randomized complete block (RCB) and split block (SB) designs.Objective 2. Over the past three years we have grown mung beans and cowpeas as borders to our grain amaranth field. In doing so, we have made a selection from a mung bean population and multiplied it for uniform ripening and high productivity. This mung bean variety is called MB-TSU1. In addition, we have received the varieties Beken (sprout) and OK-2000 (cover crop) to test. We also have access to 400 genotypes in the core collection from the USDA-GRIN system. For comparison of mung bean as an exotic and introduced grain legume we also have productive cowpea varieties from the Seedway company and Co-op stores selected as controls. The lines and varieties will be assessed for adaptation, growth vigor, resistance to multiple pests and abiotic factors, yield and grain quality. Statistical analysis of grain legume experiments will use the same experimental designs mentioned above for grain amaranth.Objective 3a. The fertilizer trials with grain amaranth will be conducted in Ashland city and Nashville ARECs. These trials will consist of two USDA genotypes and two SSE genotypes for a total of 4 pre-varieties. The genotypes will be fertilized at three different levels with urea (0, 40 and 80 kg/ha) nitrogen added pre-planting as a banded application below direct seeded amaranth. Plot size will be 20 to 30 feet in length, 50 inches between rows based on marked rows from a corn planter and 3 rows wide. Eight-foot alleys will be used between plots to avoid inter-treatment interference. Dry seeding of the grain amaranths before a rain front or overhead irrigation of the lightly covered grain amaranth rows will be used to establish the crop. Plants will be checked for seed purity with off-types or genetic mixtures removed by rouging. If necessary, space-planted transplants can be used but will require waiting for repair of the greenhouse which was used to grow seedlings in our past diversity screening. Harvests will consist of the entire middle row minus the end plants and four marked plants from the outside rows. The individual plants will be measured for height and biomass as well as seed yield. Objective 3 b. The photosynthesis trial with four varieties of mung bean will be conducted in Ashland City and Nashville ARECs. The varieties will be selected based on productivity with TSU1, AAMU1 or 2, Beken and OK2000 as first contenders. Cowpea controls will be grown as borders partly to avoid deer herbivory which we have found to be a problem especially in Cheatham county. The top four varieties/lines will be subjected to agronomic treatments such as planting date and spacing using a split-split design in which three planting dates (mid-April, mid-May and mid-June) will be main plot treatments, 3 spacings (45 x 5 cm, 45 x 10 cm and 45 x 20 cm) will be sub-plots and selected varieties/lines will be sub-sub-plot treatments. Each treatment will be replicated four times. These trials may also be repeated on farmers' fields. Additional germplasm for grain legumes is available from USDA or from IITA / AVRDC (WorldVeg) breeding program and genebanks in the CGIAR system. This is part of a larger AFRI funded project with one objective to evaluate mung bean varieties and germplasm lines for adaptation and agronomic and physiological traits desirable for production as food crop in Tennessee.Objective 4. High throughput sequencing for genomics will be done based on root tissues from the crops described above used for RNAseq experiments. The basic ingredients consist of RNA extraction, mRNA capture using magnetic beads (Luminex Inc.), conversion to cDNA and library preparation with Truseq kits (Illumina Inc.). The RNA based libraries will then be sequenced on a MiSeq or a NextSeq for 5 to 50 million (M) 600 or 300 base pair (bp) reads, respectively. Both sequencers are located in the Blair lab and the graduate student involved, Mr. David Hickok, has been trained on sequencing reactions. Objective 5a. Training in plant breeding, plant physiology and molecular genetics will be for graduate and undergraduate students. A M.S. student is expected to graduate in 2021 and recruitment is open for an M.S. and a Ph.D. student for research assistantships under the project. Additional students could be recruited with AFRI and 1890s foundation funding with an emphasis on African-American students graduating from TSU and interested in a graduate degree. Undergraduate training will be for Dean's Scholars and Senior/Honor's projects and will mix virtual and on farm learning during the pandemic and lab training once the pandemic is under control. A new crops conference is already funded by AFRI for Dr. Blair's leadership and will highlight student projects as well as results from the previous four objectives as they come in. Corteva, the Agrisciences company formed from the fusion of chemical giants Dow and DuPont is also interested in assisting in a second iteration of the highly successful Plant Science Symposium that we had in 2019 in-person, pre-covid. These conferences are opportunities for students at all grade levels to get involved and see the public and private sectors working in Agriculture. The challenge will be to make these events successful on-line! Objective 5b. For outreach to Tennessee farmers and citizens more generally, the Blair Lab team will make continued contributions and presentations on New Crops to the Small Farm Expo sponsored by TSU-UT Extension every year for the middle TN region and held for the past two years in early September. Grain amaranth promotion will also be done through the webpage and conference of the Amaranth Institute (www.amaranthinstitute.org) for which Dr. Blair has been the current president (2018-20). Mung bean promotion is part of a larger project funded by AFRI competitive grants on this alternative crop with the final objective of developing education and training programs to assist small and mid-sized farmers in commercial cultivation of the crop. As part of this/these objective/s; promotional videos and pamphlets will be prepared using helpful software tools such as iMovie, Microsoft Publisher, Slido and Zoom with innovative content that engage the viewer/reader in the topics of New Crops for the state of Tennessee and the mid-South region. ?