How can various cultivars influence
the history of a crop?
Not many of us see Model T cars on the road today. This 1920's era car made car travel accessible for the middle class, but its last production was in 1927. Yet, some of the engineering that went into the Model T still has an impact on today's cars.
In the same way, older varieties of crops, now much-improved, may today occupy very few acres of land. Where they once were the major variety of the day, their impact is on the history – and genetics – of their specie.
A type of wheat called Madsen, is one of those varieties not widely produced today. But its impact on today's wheat, and future generations, is undeniable. Released in 1988 for production in the Pacific Northwest, Madsen is a soft white winter wheat. It has a high yield potential. But, newer, higher producing cultivars are now more popular, but that doesn't negate the importance Madsen has in the success of today's wheat cultivars.
Madsen's legacy has gone far beyond commercial production. Madsen has been the parent of over 45 released cultivars, many of which were the lines that replaced it in commercial production. It is used as a parent mainly because of the excellent disease resistance it has to common diseases of the PNW. Madsen has also been used in research projects to identify disease resistance genes. In some cases, Madsen was found to be carrying resistance genes the breeder was not aware of but were discovered later in research or field screenings.
A plant breeder's goal is to release cultivars that are commercially economical and environmentally sustainable. The premise is that new cultivars released are superior to those that are currently available. Through multiple years of testing in small-plot trials, released cultivars and new breeding lines are evaluated for many agronomic traits such as heading date, plant height, yield potential, etc. Furthermore, new breeding lines are subjected to different biotic stress conditions to evaluate pest and disease resistance traits. They may even be subjected to different abiotic stress conditions, either under field or controlled conditions, such as cold temperatures, drought, or low pH soils. After multiple years of testing, breeding lines that have better performance than currently grown cultivars are released for commercial production. Although plant breeders have multiple years of data supporting the performance of the new cultivar, there is no true indicator of how it will perform as a new cultivar until it is released and growers cultivate it on large acreage under commercial production systems.
During its development, Madsen showed very effective resistance to Pacific Northwest races of the stripe rust fungus and to leaf and stem rust. This disease resistance is important, as fungal diseases spread easily and reduce yields. In fact, Madsen was originally developed to be resistant to a different disease, eyespot foot rot.
Commercial Production
Once Madsen was released as a cultivar, it became widely grown in only a few years. At one time, 20% of the wheat produced in the Pacific Northwest was Madsen. It remained the most widely grown cultivar in the PNW for almost 13 years. Madsen has also been blended and planted with other cultivars in the same field to manage pests because of its excellent disease resistance. This production history has been an impressive 30-year life of a cultivar!
Breeding value
Approximately 45 cultivars have been released in the Pacific Northwest containing Madsen as a direct parent or somewhere within the pedigree. Six of these have been the leading cultivars in either Oregon or Washington for multiple years based on planted hectares.
Agronomic value
If you have ever driven by a field of beautiful wheat and see some of it laying on the ground (versus upright), that is called lodging. Lodging can hurt the value of wheat. Madsen has a lower rate of lodging than other wheats, which could be because its stems are strong. In addition, its resistance to fungal diseases may also help.
Consumer value
No cultivar of crop will remain on the market long if its end-users do not buy it. In addition to how well Madsen performs in the field, it also has excellent baking properties.
Answered by Arron Carter, Washington State University
Fun fact: did you know that many cultivars are named after people? Madsen was named in honor of Dr. Louis L. Madsen, Dean of the College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resource Sciences at Washington State University from 1965 to 1973. Dr. Madsen was an effective advocate of wheat research at the university, and a strong supporter of the collaboration between the USDA units and the College on campus.
Dr. Carter recently published a paper about the lineage of Madsen in Journal of Plant Registrations.
About us: This blog is sponsored and written by members of the American Society of Agronomy and Crop Science Society of America. Our members are researchers and trained, certified, professionals in the areas of growing our world's food supply while protecting our environment. We work at universities, government research facilities, and private businesses across the United States and the world.
Images of avocado forerunners of 'Hass' variety
/span>/h1>/h1>- Author: Lynn M. Sosnoskie
University of California Small Grains - Alfalfa/Forages Field Day
Wednesday, May 15, 2019
UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences Field Headquarters
2400 Hutchison Dr., Davis, CA 95616, Davis, CA
8:00-4:30 Includes Lunch
CEUs: TBD
The annual UC Small Grains/Alfalfa-Forages Field Day will be held on May 15th at the University of California, Davis Department of Plant Sciences Field Headquarters on Hutchinson Road (west of Highway 113) from 8AM – 4:30PM.
The event showcases UC efforts in breeding and agronomic research related to small grains, alfalfa and forage crops and is one of the longest running field days in the state. The small grains portion will take place from 8 to noon and the alfalfa/forages section will take place between 12:40 and 4:30. A barbecue lunch will be provided.
Agenda:
7:30 Registration (no charge)
8:00 Start of Small Grains Program
8:00 Welcome and Opening Remarks
8:35 Malting Barley & Oat Breeding: Alicia del Blanco, UC Davis
8:45 Barley Breeding for Food, Feed and Forage: Allison Krill-Brown, UC Davis
9:00 New Wheat Varieties: Oswaldo Chicaiza, UC Davis
9:15 Breeding Triticales for Bread and Forage: Josh Hegarty, UC Davis
9:25 Increasing Grain Size and Number: Alejandra Alvarez, UC Davis
9:35 A New Gene Controlling Number of Grains Per Spike: Saarah Kuzay, UC Davis
9:40 Balancing Source and Sink to Increase Yield: Jorge Dubcovsky, UC Davis
10:00 Herbicide Programs for Barley and Wheat: small grain herbicides and maximizing efficacy for control: Lynn Sosnoski, UC Cooperative Extension
10:20 Italian Ryegrass: Updates on Cultivation vs Herbicide Trials: resistance and methods for control: Konrad Mathesius, UC Cooperative Extension
10:30 Warm-season legume cover crop between winter small grains: Michelle Leinfelder-Miles, UC Cooperative Extension (This project was supported by the California Climate Investments program.)
10:45 Using Nitrogen Rich Reference Zones to Guide Wheat Topdress Decisions in the Sacramento Valley: Sarah Light, UC Cooperative Extension
10:55 Yield and Protein Stability for Wheat and Triticale Varieties Grown under N and Terminal Drought Stress: Mark Lundy, UC Cooperative Extension
11:05 Updates on UC Statewide Small Grain Trials: Seasonal conditions, pests and diseases, nitrogen management, and extension efforts: Mark Lundy, UC Cooperative Extension
11:15 Comments from breeders with entries in UC Statewide Small Grain Trials
11:30 UC Statewide Small Grain Trial Observations
11:50 Return for lunch
12:00 BARBEQUE LUNCH – Sponsored by CCIA – Many thanks to the staff at CCIA!
12:40 Start of Alfalfa and Forage Portion
12:40 Welcome and Introductions—Dan Putnam, UCCE/UCD Alfalfa Specialist
12:50 Managing Alfalfa in a Wet Year- What are the Diseases?-How to Help your Fields Recover? Rachael Long, UCCE Farm Advisor, Yolo County, Woodland, CA
1:05 IPM and Managing for Weevil Resistance in Alfalfa – Ian Grettenberger, Entomology Specialist, UC Davis, CA
1:20 Evaluation of N Stabilizers in Corn –Michelle Leinfelder Miles, UCCE Farm Advisor, Delta Region.
1:35 Forage Sorghum as a Summer Option: Controlling Sugarcane Aphid in Sorghum/ Sudangrass—Nick Clark, UCCE Farm Advisor, Kings/Fresno/Tulare Counties
1:50 Innovations in Overhead Irrigation – How that might improve Water Use Efficiency—Isaya Kisseka, UC Davis Professor, Irrigation Technology
2:10 Fun with Drones –Detecting Pest and Diagnosing Problems with Aerial Photography—Umair Gull, UC Davis Graduate Student, Plant Sciences.
2:25 Controlling Difficult Weeds in Alfalfa—Lynn Sosnoskie, UCCE Farm Advisor, Merced County.
2:50 Alternative Crops Research—Kura Clover, Switchgrass, Hemp—Dan Putnam, UC Davis
3:05 Reduced Lignin Alfalfa Varieties and Interactions with Harvest Scheduling—Brenda Perez, Graduate Student UC Davis
3:20 Analyzing Alfalfa Varieties for Pest Resistance (Nematodes, Insects, Diseases) and other characteristics—Dan Putnam, UC Davis
3:35 Alfalfa and Tall Fescue Breeding Programs at UC Davis –Charlie Brummer and students, UC Davis.
3:50 Test your Weed ID IQ: Weed Identification—Brad Hanson, UC Davis
4:15 Return to Headquarters
UCDavisFieldDay 5 15 19
- Author: Pat Bailey
As you're ladling up country-style pinto beans for your weekend barbecue or fixing a cold three-bean salad from kidney, string and navy beans for a summer picnic, pause to remember what a long and storied history these “common bean” varieties share and the new scientific advances that promise to boost their productivity worldwide.
This week, a new genome sequencing is being reported for the common bean, which ranks as the world's 10th most widely grown food crop and includes the culinary favorites above, whose varieties together comprise a $1.2 billion crop in the United States.
“The availability of this new whole-genome sequence for beans is already paying off,” said Paul Gepts, professor in the Department of Plant Sciences at UC Davis and co-author of the new sequencing study.
Gepts, who leads the bean-breeding program at UC Davis, notes that the new sequence is being used to confirm many of the findings made earlier by his UC Davis research group, including identification of the common bean's two points of origin and domestication.
Sequencing and bean ancestry
The common bean is thought to have originated in Mexico more than 100,000 years ago, but -- as the Gepts group earlier discovered – was domesticated separately at two different geographic locations in Mesoamerica and the southern Andes.
“This finding makes the common bean an unusually interesting experimental system because the domestication process has been replicated in this crop,” Gepts said.
The sequencing team compared gene sequences from pooled populations of plants representing these two regions and found that only a small fraction of the genes are shared between common bean species from the two locations. This supports the earlier finding that the common bean was domesticated in two separate events -- one at each location -- but distinct genes were involved in each event.
The new whole-genome sequencing is also helping to identify genetic “markers” that can be used to speed up breeding of new and more productive bean varieties in the United States, East Africa and elsewhere, Gepts said.
The nitrogen connection
All of bean varieties that belong to the “common bean” group share with the closely related soybean the highly valued ability to form symbiotic relationships with “nitrogen-fixing” bacteria in the soil.
The plants and the bacteria work together to convert nitrogen in the atmosphere into ammonia – which includes nitrogen in a form that enriches the soil and feeds crops. Nitrogen-fixing crop plants can actually reduce or eliminate the need for farmers to apply expensive fertilizers.
One goal of the new sequencing project was to better understand the genetic basis for how such symbiotic relationships between nitrogen-fixing plants and bacteria are formed and sustained, with an eye toward increasing fuel- and food-crop productivity.
The research team successfully identified a handful of genes involved with moving nitrogen around, which could be helpful to farmers who intercrop beans with other crops that don't fix nitrogen.
Findings from this study are reported this week online in the journal Nature Genetics. The sequencing project was led by researchers at the University of Georgia, U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute, Hudson Alpha Institute for Biotechnology and North Dakota State University.
- Author: Marissa Palin
“We are honored to be part of this new venture,” said UC Davis plant scientist Allen Van Deynze, co-founder of the UC Davis Plant Breeding Academy, which has trained 114 crop breeders from 26 countries since 2006.
“We believe that the new plant breeding academy will produce important benefits for the daily lives of many Africans,” said Van Deynze, who is also the research director for the University of California Seed Biotechnology Center.
The new academy is part of the African Orphan Crops Consortium, which aims to sequence the genomes of 96 indigenous orphan crops that are important for African diets. The term “orphan crops” refers to African food crops and tree species that have been neglected by researchers because they are not economically important on the global market. The 96 crops being sequenced by the consortium include African eggplant and potato, cocoyam and Ethiopian mustard, as well as more commonly known crops such as cassava, cacao, millet, sorghum and legumes.
The African Plant Breeding Academy will enable plant breeders to enhance the nutritional value of these key crops through breeding and application of genomic tools.
Partners in the consortium are the African Union’s New Partnership for Africa’s Development, Beijing Genomics Institute, Life Technologies, World Wildlife Fund, University of California Seed Biotechnology Center, iPlant, Integrated Breeding Platform Initiative and Mars Incorporated. More information on the consortium is available online.
"Getting opportunities to grow nutritious food and put it into the hands of those who need it most has been the ambition of the African Orphan Crops Consortium since its inception,” said Howard Yana-Shapiro, chief agricultural officer for Mars Inc. and a senior fellow in the UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences.
"It is hugely exciting to realize that, through the pursuit of fundamental science, the consortium is playing its role in fighting chronic hunger and malnutrition, and Mars is proud to be a part of this effort,” he said.
The new academy, a six-week program, will be delivered in three two-week classes, beginning Dec. 2 at the World Agroforestry Center in Nairobi. Closing date for applications is July 15.
Participating African plant breeders will be trained in the most advanced theory and technologies for plant breeding, in support of critical decisions for crop improvement. The curriculum will cover the latest concepts in plant breeding, quantitative genetics, statistics and experimental design.
The program also covers accurate and precise trait evaluations, strategies to integrate genomics into breeding programs, and identification and use of genomic data and DNA-based markers in breeding programs.
The instructors are internationally recognized experts in plant breeding and seed technology.
With significant contributions from Life Technologies and the World Agroforestry Center in Nairobi, the African Orphan Crop Consortium is developing state-of-the art laboratories to apply the technologies being developed for Africa.
The African Plant Breeding Academy is the latest offering of the UC Davis Plant Breeding Academy, a premium professional certificate program, offered since 2006 in the United States, Europe and Asia.
For more information on the African Plant Breeding Academy’s course curriculum, dates, application process and scholarships, please visit http://pba.ucdavis.edu/ or http://www.nepad.org.
About the New Partnership for Africa’s Development
The partnership is a program of the African Union, with the mandate to eradicate poverty through sustainable growth and development. The key priority areas of the agency include, among others: facilitating implementation of the food security and agricultural development program in all sub-regions; and monitoring and intervening as appropriate to ensure that the Millennium Development Goals in the areas of agriculture/food nutrition, health and education are met.
About UC Davis
In May, UC Davis was ranked No. 1 in the world for teaching and research in agriculture and forestry by QS World University Rankings. For more than 100 years, UC Davis has engaged in teaching, research and public service that matter to California and transform the world. Located close to the state capital, UC Davis has more than 33,000 students, more than 2,500 faculty and more than 21,000 staff, an annual research budget of nearly $750 million, a comprehensive health system and 13 specialized research centers. The university offers interdisciplinary graduate study and more than 100 undergraduate majors in four colleges — Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Biological Sciences, Engineering, and Letters and Science. It also houses six professional schools — Education, Law, Management, Medicine, Veterinary Medicine and the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing.
Media contact(s):
- Allen Van Deynze, UC Davis Plant Breeding Academy, (530) 754-6444, avandeynze@ucdavis.edu
- Pat Bailey, UC Davis News Service, (530) 752-9843, pjbailey@ucdavis.edu
- Author: Diane Nelson
While working in Tanzania on community development projects several years ago, Iago Lowe came to a life-changing conclusion:
Food security is central to projects that make a lasting difference in people's well-being. It ensures that communities have the seeds, soil, water and environment to produce enough to eat.
However, his bachelor's degree in physics and religion from Dartmouth College did not adequately prepare him to spearhead those kinds of projects.
To address that gap in his ability to "make some small difference in the world," Lowe started doctoral studies at UC Davis in 2007 in plant breeding and genetics.
"There are so many needs in developing nations — for schools, roads, water, other infrastructure — but when the money and people leave, so often the projects die," said Lowe, who completed his Ph.D. in Plant Breeding and Genetics at UC Davis in 2011. "The few projects I saw that continued to thrive, that really made a tangible difference in people's lives, almost always dealt with local food security, seed systems, soil and water conservation and ecological restoration — projects that demanded a set of skills I didn't have. After studying plant breeding at UC Davis and that's no longer the case."
Lowe exemplifies a new breed of plant breeders at UC Davis. Long a global leader in plant breeding, UC Davis has been retooling its programs — offering new training, creating new curriculum, hiring new faculty (as the budget allows) and conducting world-class research to meet a growing demand for new crops and for breeders.
The new generation of scientists that those programs will produce — and their research breakthroughs — can't come soon enough for industry, government and philanthropic foundation leaders who say that a shortage of plant breeders is hampering efforts to alleviate hunger around the world. Hundreds of high-paying industry jobs for plant breeders are going unfilled.
“Plant breeding is such a vital tool for helping us deal with significant challenges in the 21st century such as food security, population increase, urbanization, and water and energy shortages," said Xingping Zhang, a watermelon breeder with the Davis-based seed company Syngenta. "Who is going to educate the plant breeders? UC Davis is in a perfect position to do so because it's a great center of science and technological inventions, located right in the heart of agricultural abundance. No place in the world offers the diversity of crops [like those] grown in California."
In another major nod to UC Davis expertise, the U.S. Department of Agriculture awarded $40 million in grants earlier in 2011 to develop climate-change-tolerant plants and new bioenergy sources. UC Davis scientists will lead two research teams from more than 50 universities in more than 20 states.
"Each of these projects features transdisciplinary, regional, integrated teams, including scientists from institutions that represent underserved populations," said Roger Beachy, director of the USDA's National Institute of Food and Agriculture, in announcing the grants at UC Davis. "This approach represents a new paradigm in how USDA science can best solve critical issues facing agriculture today."
You can read more about the history and future of plant breeding at UC Davis in this article in the UC Davis Magazine.
Learn more:
UC Davis plant breeding education
Story on UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences website
Seed Biotechnology Center videos on plant breeding