Novel technologies for crop improvement are needed to face the global societal and climate change challenges. Apomixis, i.e., asexual reproduction through seeds, is a key enabling technology for plant breeding and seed production. Unfortunately, available apomixis technologies are inefficient and a proof of concept (PoC) is currently limited to maize and rice.
The major goal of the ApoSoy project is to develop robust apomictic breeding and seed production systems for soybean. For this purpose, new genes to engineer the three elements of apomixis (apomeiosis, parthenogenesis and autonomous endosperm) will be identified and evaluated using novel tools in Arabidopsis, Cenchrus spp., tomato and rice. These novel genes and tools can then be used to custom engineer robust apomixis in a broad range of crops. As a PoC, these novel technologies will be introduced into soybean to demonstrate the feasibility of engineering efficient apomixis in a strictly self-fertilizing, dicot crop. Such self-fertilizing dicot crops often have the potential for expression of hybrid vigor when crossed but lack a commercially feasible hybrid production system. In the long-term, apomixis technology will allow (i) clonal seed production, (ii) shorter breeding cycles, (iii) fixation of hybrid vigor, (iv) true seed propagation of vegetative crops, and (v) transgene containment. Moreover, individual elements of apomixis can also be used to facilitate (vi) breeding of Page 1 of 35 ApoSoy – Confidential Application polyploid varieties of diploid crops, (vii) haploid production and reverse breeding, and (viii) artificial seed production.
ApoSoy brings together partners with complementary expertise to develop novel and efficient apomixis technologies and to successfully implement the four-year project, including apomeiosis (Underwood/Ozias-Akins), parthenogenesis (Boutilier/Dresselhaus/Grossniklaus) and autonomous endosperm (Figueiredo/Gehring), as well as a professional project management and communication partner (Rohner).
Funder: Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research
Amount: $659,080
PI: Peggy Ozias-Akins, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences