Genetics used to improve plants for bioenergy

Jeon Hong and Maria Harrison

This image shows an arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus (green) inside Brachypodium distachyon root cells (red). The fungi invade root cells and naturally deliver essential nutrients phosphate and nitrogen - which are necessary for plant growth, development and yield - from the soil to the plants.

Jeon Hong and Maria Harrison

Brachypodium distachyon, a model grass species.

An upcoming genetics investigation into the symbiotic association between soil fungi and feedstock plants for bioenergy production could lead to more efficient uptake of nutrients, which would help limit the need for expensive and polluting fertilizers.

The study is part of a three-year, $864,400 U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) grant to researchers at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research (BTI) at Cornell. It is one of eight awards nationwide by the DOE last month aimed at accelerating genetic breeding programs to improve plant feedstocks for the production of biofuels, biopower and bio-based products. The U.S. Department of Agriculture also funded two additional projects as part of this program.

Maria Harrison, a professor at BTI, is the grants principal investigator. Co-PI Zhangjun Fei, an associate professor at BTI, will provide bioinformatics expertise for the project. They are Cornell adjuncts in plant pathology and plant microbe biology.

The grant has two parts:

First, Harrison and Fei will use genetics to examine the symbiotic relationship between Brachypodium distachyon (Bd), a model grass species, and Arbuscular mycorhizal (AM) fungi, soil fungi that invade root cells and naturally deliver essential nutrients phosphate and nitrogen necessary for plant growth, development and yield from the soil to the plants.

Switchgrass and sorghum, for example, are both grasses considered to be important biofuel feedstocks.

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Genetics used to improve plants for bioenergy