Evaluation of Sunflower Pre-Bred Lines for Stress Resistance and Associated Trade-Offs with Yield

Grant No

GS17008

Project Description

Plants are regularly challanged by a variety of environmental stresses such as drought, flooding, salt, and low-nutrient levels. These stresses negatively affect plant growth and reduce the productivity of our crops. Thoughh wild plants have evolved mechanisms to meet these challenges, many crops are less resilient. To reduce stress-induced tield loss and improve food security, attention has increasingly turned to the tapping of genetic diversity in crop wild relatives. Sunflower is an ideal system for such an approach because this oilseed crop is clearly limited by such stress, while wild relative species are adapted to a variety of extreme environments. As part of a previous project sponsored by the Trust, we developed and genotyped 400 pre-bred lines for sunflower that derive from 25 wild donor genotypes. Here we propose to extend the previous project to evaluate the new pre-bred lines for resistance to three abiotic and three biotic stresses, and to test for negative trade-offs between resistance and yield. We also will study the mechanistic basis stress resistance, determine the genetic architecture of high oil content observed in some lines, stabilize promising lines through selfing, and train sunflower breeders from developing countries. Stress-resistant cultivars resulting from this project are expected to stabilize production in developing countries in the face of environmental stresses.

Institute Name

Department of Botany, University of British Columbia (UBC)

Institute Country

Canada

List of Countries

Canada
Israel
Uganda
India
Argentina
France

Crops

Crop	Seed or Veg type	Acc collected	Acc regenerated	Acc sent to CG	Acc introduced to genebank	Acc sent to Svalbard
Sunflower		0	0	0	0	0

Program Name

Crop Wild Relatives

Donor

Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD)

Start Date

1st of April 2017

End Date

31st of August 2019

Status

Completed