description
- A major challenge facing society is to improve crop yield and quality, in order to meet the needs of the global population. One means to address this challenge is to breed and further improve crop germ plasm. For example, disease and stress resistance traits from wild populations can be beneficial to introduce into elite domesticated varieties. In this case beneficial traits must then be introgressed over many generations to achieve a desirable, improved strain. The process of crop improvement relies on the trait re-assortment in offspring that occurs naturally during sexual reproduction. Specifically, diversity is generated during a specialised cell division called meiosis, which results in production of gametes (sex cells). One mechanism that creates genetic diversity during meiosis is called crossover recombination. During meiosis, homologous chromosomes physically pair and exchange reciprocal regions, which generates new combinations of genetic variation. However, crossover recombination patterns along chromosomes are highly skewed in many of the most important crop species, including wheat, maize, barley and tomato. As a consequence, some regions of the genome are inaccessible for breeding, despite containing important genes with effects on agronomically important traits. The specific crop this proposal will investigate is Solanum lycopersicum (tomato). Tomato is a major global crop with an annual yield of over 130 million tons. Domesticated tomato belongs to a tribe of 13 related Solanaceous species, which represent an important source of wild diversity for improving yield and disease resistance traits. Following wide crosses, breeders must complete multiple cycles of introgression to obtain useful lines, and this process relies on meiosis and recombination. However, low numbers of recombination events and skewed genomic distributions limits the efficiency of this process. Tools that boost or unlock recombination will accelerate improvement of tomato germ plasm. The tomato FTL system that we will develop will enable academic and industrial researchers to rapidly quantify recombination frequency. This will facilitate the development of technology to modulate meiotic recombination to enhance breeding efforts and increase food security. All of the tools we develop with be shared on an open-access basis.