A crop of half a million genetically diverse sorghum plants growing at The University of Queensland’s Gatton campus will help future-proof cereal production in a changing climate.
UQ’s Professor Robert Henry said the crop would reinvent the way producers use mutagenesis, a conventional plant breeding technique that mimicked nature.
“This crop will help breeders more quickly find genetic traits of interest as essentially it is a ‘here’s what we prepared earlier’ library of traits,” Professor Henry said.
Robert Henry (left) Patrick Mason at the Gatton library of sorghum mutants. Photo: UQ
“Usually when mutagenesis is used, a gene of interest is found, a genetic variation induced, and the new trait is then bred over several generations.
“What this project is doing is generating and propagating half a million Australian-grown genetically diverse sorghum lines in advance and using high-throughput DNA screening tools to create a searchable library of genetic traits.”
The collaborative research effort is led by Denmark’s Carlsberg Research Laboratory, through the Semper Ardens Crops for the future – Tackling the challenges of changing climates project.
