Oats are an alternative cereal for arable rotations increasing crop diversity and require fewer inputs than other cereals so can grow on more marginal land, expanding cropping options for arable production and for mixed farming systems. Oat grains exhibit quality characteristics beneficial to human health including the soluble fibre β-glucan. Oat grain yield and quality display high levels of phenotypic plasticity with a large interaction between genotype and environment (G x E). Understanding how plant architecture, partitioning and phenology impact on this is key to developing environmental resilience, optimising ideotypes and reducing the yield gap.

 

The objective of this theme is to investigate the effect of genotype and environment on traits contributing to grain quality and yield in oats.

 

Approach: Our approach is to use detailed phenotyping at a range of scales from controlled environments (including specific stresses and nutrient treatments) to multi-locational field trials to enable physiological dissection and gene discovery for target traits.

 

The outcome will be the development of tools and understanding to enable enhanced grain quality and yield in different environments.

 

Potential impact: This will create impact by developing knowledge and tools that will be used to design future crops adapted to a range of climate change scenarios and end-uses in collaboration with commercial partners (e.g. Senova, oat millers and feed manufacturers).

 

Key research insights and findings: By taking a Genotype By Sequencing approach, the marker density of the oat consensus map has been increased by the addition of more than 70,000 loci in an international collaboration with researchers in US and Canada (Bekele et al., 2018). A combined genome-wide association study of heading date from multiple locations identified a number of quantitative trait loci (QTL) as well as genomic regions containing signatures of selection. Through detailed phenotyping of near-isogenic lines (QTL-NILs) where contrasting haplotypes for specific major QTL have been fixed in a common oat genetic background, we have now verified QTL previously identified and revealed their interaction in traits such as height, flowering time, yield components and grain quality. These QTL-NILs have enabled the dissection of the role of both vernalisation and photoperiod in the control of flowering time and in seedling root system architecture.

 

These lines along with other genetically characterised populations that we have developed are being used in the CSP to further characterise shoot and root architectures, from seedling to grain maturity under different conditions (well-watered, flooded, drought, nitrogen depletion) in the National Plant Phenomics Centre (NPPC) and results related to those from multi-locational field trials in a number of sites in the UK, Ireland and North America. Field trial sites have been expanded to include the CSP altitudinal gradient. Initial results from G x E analysis of one such population has revealed the plasticity of a range of agronomic traits (Howarth et al., submitted) and experiments in phenomics under a range of stress and nutrient conditions are in progress. This has identified key developmental stages sensitive to environmental perturbation. The trade-offs between tiller/panicle number, grain number per panicle and grain size will be further dissected and novel alleles characterised that can be used to precisely manipulate these developmental processes.

 

We have recently developed deep learning and other methods to accurately measure flowering time remotely and quantify many other traits in real time including root development, tillering, panicle and grain architecture. To quantify the effects on grain quality we have developed micro computed tomography screening to model changes in cereal grain  and floral morphology. We will extend existing knowledge on the effect of G x E, grain maturity and processing on β-glucan content to understanding of effects on the molecular structure of β –glucan and also on the content of other grain constituents. Grain metabolite profiling has revealed the interaction of genotype and nitrogen supplementation.

 

Note: If you are viewing this page on a mobile device the associated images will appear below.

 

> Publications

 

^ Top of current page

 

< Return to Oats for Healthy Food