increasing resilience to stress

Foreground equipment for measuring leaf pressure and background tall, many stemmed, green Miscanthus plants growing in large volume pots

 

A new Soil-Plant-Air facility is being used to understand the mechanisms delivering high performance of elite hybrids from the Miscanthus breeding programme under stress in a more realistic environment.

Shows approximately fifty, green, many stemmed, large grass plants of about one metre high growing in a glasshouse in large orange pots

 

Five high yielding Miscanthus genotypes growing in pots under glasshouse conditions and treated with gravimetrically controlled water stress treatments. Plants were sampled to identify metabolic and transcriptional differences between genotypes and treatments.

Idealised stem growth curves linked to the many traits such as leaf emergence, cold tolerance, flowering and senescence that control growth

 

Raman microscropy of an imbibed Miscanthus seedling displaying signal consistent with dipicolinic acid, a major component of the bacterial endospore coat (Cope‐Selby et al. GCB Bioenergy 9.1 (2017): 57-77)

The picture shows twenty plots of tall Miscanthus grass growing in a field with a background of conventional forage grass cultivation

 

Bacterial endophytes plated onto Bacillus ChromoSelect media, indicating the diversity present. Image courtesy of Islam Abd-El Daim

 

We aim to determine the molecular and physiological mechanisms that can make Miscanthus resilient to environmental stresses, including water and nutrient limitation. Both the plant genome and the plant microbiome are being investigated to optimise resilience traits. These combined approaches will generate an understanding of Miscanthus biology that underpins performance under multiple stresses at different life stages, and enable modelling for resilience under different climate scenarios.

 

Approach: Miscanthus genotypes are being subjected to nutrient and water stresses, in both controlled environment experiments and in the field, and the phenotypic, physiological and gene expression responses analysed. Plant growth promotion by novel bacterial endophytes is being tested under limited nutrient and water regimes. Resilience is considered in terms of both biomass yield and quality.

 

Potential impact: This work will contribute to the accelerated domestication of Miscanthus; to the definition of future ideotypes, including optimised plant-microbe interactions; and to the development of novel biomass varieties with improved resilience for different UK environments.

 

Key research insights and findings: We aim to understand the biology underpinning environmental stress responses at different life stages and to increase crop resilience for biomass quantity and quality. To address this we have subjected Miscanthus genotypes and model species to environmental stresses, alone and in combination to determine the mechanistic regulation of performance and resilience; and we have established 5 Miscanthus genotypes at 4 field locations along an altitudinal gradient from 70 to 340 m elevation.

 

We have identified a number of genotypes that  retain higher yield than M. x giganteus in control and drought treatments, highlighting the potential for developing high yielding Miscanthus genotypes and cultivars resilient to drought stress.

 

We have used a new Soil-Plant-Air facility to control water status of different germplasm and showed Miscanthus was able to extract water down to -50 bar, around 3x the expected wilt point of crops such as wheat. This was confirmed in field-grown genotypes in the extreme drought of 2017 and we continue to try to understand the mechanisms by which Miscanthus achieves this.

 

Bacterial endophytes are increasingly under scrutiny as alternative plant growth promoters and for their environmental stress amelioration potential. We have identified a number of novel bacterial endophytes isolated from Miscanthus seed and halotolerant plants that  affect growth related features of Brachypodium, including promoting growth,  increasing plant height, seed head production or dry weight either with or without salinity treatment, and a number of isolates out-performed published strains. Further analysis is underway to determine the genes and pathways involved in a beneficial plant-microbe interaction.

 

We have demonstrated that sugar release from Miscanthus biomass by enzymatic hydrolysis, used as a biomass quality measure, was significantly affected by environmental conditions (drought and nutrient stress, both separately and in combination) in a stress, genotype and organ dependent manner.

 

http://www.miscanthusbreeding.org/

 

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paul robson

ibers website

ppr@aber.ac.uk

www.aber.ac.uk/en/ibers

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Foreground equipment for measuring leaf pressure and background tall, many stemmed, green Miscanthus plants growing in large volume pots Shows approximately fifty, green, many stemmed, large grass plants of about one metre high growing in a glasshouse in large orange pots Idealised stem growth curves linked to the many traits such as leaf emergence, cold tolerance, flowering and senescence that control growth The picture shows twenty plots of tall Miscanthus grass growing in a field with a background of conventional forage grass cultivation

Foreground equipment for measuring leaf pressure and background tall, many stemmed, green Miscanthus plants growing in large volume pots Shows approximately fifty, green, many stemmed, large grass plants of about one metre high growing in a glasshouse in large orange pots Idealised stem growth curves linked to the many traits such as leaf emergence, cold tolerance, flowering and senescence that control growth The picture shows twenty plots of tall Miscanthus grass growing in a field with a background of conventional forage grass cultivation