The requirements for future products are substantial: They must be better able to survive extreme climatic conditions, and to limit the use of spraying, the plants must be more resistant to diseases. The market is also demanding continuing improvements in yield and quality while smaller and smaller quantities of nutrients are added. These challenges are stimulating factors in DLF-TRIFOLIUM's endeavours to develop new high-value varieties.
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Controlled flowering in grasses
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Increased drought and cold tolerance
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Improved nutritional value
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Improved nutrient utilization
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Fungal disease tolerance
Controlled flowering in grasses
One of the most important parameters determining forage grass quality is the onset of flowering. When grass starts to flower it looses its nutritional value due to its production of stems. Therefore, we seek to develop grass varieties, which will only flower upon a certain induction. Besides an improved biomass production these GM varieties also ensure that transgene spread to related species is minimal (biological containment). In the development of these species DLF-TRIFOLIUM participates in an EU project, 'TransContainer' - ”Developing efficient and stable biological containment systems for genetically modified plants” under the sixth framework programme (transcontainer.org/UK/).
Increased drought and cold tolerance
Phenomena like drought, cold or high salinity are serious stress factors, which inhibits plant growth in several areas today. Each year an additional number of locations are added to these impacted environments enforcing a further demand to crop plant robustness. Breeding towards increased stress tolerance is complicated and time consuming but DLF-TRIFOLIUM is heading for new varieties, which perform better than normal varieties under severe salt stress.
Improved nutritional value
With its trivial environmental impact, the grass field is an important item in sustainable agriculture. If we can further improve the general nutritional value of the grass, the need for daily supplementary cereal-based concentrated feed will decrease, and forage grass will gain even greater significance in the agriculture of the future. One strategy is to make the grass more easily digestible for the animals by reducing the content of lignin, a cell wall component which is difficult to digest. Another strategy is based on increasing the grass’s content of water-soluble carbohydrates, fructans, which are an important energy source and a critical factor for the nutritional value. DLF-TRIFOLIUM has developed a screening platform, by which thousands of plants can be screened for these traits every year and we have identified several key genes that are involved in the production of these components in grasses.
Improved nutrient utilization
During the last five years DLF-TRIFOLIUM has increased its efforts to develop grasses, which produces the same high quality as the existing varieties but for less nutrient input. Improved nutrient utilization will not only reduce farm costs but also improve the conditions of the surrounding environment. In computer controlled hydroponic systems different varieties and germplasms are tested for the ability to grow under low nitrogen conditions. At the same time we test the ability of different genes to improve the utilization of the available nitrogen.
Resistance to fungal diseases
Attack by fungal diseases in lawns is an increasing problem throughout the world. With the aid of traditional and marker-based breeding, it is possible to produce grass varieties with good resistance to certain fungi. Breeding with respect to resistance to rust has enjoyed particularly good success.
