Improving adaptability and resilience of perennial ryegrass for safe and sustainable food systems through CRISPR-Cas9 technology - EditGrass4Food

Aim of the project is to utilize transcriptomics and functional genomics to increase sustainability in agriculture through improvement of perennial ryegrass with better adaptation to frost and drought for current and future climates.

prosjekt

About/Aims

Background

More informaton of the project can be found here

https://www.editgrass4food.lu.lv/en

Objective

Aim of the project is to utilize transcriptomics and functional genomics to increase sustainability in agriculture through improvement of perennial ryegrass with better adaptation to frost and drought for current and future climates.

More about the project

Establish a diverse perennial ryegrass core association panel by utilization of data from ongoing projects (WP1)

Screen the association panel in order to detect haplotype-resolved single-nucleotide variants and structural variation in the targeted genes/alleles for freezing and drought genes (WP1)

Identify novel genes and characterize drought and freezing tolerance genes by comparing their expression for pathway related genes in non-edited and mutant plants (WP2)

Develop CRISPR-Cas9 constructs and generate CRISPR-edited perennial ryegrass mutants for freezing and mild drought tolerance (WP3)

Validate and characterize the role of the genes and their sequence variations in the freezing and drought mechanisms (WP4).

Management and coordination of research activities and dissemination of results (WP5).

Project is implemented by University of Latvia ( Coordinator) in cooperation with The Lithuanian Research Centre for Agriculture and Forestry, Norwegian University of Life Sciences NMBU and Tallinn University of Technology from 1^st of May, 2021 until 30^th of April 2024.