Download Japanese barleys offer frost-tolerance hope

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Better barleys
This article appeared in the January 2010 edition of the Kondinin Group’s monthly magazine Farming Ahead. The Kondinin Group holds
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Photo: Emma Leonard
Japanese barleys offer
frost-tolerance hope
Nick Collins
for Grains Research and
Development Corporation
Potential options: Frosts cost an estimated
$100 million in lost cereal production but genetic
research offers the promise of frost-tolerant
varieties within the next decade.
At a glance
Management strategies are
currently the only way to reduce
the risk of cereal frost damage.
Two Japanese barley varieties
have been identified with
moderate genetic frost-tolerance.
This genetic resistance could
form the basis of future breeding
programs for genetic frost
resistance in other cereal varieties.
Identifying genetic frost-tolerance is an important step in breeding tolerant
varieties for Australian growers.
Management strategies are currently
the only option Australian growers have to
reduce the risk and impact of frosts, which
cost an estimated $100 million in lost cereal
yields each year.
However research at the University of
Adelaide, funded by the Grains and Research
and Development Corporation (GRDC), has
identified genes in two varieties of Japanese
barley, which could be used in plant breeding
programs to increase genetic frost-tolerance
in grain varieties
Frosts in the order of
-4 degree Celsius to –80C
can cause floret sterility or
damage to the developing
grain.
The threat of frost also has an indirect
effect on production because growers delay
sowing so that flowering occurs after the
period of maximum frost risk.
The lack of frost-tolerant cereals for
Australian growers partly reflects the
difficulties of breeding for frost-tolerance at
flowering (reproductive frost-tolerance), and
the apparent lack of strong natural tolerance
in any barley or wheat varieties.
Challenges in identifying and assessing
frost-tolerance include the traditional
reliance on unpredictable natural frost
events for scoring and the tendency of any
flowering-time differences to interfere with
the detection of true tolerance.
Hope on the horizon
The University of Adelaide’s barley
breeding group, led by Jason Eglinton, has
identified the Japanese barley varieties
Amagi Nijo and Haruna Nijo as being
moderately frost-tolerant. They determined
that this tolerance was controlled by genes
at two chromosome locations. Although the
effects of these genes are relatively subtle,
each accounting for about 15 per cent higher
fertility after a frost event of -40C, these are
the only reproductive frost-tolerance loci so
far described in any cereal.
One program at the Australian Centre for
Plant Functional Genomics (ACPFG) aims
to isolate the two barley frost-tolerance
genes. This work could reveal the nature of
natural frost-tolerance mechanisms, provide
tools to allow more efficient selection of the
genes in breeding programs, and create
opportunities for producing tolerant barley
or wheat varieties by genetic engineering.
Jason Reinheimer and Andrew Chen,
assisted by visiting scientists Anita BrûléBabel (University of Manitoba) and Larry
Gusta (University of Saskatchewan), have
been able to demonstrate that the two
genes provide real frost-tolerance rather
than an escape mechanism based on
flowering time.
The go ahead
This knowledge gives the researchers the
green light for accurate localisation and
eventual isolation of the genes. A state-ofthe-art frost simulation chamber, built by the
Australian Genome Research Facility (AGRF)
on the Waite Campus of the University of
Adelaide, was shown to be capable of
reproducing the varietal frost-tolerance
differences seen in the field, and will be an
essential tool in ongoing research.
In another approach, ACPFG researchers
are investigating several types of master
switches (transcription factors) known to
control biochemical responses or tolerance to
cold and other stresses. Genetic engineering
is being used to express these factors to high
levels and in a cold-inducible manner in
cereal heads. The transgenic plants will be
assessed for reproductive frost-tolerance.
Cereals also possess genes for antifreeze
factors, but these are not normally expressed
in heads.
Farming Ahead January 2010 No. 216 www.farmingahead.com.au
55
Cropping
Cropping
soil health
Better barleys
Photo: R Freebairn
transporting and spreading various inputs
and making assumptions about the relative
availability of each nutrient.
For example, applying manure with an
N:P:K ratio of 2.2:0.8:2.3 at one tonne per
hectare would supply 26, 8 and 23kg/ha of
nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium
respectively. This would be enough to replace
the phosphorus and potassium removed in a
3t/ha wheat crop, but additional nitrogen (at
least 58kg/ha) would be needed.
contAct dr chris dorahy, Ableblue Pty ltd
(03) 5579 8519
[email protected]
toni nugent is a researcher and writer for
Screening: Barley field screening plots for frost assessment. Australian lines developed with genes
kondinin
group.
transferred from frost-tolerant Japanese varieties are showing good improvements in frost-tolerance
[email protected]
as well as high yields and sound type.
Australian Grains, which is available from
Ground Cover Direct.
However it is anticipated
that varieties with improved
frost-tolerance at flowering
will be developed in the
future.
Based on current knowledge and
technologies, improved frost-tolerance
could be a reality in the next decade.
More information Managing Frost Risk:
A Guide for Southern Australian Grains is
available from Ground Cover Direct, freephone
1800 11 00 44, ground-cover-direct@canprint.
com.au, www.grdc.com.au/bookshop.
GRDC research
Contact Dr Nick Collins,
ACPFG
(08) 8303 7171
[email protected]
Farming Ahead December 2009 No. 215 www.farmingahead.com.au
56 Farming Ahead January 2010 No. 216 www.farmingahead.com.au
photo: simone Jolliffe
Transgenic cereal plants made to express
barley antifreeze genes in heads are being
produced in a strategy to engineer
mixing it together: Feedstocks are added
reproductive
frost-tolerance.
and incorporated
one at a time fromAthe similar
approach
is through
being pursued
elsewhere
using
least dense
to most dense.
Straw is
antifreeze
genes tofrom
Antarctic
hairgrass
the first feedstock
be added,
with bales
being ‘busted up’
for an even spread
(Victorian
Department
of and
Primary
decomposition.or from the fish winter
Industries),
flounder
(University
of
Southern
Queensland).
Management will remain an important
method for dealing with frost in cereals
and strategies are detailed in the book
Managing Frost Risk: A Guide for Southern
63