SusCrop- ERA-NET

MineLandDiv

Mining Allelic Diversity in maize Landraces for Tolerance to Abiotic and Biotic stresses

Summary

Source: Stéphane D. Nicolas, INRAE

Climate change, soil degradation and fertilizer costs threaten food security and agriculture sustainability in Europe. Traditional varieties of crops or landraces are a valuable source of genetic diversity for addressing these challenges.

Source: Anne Zanetto, INRAE

Landraces have been selected for adaptation to local agro-climatic conditions and human uses and could therefore carry favorable alleles for tolerance to abiotic or biotic stresses. However, landraces remain underutilized in modern breeding programs and agriculture because they are poorly characterized, genetically heterogeneous and exhibit limited agronomic performance compared to elite material. Great effort has been recently made to characterize the genotypic variation of thousands of maize landraces but few resources have been mobilized for analyzing their phenotypic variation and genetic diversity for complex traits as tolerance to abiotic and biotic stresses. MineLandDiv project proposes to fill this gap by combining different up-to-date genomic approaches, genetic and statistical methods with high throughput phenotyping tools including sensors / metagenomics for fine environmental characterization.

Source: : Carlotta Balconi, CREA)

MineLandDiv aims at (i) identifying maize landraces and favorable alleles for tolerance to abiotic (heat/drought - cold - nitrogen) and biotic stresses (Corn borer) that could be used to broaden genetic diversity of modern breeding germplasms and (ii) better understanding their resilience to variable environmental conditions.

Source: : Xavier Draye, UCL

To achieve this, MineLandDiv proposes to:

1. Optimize a collection of 300 temperate maize landraces representative of American and European genetic diversity and adapted to various agro-climatic conditions.
2. Evaluate, across a large European network, these 300 landraces for different agronomic and physiologic traits with contrasted treatments for studying the effect of these stresses on agronomic performances by using high-throughput phenotyping tools (Drones, NIRs) and environmental sensors to assess the environmental conditions felt by plants.
3. Identify genomic regions involved in agronomic performance and tolerance to abiotic stresses by (i) conducting association studies for agronomical, physiological and roots traits as well as environmental variables associated with the landrace collecting sites, (ii) detecting selective footprints between landraces from contrasting environments.
4. Develop targeting sequencing approach to explore allelic diversity in these genomic regions and candidate genes putatively involved in abiotic tolerance or plant-microorganism interactions for all landraces as well as for a set of inbred lines for comparison.
5. Predict, for a larger number of landraces, agronomic performance and tolerance to abiotic/biotic stresses by calibrating a model based on phenotypic evaluation and deep genomic characterization of these 300 landraces.

Source: Stéphane D. Nicolas, INRAE

This project will increase our knowledge about adaptation mechanisms of maize landraces to different agro-climatic conditions. We will identify promising alleles and landraces that could be used to broaden the genetic basis of breeding germplasm for tolerance to abiotic / biotic stresses by releasing new inbred lines or using other bridging/technology approaches.

Source: Stéphane D. Nicolas, INRAE

Coordinator

Dr Stéphane D. Nicolas
INRAE, GQE-Le Moulon - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environment, France

Email: stephane.nicolas@inrae.fr

Partners

Dr Alain Charcosset
GQE-Le Moulon - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environment (INRAE), France

Dr Laurence Moreau
GQE-Le Moulon - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environment (INRAE), France

Assistant Professsor Julie Fievet
GQE-Le Moulon - AgroParisTech, France

Assistant Professsor Sarah Ben Sadoun
GQE-Le Moulon - AgroParisTech, France

Cyril Bauland
GQE-Le Moulon - AgroParisTech, France

Dr Brigitte Gouesnard
Institut AGAP - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environment (INRAE), France

Paule Térès
CRB GAMét – CIRAD, France

Morgane Vincent
CRB GAMéT, Institut AGAP, Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environment (INRAE), France

Dr Patricia Faivre-Rampant
EPGV - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environment (INRAE), France

Dr Damien Hinsinger
EPGV - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environment (INRAE), France

Dr Romain Chapuis
UE Diascope - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environment (INRAE), France

Pascal Sartre
UE Diascope - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environment (INRAE), France

Carine Palaffre
UE du maïs, Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environment (INRAE), France

Dr Carlotta Balconi
Consiglio per la Ricerca in Agricoltura e l'Analisi dell'Economia Agraria (CREA), Italy

Dr Rita Redaelli
Consiglio per la Ricerca in Agricoltura e l'Analisi dell'Economia Agraria (CREA), Italy

Dr Alessio Torri
Consiglio per la Ricerca in Agricoltura e l'Analisi dell'Economia Agraria (CREA), Italy

Dr Gianfranco Mazzinelli
Consiglio per la Ricerca in Agricoltura e l'Analisi dell'Economia Agraria (CREA), Italy

Professor Silvio Salvi
ALMA MATER STUDIORUM - Università di Bologna (UNIBO), Italy

Professor Elisabetta Frascaroli
ALMA MATER STUDIORUM - Università di Bologna (UNIBO), Italy

Professor Antonio Lupuni
Mediterranea University of Reggio Calabria (UNIRC) , Italy

Dr Rossana Sidari
Mediterranea University of Reggio Calabria (UNIRC), Italy

Dr Ana Butrón
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), Italy

Dr Pedro Revilla
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), Italy

Dr Rosa Ana Malvar
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), Italy

Dr Amando Ordás
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), Italy

Dr Sekip Erdal
Bati Akdeniz Agricultural Research Institute (BATEM), Turkey

Dr Mesut Esmeray
Maize Research Institut (MRI), Turkey

Professor François Chaumont
Université Catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain), Belgium

Professor Xavier Draye
Université Catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain), Belgium