Institut für Resistenzforschung und Stresstoleranz
Insect damage, heat stress and sulfur deficiency are current threats to rapeseed production in Germany. In this project, we aim to identify and characterise biotic and abiotic resistances by developing and applying innovative phenotyping, genomic, metabolomic pathway analysis and bioinformatic approaches to systematically exploit existing and novel biodiversity for integrative rapeseed crop improvement. We will focus on five insect pests that cause major losses in oilseed rape production in Germany and are spreading due to climate change. Existing and newly created germplasm sets covering a broad range of genetic diversity from the Brassicaceae family will be screened in field and laboratory experiments. Novel phenotyping resources useful for commercial breeding will be established also by identification of metabolites co-varying with insect resistances. Germplasm will be screened using bioinformatics-assisted genetic mapping approaches to determine candidate loci. Identified candidate genotypes showing insect resistances will also be evaluated for their performance under heat stress and sulfur deficiency, to select lines with broad spectrum future breeding potential. We will specifically target sulfur deficiency because this not only results in quality and yield losses in oilseed rape, but also in changes in sulfur-containing metabolites such as glutathione and glucosinolates which are critical for defense responses to heat stress and insect pest infestation. We expect to identify climate-robust resistances against the targeted insect pest species providing an invaluable resource for future rapeseed improvement particularly under low cropping intensities. Metabolomic pathway analysis will enable us to transfer knowledge also from wild species to B. napus to provide metabolome bio marker and molecular marker assays for use in marker-assisted introgression breeding of oilseed rape by the breeding industry.
Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space
