Award details

Improving water use and accelerating breeding pipelines in Mexican avocado

Reference	BB/S012850/1
Principal Investigator / Supervisor	Dr Stuart Casson
Co-Investigators / Co-Supervisors	Professor Julie Gray, Dr Ian Sudbery
Institution	University of Sheffield
Department	School of Biosciences
Funding type	Research
Value (£)	541,029
Status	Completed
Type	Research Grant
Start date	08/02/2019
End date	07/08/2022
Duration	42 months

Abstract

unavailable

Summary

Mexico is the world's leading avocado producer and Jalisco is the second largest avocado producing state. The global trade in this fruit makes avocado Mexico's most valuable agricultural product and this has a major impact on the the quality of life of thousands of farmers and workers employed in its cultivation and supply chain. Water availability has a major impact on avocado growth and yield, which is of major concern given the growing water crisis facing Mexico. Water demand is so great that ground water supplies are being depleted and droughts are frequent, with large areas of Jalisco being affected by severe drought. Given the economic importance of this crop to Mexico, it is therefore vital that breeding programs focus on improving the resilience of avocado to water stress and improve the amount of crop per drop. This has been recognized by policy makers in the Mexican Agri-Food Agenda, determining that the generation of varieties of avocado adaptable to different agro-ecological conditions is a priority issue. Avocado has a wealth of genetic resources that could be used to achieve this aim yet major barriers exists to utilising these resources. This is because avocado is a perennial species with a prolonged juvenile stage, meaning that it can take years to segregate outstanding characteristics in germplasm with commercial characteristics by traditional breeding. Further, whilst there are significant genetic resources in terms of different accessions, this is poorly supported by genomics resources. For example, as yet there is no genome sequence and limited gene expression data. This project aims to address these barriers and provide a platform for advancing avocado breeding programs. As improved resilience against water stress is a key trait and aim for breeders, as a case-study, we will focus on improving water use efficiency (WUE) and drought tolerance using knowledge gained from work with other plants. To address these issues, our project has three objectives. The first is focused on reducing the time that is required for avocado trees to flower. As a proof of concept, we will utilise biotechnology to increase the expression of a positive regulator of flowering with the future aim of developing non-transgenic approaches to achieve this. Our second objective is focused on identifying and then characterising avocado accessions with improved water use. Here, we will generate a number of genomic resources, in order to enable molecular research in this area, which is currently limited due to a lack of sequence information. Finally, we will focus on facilitating the use of gene editing technologies in avocado, which when coupled to our goal of faster flowering, should significantly accelerate the breeding pipelines of avocado. This research and the resources it develops will be made publicly available to the avocado research and breeding community and will be valuable for advancing breeding steps. This will enable targeted improvement of this Mexican crop and through improved water use, should also reduce the water requirements of this crop, and so reduce pressure on Mexico's freshwater supplies.

Impact Summary

Who will benefit from this research? This project is aimed at accelerating flowering time in avocado, developing non-transgenic methods for gene editing in pollen, improving genomic resources and developing varieties with improved water use. The academic community will benefit through improved sequence resources, tools and data developed by this research and this is discussed elsewhere in this proposal. The major beneficiaries outside of academia will primarily be: 1) staff trained on the project; 2) Horticulture and plant breeders; 3) the farming community; 4) the general public. How might they benefit from this research? The staff employed on this project will benefit from an excellent training environment and these skills will then be of significant value to both the academic and commercial sector. Through publication and networking events, this will improve the employability and career aspirations of these staff. In particular, this proposal will involve training and knowledge exchange with members of the Mexican team spending time in Sheffield to learn techniques to ensure that these become routine in the laboratories in CIATEJ. Abiotic stress, particularly limitations in water, are major issues that impact on avocado yields and the development of new varieties of avocado adaptable to different agro-ecological conditions is a priority issue, established in the Mexican Agri-Food Agenda. There is a wealth of avocado genetic resources available to breeders, with well over 300 accessions in Mexico alone. However, the long juvenile phase of means that it can take years to segregate outstanding characteristics in germplasm with commercial characteristics by traditional breeding. By accelerating flowering time, this project can substantially reduce these timings, allowing for much faster evaluation by breeders. In addition, this project will provide a wealth of new sequence information for several different accessions. By identifying sequence polymorphisms, the project will provide breeders with new markers for marker assisted breeding and, if expanded, even genome wide association studies. We will also identify accessions with better water use efficiency, providing breeders with information to introduce this trait into the most commercially significant varieties. Finally, we will develop non-transgenic editing in avocado as a means of targeted crop improvement, allowing translation of basic research from model species. We have enlisted the support of Dr Juan Carlos Reyes Alemán (Autonomous University of Mexico State), who will assist in translating our findings from the laboratory to the field. As a case-study, we will focus on identifying and investigating accessions with improved water use, which is important as much of Mexico and Jalisco, have annual water availability problems. As end users, farmers will benefit from the development of improved WUE and drought tolerance at several levels with reduced costs associated with irrigation (e.g. abstraction of water from rivers and boreholes and construction of on farm reservoirs) and improved crop security during periods of water stress. Accelerating breeding pipelines will also allow the development of other beneficial traits that will improve avocado resilience and ensure that farmers have improved yield security. Agriculture is the major user of water supplies in Mexico and overall demand is so great that Mexico is significantly reducing its ground water supplies. This has major implications for the public, who are the second biggest user of these water supplies. By improving avocado water use, the public will potentially benefit not only through improvements to food security but importantly, through reductions in agricultural water use. Ultimately, this may help enable a more sustainable food supply network.

Committee	Not funded via Committee
Research Topics	Crop Science, Plant Science
Research Priority	X – Research Priority information not available
Research Initiative	Newton Fund - Mexican Crop Resilience (NFIMCRAS) [2018]
Funding Scheme	X – not Funded via a specific Funding Scheme

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