De Storme Lab
LABORATORY FOR PLANT GENETICS AND CROP IMPROVEMENT
Projects
Towards a chicory haploid inducer line via CRISPR
The project focuses on Cichorium intybus (chicory), a crop which is mostly used for the inulin content of its roots. In the first part of the research, the objective is to create a haploid inducer line by CRISPR-editing certain target genes. This haploid inducer line would allow for fast generation of homozygous plants, which would take years using normal breeding strategies. Here, the focus will be mainly CENH3, a gene that was shown to induce haploids when mutated in Arabidopsis thaliana.
Secondly, the project focuses also on elucidating which molecular pathways are disturbed in two chicory Cytoplasmic Male Sterility (CMS) lines via transcriptome analysis.
Polyploidy effects on tomato productivity and abiotic stress tolerance
Tomato is an important horticultural crop that is produced indoor and outdoor globally. Despite several breeding efforts, current tomato cultivars are susceptible to several biotic and abiotic stress factors. To ensure sustainable tomato production and develop a wide spectrum of stress-resistant tomato cultivars, a new breeding approach is needed. Polyploidization improves the yield and resistance of plants to biotic and abiotic stresses. However, the impact of polyploidy on tomato crop productivity and stress tolerance is not well studied. In the current project, we will induce tri and tetra ploidy lines for three elite tomato cultivars collected from Ethiopia. The generated tomato ploidy lines together with their diploid parents will be studied for their performance and tolerance to nutrient salinity and drought stress conditions. We will study morphological characteristics, physiological activities, biochemical compositions difference between the diploid parents, and generated polyploidy lines under stress and no stress conditions. Moreover, ploidy-dependent genetic and molecular regulation of developmental changes and abiotic stress responses will be unraveled by comparing gene expression profiles between polyploidy lines and corresponding diploids.
Overcoming barriers to accelerate banana breeding (Musa spp.)
Banana (Musa spp.) currently is the most important fruit crop worldwide, with dessert bananas, cooking bananas and plantains being consumed by over 400 million people daily. However, multiple fungal diseases threaten the banana crop and breeding of new resistant varieties is hindered by low levels of seed set. Wild bananas do not have these problems and can easily be used for breeding due to their fertility. Eventually however, no one wants seeds in their bananas, so we need to convert the plant to being sterile at the end of our breeding efforts.
One way to do this is by making the plant triploid instead of diploid, this we can do by fertilizing a normal haploid gamete with a diploid one. The main goal of this project is therefore to characterize the intrinsic diploid gamete production in the banana germplasm, and to find ways to induce diploid gamete production in varieties that do not do this naturally. These insights can form a basis for the development of novel methods that enhance banana breeding programs.
