Biotechnology In Pasture Plants

Biotechnology will play an essential role in NZ’s economic future, according to Greg Bryan, who leads the plant genomics research at AgResearch Grasslands in Palmerston North.

Grasslands pasture plant breeders have been in the forefront of improving the pasture plants grown on livestock farms, by applying the latest science to their breeding programmes. Today this means exploring the detailed genetics of these plants to understand how important plant features are inherited, so that these can be built into new cultivars of grasses, legumes and grazing herbs. Several research groups worldwide are developing comprehensive genetic maps of white clover and perennial ryegrass and are trying to identify the agronomically important genes – the science we now call genomics.

Techniques developed by the gene scientists, such as marker-assisted selection and plant transformation, are being used in the laboratory and controlled growth room to make pasture plant breeding more effective. Marker-assisted selection enables a breeder to identify which plants contain valuable genes needed in a new selection. “It allows more precise modifications during plant breeding,” says Dr Bryan, “and plant transformation provides more direct and novel routes to cultivar improvement.” These new techniques, which do not involved any controversial use of genes from other living organ-isms, can also reduce costs of breeding pasture plants and at the same time, enable superior plants to be selected earlier and without any diseases or pests present.

Researchers will need to fully integrate functional genomics with gene-tics, biochemistry, plant biology, agronomy and farm system management
to develop tomorrow’s pasture plants.

16th April 2003
Source: Deric Charlton