FAO/IAEA International Symposium on Plant Mutation Breeding and Biotechnology

27 Aug 2018, 08:00 → 31 Aug 2018, 18:00 Europe/Vienna

IAEA, Vienna

Natural genetic diversity through spontaneous mutation has been exploited for many millennia to improve major food crops. One of the most important breakthroughs in the history of genetics was the discovery that mutations can be induced by physical and chemical methods. Mutation induction, together with mutation detection has been an important tool for plant scientists as well as plant breeders for more than 90 years to increase the genetic diversity of plants and derive new varieties with improved characteristics.

The successful application of gamma rays and other physical and chemical mutagens in plant breeding over the past decade has further increased crop biodiversity and productivity across the world. The number of officially released crop mutant varieties is more than 3250, and the majority of these have been produced using radiation technologies. This clearly demonstrates the successful role of nuclear technologies for enhancing food security, especially in developing countries in the era of climate change and steady increase in world population.

Advances in in vitro plant tissue and cell culture techniques together with recent breakthroughs in high-throughput mutation detection technologies, such as whole genome sequencing, have increased the efficiency of identifying natural or induced variation that underlies key agronomic traits. These advances have helped the plant breeder to speed up the process of incorporating the desired trait into other commercial varieties using molecular marker technologies. Likewise high-throughput methods for screening induced DNA deletions have allowed directed identification of mutations in a specific gene for improved selection.

Topics to be addressed at the Symposium will attract plant scientists as well as plant breeders from all over the world. Therefore, the symposium will at once provide opportunities to present and discuss research and technology development in this field and establish linkages among scientists in order to develop knowledge-based breeding strategies.

Poster Guidelines.pdf

Preliminary Programme.pdf

Announcement Announcement.docx

Form B Form_B.docx

Monday, 27 August

08:00 → 08:20 GAMMA RAY INDUCED PEDIGREED MUTANT POPULATION OF TOSSA JUTE (CORCHORUS OLITORIUS L.): A KEY RESOURCE FOR FORWARD AND REVERSE GENETICS

Low natural genetic diversity is a serious limiting factor for academic progress and agronomic improvement of crops like tossa jute (Corchorus olitorius L.), an economically important bast fibre crop. Mutation breeding with proven ability to improve both qualitative as well as quantitative yield attributes can be employed to augment germplasm diversity. In the present study, we used gamma rays to produce a total of 33,000 mutants of Corchorus olitorius L. cv. JRO 204. The mutant population was screened for agro-morphological traits (M2), abiotic stress (drought and water logging) tolerance (M5) under long day condition and flowering resistance (M2) under short day condition. A range of morphological variations of agronomic as well as scientific importance were identified at vegetative and reproductive stages. These traits include growth habit, pigmentation, plant architecture, root architecture and flowering behaviour. Conditional mutants such as drought and waterlogging stress tolerance were also identified in a pilot experiment by using a sub-set of the population. Selected mutants (588) have been advanced to M6 generation by following single seed descent method to constitute pedigreed mutant population. These mutants were subjected to morphological, histological, genomic analysis to understand their genetic regulation using qRT-PCR analysis of key phenyl propanoid pathway genes in lignin deficiency. The study of lignin deficient mutants demonstrated that transcriptional regulation of CCoAMT 1 gene is associated with suppressed phloem fibre intrusive growth and fibre cell bundle formation and hypo-lignifications at early growth stage. In addition, comparative transcriptional analysis of flowering mutants compared to wild type underscored genes regulating flower timing in jute. Overall, the mutant population will be of paramount importance for genetic and functional genomic research in jute.

Speaker: Dr SHASHI CHOUDHARY (ICAR-National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources, Regional Station Ranchi, Jharkhand, India)

10:30 → 11:00 Opening Session