Boosting photosynthesis opens new opportunities for agriculture sustainability and circular economy: The BEST-CROP research and innovation action.

There is a need for ground-breaking technologies to boost crop yield, both grains and biomass, and their processing into economically competitive materials. Novel cereals with enhanced photosynthesis and assimilation of greenhouse gasses, such as carbon dioxide and ozone, and tailored straw suitable for industrial manufacturing, open a new perspective for the circular economy. Here we describe the vision, strategies, and objectives of BEST-CROP, a Horizon-Europe and United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI) funded project that relies on an alliance of academic plant scientists teaming up with plant breeding companies and straw processing companies to use the major advances in photosynthetic knowledge to improve barley biomass and to exploit the variability of barley straw quality and composition.

A barley pan-transcriptome reveals layers of genotype-dependent transcriptional complexity.

A pan-transcriptome describes the transcriptional and post-transcriptional consequences of genome diversity from multiple individuals within a species. We developed a barley pan-transcriptome using 20 inbred genotypes representing domesticated barley diversity by generating and analyzing short- and long-read RNA-sequencing datasets from multiple tissues. To overcome single reference bias in transcript quantification, we constructed genotype-specific reference transcript datasets (RTDs) and integrated these into a linear pan-genome framework to create a pan-RTD, allowing transcript categorization as core, shell or cloud.

Priority actions for Fusarium head blight resistance in durum wheat: Insights from the wheat initiative.

Fusarium head blight (FHB), mainly caused by Fusarium graminearum and Fusarium culmorum, is a major wheat disease. Significant efforts have been made to improve resistance to FHB in bread wheat (Triticum aestivum), but more work is needed for durum wheat (Triticum turgidum spp. durum).

Simulation of Daily Iron Intake by Actual Diet Considering Future Trends in Wheat and Rice Biofortification, Environmental, and Dietary Factors: An Italian Case Study.

Background And Aim: Cereals' iron content is a major contributor to dietary iron intake in Europe and a potential for biofortification. A simulation of daily iron intake from wheat and rice over the next 20 years will be quantified.

Methods: Food items, and energy and iron intake by age classes are estimated using the Italian dietary survey (IV SCAI).

A missense mutation in the barley Xan-h gene encoding the Mg-chelatase subunit I leads to a viable pale green line with reduced daily transpiration rate.

The barley mutant xan-h.chli-1 shows phenotypic features, such as reduced leaf chlorophyll content and daily transpiration rate, typical of wild barley accessions and landraces adapted to arid climatic conditions. The pale green trait, i.

A new wild emmer wheat panel allows to map new loci associated with resistance to stem rust at seedling stage.

Wheat stem rust, caused by Puccinia graminis f. sp. tritici (Pgt), is a major wheat disease worldwide.

QTL mapping for kernel-related traits in a durum wheat x . segregating population.

Durum wheat breeding relies on grain yield improvement to meet its upcoming demand while coping with climate change. Kernel size and shape are the determinants of thousand kernel weight (TKW), which is a key component of grain yield, and the understanding of the genetic control behind these traits supports the progress in yield potential. The present study aimed to dissect the genetic network responsible for kernel size components (length, width, perimeter, and area) and kernel shape traits (width-to-length ratio and formcoefficient) as well as their relationships with kernel weight, plant height, and heading date in durum wheat.

Association Mapping of Resistance to Tan Spot in the Global Durum Panel.

Tan spot, caused by the necrotrophic fungal pathogen (Ptr), is an important disease of durum and common wheat worldwide. Compared with common wheat, less is known about the genetics and molecular basis of tan spot resistance in durum wheat. We evaluated 510 durum lines from the Global Durum Wheat Panel (GDP) for sensitivity to the necrotrophic effectors (NEs) Ptr ToxA and Ptr ToxB and for reaction to Ptr isolates representing races 1 to 5.

Updated guidelines for gene nomenclature in wheat.

Here, we provide an updated set of guidelines for naming genes in wheat that has been endorsed by the wheat research community. The last decade has seen a proliferation in genomic resources for wheat, including reference- and pan-genome assemblies with gene annotations, which provide new opportunities to detect, characterise, and describe genes that influence traits of interest. The expansion of genetic information has supported growth of the wheat research community and catalysed strong interest in the genes that control agronomically important traits, such as yield, pathogen resistance, grain quality, and abiotic stress tolerance.

Marker-Assisted Introgression of the Salinity Tolerance Locus Saltol in Temperate Japonica Rice.

Background: Rice is one of the most salt sensitive crops at seedling, early vegetative and reproductive stages. Varieties with salinity tolerance at seedling stage promote an efficient growth at early stages in salt affected soils, leading to healthy vegetative growth that protects crop yield. Saltol major QTL confers capacity to young rice plants growing under salt condition by maintaining a low Na/K molar ratio in the shoots.

Multi-environment genome -wide association mapping of culm morphology traits in barley.

In cereals with hollow internodes, lodging resistance is influenced by morphological characteristics such as internode diameter and culm wall thickness. Despite their relevance, knowledge of the genetic control of these traits and their relationship with lodging is lacking in temperate cereals such as barley. To fill this gap, we developed an image analysis-based protocol to accurately phenotype culm diameters and culm wall thickness across 261 barley accessions.

Advanced Breeding for Biotic Stress Resistance in Poplar.

Poplar is one of the most important forest trees because of its high economic value. Thanks to the fast-growing rate, easy vegetative propagation and transformation, and availability of genomic resources, poplar has been considered the model species for forest genetics, genomics, and breeding. Being a field-growing tree, poplar is exposed to environmental threats, including biotic stresses that are becoming more intense and diffused because of global warming.

Does Plant Breeding for Antioxidant-Rich Foods Have an Impact on Human Health?

Given the general beneficial effects of antioxidants-rich foods on human health and disease prevention, there is a continuous interest in plant secondary metabolites conferring attractive colors to fruits and grains and responsible, together with others, for nutraceutical properties. Cereals and are important components of the human diet, thus, they are the main targets for functional food development by exploitation of genetic resources and metabolic engineering. In this review, we focus on the impact of antioxidants-rich cereal and derived foods on human health by analyzing natural biodiversity and biotechnological strategies aiming at increasing the antioxidant level of grains and fruits, the impact of agronomic practices and food processing on antioxidant properties combined with a focus on the current state of pre-clinical and clinical studies.

High accuracy of genome-enabled prediction of belowground and physiological traits in barley seedlings.

In plants, the study of belowground traits is gaining momentum due to their importance on yield formation and the uptake of water and nutrients. In several cereal crops, seminal root number and seminal root angle are proxy traits of the root system architecture at the mature stages, which in turn contributes to modulating the uptake of water and nutrients. Along with seminal root number and seminal root angle, experimental evidence indicates that the transpiration rate response to evaporative demand or vapor pressure deficit is a key physiological trait that might be targeted to cope with drought tolerance as the reduction of the water flux to leaves for limiting transpiration rate at high levels of vapor pressure deficit allows to better manage soil moisture.

Extensive allele mining discovers novel genetic diversity in the loci controlling frost tolerance in barley.

Exome sequencing-based allele mining for frost tolerance suggests HvCBF14 rather than CNV at Fr-H2 locus is the main responsible of frost tolerance in barley. Wild relatives, landraces and old cultivars of barley represent a reservoir of untapped and potentially important genes for crop improvement, and the recent sequencing technologies provide the opportunity to mine the existing genetic diversity and to identify new genes/alleles for the traits of interest. In the present study, we use frost tolerance and vernalization requirement as case studies to demonstrate the power of allele mining carried out on exome sequencing data generated from > 400 barley accessions.

Frontiers in the Standardization of the Plant Platform for High Scale Production of Vaccines.

The recent COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the value of technologies that allow a fast setup and production of biopharmaceuticals in emergency situations. The plant factory system can provide a fast response to epidemics/pandemics. Thanks to their scalability and genome plasticity, plants represent advantageous platforms to produce vaccines.

Characterization of the Resistance to Powdery Mildew and Leaf Rust Carried by the Bread Wheat Cultivar Victo.

Leaf rust and powdery mildew are two important foliar diseases in wheat. A recombinant inbred line (RIL) population, obtained by crossing two bread wheat cultivars ('Victo' and 'Spada'), was evaluated for resistance to the two pathogens at seedling stage. Upon developing a genetic map of 8726 SNP loci, linkage analysis identified three resistance Quantitative Trait Loci (QTLs), with 'Victo' contributing the resistant alleles to all loci.

What Makes Bread and Durum Wheat Different?

Durum wheat (tetraploid) and bread wheat (hexaploid) are two closely related species with potentially different adaptation capacities and only a few distinct technological properties that make durum semolina and wheat flour more suitable for pasta, or bread and bakery products, respectively. Interspecific crosses and new breeding technologies now allow researchers to develop wheat lines with durum or bread quality features in either a tetraploid or hexaploid genetic background; such lines combine any technological properties of wheat with the different adaptation capacity expressed by tetraploid and hexaploid wheat genomes. Here, we discuss what makes bread and durum wheat different, consider their environmental adaptation capacity and the major quality-related genes that explain the different end-uses of semolina and bread flour and that could be targets for future wheat breeding programs.