You're not the only one who gets sick. Before making it to your bread, wheat catches disease as well. A Tech professor wants to know why.
Carl Griffey, a professor of crop and soil environment science at Virginia Tech, is currently undertaking a four-year research project investigating wheat varieties with greater disease resistance. This research will add to the understanding of the achievement of improving food supply as well as the milling and baking aspects of the wheat industry.
“It is a $5 million project to undergo 20 labs within four years. Half of the money will go to discovering new and direct wheat technologies. The research is important because there is public competition around the world for exported wheat and all the competitors are using more technology,” said George Dubcovsky, project coordinator of the research at the University of California at Davis.
The wheat variety research has become an extension of the United States Department of Agriculture's ongoing research to discover more efficient breeds.
“The previous research project through USDA was more limited through research programs. They wanted to do a more extended research project involving more programs and states; it's a progression of a previous, smaller program focusing on similar things,” said Griffey.
The research is being conducted up and down the East Coast through individual and collaborative studies. The main objective of the research is to utilize molecular technology that has been developed for the past two to three decades and apply it to disease-resistant wheat, Griffey said.
“At Virginia Tech we'll be working on mildew-resistant wheat. The type of resistance is very durable and long-lasting, but the other thing about the resistance it is not controlled by a single gene,” he said. “Essentially, we've already identified in previous study that there are three chromosomes and genes in the chromosomes that control the traits. We will continue to find more markers that are close to the mildew resistance and essentially identify them for positive selection.”
Clay Sneller, professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the College of Wooster, (Wooster, Ohio) is concentrating on the functional properties of wheat genetics in conjunction with the USDA. His research will eventually help to increase export markets, increasing demand and thus the price of wheat.
“We are mapping genes for resistance from several sources in Virginia, Georgia, Missouri, and New York. We run the grain through screenings for quality. The milling of the grain will help figure out how much quality flour will be produced for functional baking quality,” he said.
Griffey said that the research is a combination of mapping plant and animal genes in specific chromosomes, while developing an understanding of how DNA markers within specific chromosomes affect the trait.
A lot of it has to do with mapping genes of plants and animals in specific chromosomes and chromosome regions. From a plant breeding standpoint we want to see how markers are blatant traits of interest, meaning that they are located in the chromosome located in the trait,” Griffey said.
Griffey said that he hopes the use of molecular markers to combine multiple genes will make it harder for external pathogens to adapt, thus creating resistance against specific types of mildew and other diseases that affect wheat.
“I think there are a lot of students who are not aware of plant breeding and probably those who are more aware of molecular and DNA technology.
There are a lot of promising things coming along in molecular technology in collaboration with plant breeding and genetics. I hope more students will gain an interest in breeding, plants and molecular technology, and careers in them,” Griffey said.
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