HYBRID EVENT: You can participate in person at Rome, Italy or Virtually from your home or work.
HYBRID EVENT
September 16-18, 2024 | Rome, Italy
GPMB 2020

Raphael Raverdy

Raphael Raverdy, Speaker at Plant Events
INRAE AgroImpact, France
Title : Estimation of genetic parameters of a Miscanthus sinensis population: A staggered-start design highlights a greater effect for climate than age

Abstract:

Bioeconomy, sustained by agriculture and breeding, belongs to innovative solutions to address current challenging environmental issues. Miscanthus, a dedicated perennial crop, is known to display interesting traits to produce renewable resources (Clifton-Brown_et_al._2001._Agronomy_Journal): a high biomass production and quality, coupled with low inputs needs. However, the improvement of these traits requires to assess their heritabilities. Due to the perennial feature of the crop, the year effect confounds the age and climate effects, which hampers the assessment of the corresponding variances and heritabilities. In the framework of the BFF1 project, we evaluated a Miscanthus sinensis population focusing on two main questions. What are the plant age and climate effects on the expression of miscanthus genetic diversity? Are they different for each trait and what are the lessons for miscanthus breeding? A Miscanthus sinensis mapping population of 159 genotypes was established with its two parents in France in two contrasted sites. On each site, the establishment was staggered over two years: a first group of genotypes was established in 2014 and its establishment was repeated in 2015. Such a design, called “staggered-start design” (Loughin_2006._Crop_Science) is relevant to evaluate perennial crops: it indeed allows decomposing the year effect in two components, the age effect and the climate effect. Due to plant losses and in vitro propagation recalcitrance for some genotypes, the design was unbalanced as all individuals were not established twice. For each establishment, year and location, phenotyping data consisted in biomass production and quality related traits. Corresponding genetic parameters were computed through Linear Mixed Models using breedR software (Muñoz and Sanchez. 2019). Regarding canopy height and plant maximum height, the mean “genotype x climate” interaction variance estimates across ages were up to 1.5 times higher than the mean “genotype x age” interaction variance estimates across years, for both locations. Concerning hemicellulose (%DM) and cell-wall content, the mean “genotype x climate” interaction variance estimates across ages were respectively up to 2.5 and 6 times higher than the mean “genotype x age” interaction variance estimates across years, in Orléans. These results displayed here show substantial effects of plant age, climate and location on the expression of miscanthus genetic diversity, through all biomass production and quality traits studied. This generated variations in heritability estimates and this could imply to detect distinct QTL and to discuss the implications in breeding.

Biography:

As a third year PhD student in INRAE and AgroParisTech – ABIES doctoral school, I am really passionate about agricultural, biological and environmental sciences. I definitely think that these sciences can be used as main strengths and levers, in order to find innovative solutions to deal with one of the biggest challenges of this century, the climate change. Since I felt that as a teenager, right in the middle of the family farm, I tried to build my graduate studies following this passion. 1 BFF Biomass for the Future project (ANR-11-BTBR-0006-BFF), funded by the French National Research Agency. https://www6.inrae.fr/ biomassforthefuture_eng/The-projec.

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