College of Food, Ag & Nat Res Sci
Twin Cities
These researchers are mapping genes and doing genomic prediction in spring wheat, intermediate wheatgrass, perrential cereal rye, and field pennycress that control important traits, including disease resistance, seed quality, and morphological traits. Research on two new perennial grain species, perennial wheat and perennial oats, have also begun and data accumulation and analysis on these two new species is expected to commence soon. For all crops, segregated multiple bi-parental populations of 100-200 lines, association mapping panels (several hundred lines, typically 400+), and breeding lines (also several hundred lines ranging from approximately 300 to 3000 depending on crop and research focus) for genomic selection are phenotyped in appropriate environments, and populated with several hundred to several thousand DNA markers to identify DNA markers associated with genes or QTLs affecting the trait or develop genomic selection models. Genotyping-by-sequencing is being used to quickly build linkage maps and identify linkages with causal genes. MSI resources used include mapping and genotyping software as well as statistical software, and storage space for data.
This group's research was featured on the MSI website in:
- October 2019: Domesticating Pennycress
- June 2016: Identifying Rust Resistance Genes in Wheat