Exploiting and explaining adaptive significance in plant lipids

N Scollan, R Yadav,  A Kingston-Smith & MJ Wilkinson

The studentship will seek to understand the genetic basis and the extent of the variation in grass lipids and will test the hypothesis that variation in leaf lipid content and composition has a significant role in growth, development and adaptation of forage grasses. The breadth of the variation in ryegrass populations is unknown and it is unclear why certain plants accumulate more lipids than others. It is also uncertain whether the variation noted relates to changes in nuclear or plastid genetic information.

Initial studies will focus on characterizing the variation between perennial ryegrass populations that have evolved in different agro climatic conditions and how this is influenced by season. It will also make use of an existing F1 mapping population that has been developed by crossing an elite ryegrass cultivar with an un-adapted ecotype and possesses significant variations for both total lipids as well as for proportion of linolenic acid. Availability of ryegrass genomic regions and the associated anonymous and candidate gene markers will open up a number of opportunities for exploitation according to the student’s intuition. It would be plausible then to study the extremes for more detailed mechanistic investigation both at physiological, genetical and molecular levels.