Pre-breeding Tools SaskCanola Pre-breeding Tools SaskCanola

Identifying new genetic resources to optimize the canola oil profile

Conventional canola oil and the high oleic (HO) specialty oils are high quality vegetable oils very well suited for human consumption, food preparation and biofuel production. They offer the lowest saturated fatty acid content of any commodity oil with total saturate levels ranging from 7% to as low as 4.5% in some “Low Sat HO” varieties.

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Pre-breeding Tools SaskCanola Pre-breeding Tools SaskCanola

Expanding BnVQs (Valine-Glutamine) gene family against Sclerotinia sclerotiorum in canola

Sclerotinia sclerotiorum, which causes Sclerotinia Stem Rot (SSR) or white mold diseases, is a devasting necrotrophic pathogen that infects a broad range of plant species, including soybean, cotton, sunflower, and canola. Sclerotinia stem rot disease is a major disease distributed across major canola/rapeseed/oilseed rape growing regions. This soil-borne disease is one of the major diseases in canola-growing regions in Canada.

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Pre-breeding Tools SaskCanola Pre-breeding Tools SaskCanola

Comparative analysis of Verticillium longisporum lineages in the Canadian Prairies: Safeguarding canola production 

The escalating frequency of drought conditions in the prairies is anticipated to exacerbate the prevalence and severity of Verticillium stripe disease. As a result, the threat posed by Verticillium stripe disease looms larger over canola production in the Canadian Prairies, necessitating diligent monitoring and proactive management strategies to safeguard crop yields and economic sustainability. Therefore, it is imperative to gain a comprehensive understanding of the genetic diversity and population structure of V. longisporum lineages prevalent in the prairies.

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Pre-breeding Tools SaskCanola Pre-breeding Tools SaskCanola

New pre-breeding tools for canola - facilitating canola improvement by accessing diploid variation

Access to genetic diversity is key to the success of crop breeding programs and, in this regard, the canola gene pool is particularly limited. This is due to the natural history of amphidiploid Brassica napus (AACC) being formed from an interspecific hybridization event between its diploid progenitor species B. rapa (A genome) and B. oleracea (C genome). This hybridization event(s) occurred recently (ca. 2000 years ago) meaning that there has been limited time for mutations and introgressions to occur and natural selection to increase the frequency of alleles required for further crop improvement. Canola breeders use a range of strategies to overcome this deficiency including mutagenesis, wide genetic crosses and crosses involving wild relatives.

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Pre-breeding Tools SaskCanola Pre-breeding Tools SaskCanola

In vitro culture of Plasmodiophora brassicae

Plasmodiophora brassicae is an obligate pathogen so must have a host to complete its life cycles and, by definition, cannot be grown in pure culture. The pathogen lives within the cells of its host throughout most its life cycle. Resting spores are produced in infected roots and are released into the soil as the roots decay. These represent the only source of pure pathogen available. However, when trying to get ‘clean’ cells for sequencing and other research, the P. brassicae material is generally contaminated with genes from plants and soil microbes which causes problems. A method to grow pure cultures of cells of P. brassicae, outside of the host, would be very useful for many types of research, and especially as a tool for selecting clubroot resistant canola lines, and advancing breeding canola for clubroot resistance.

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Pre-breeding Tools SaskCanola Pre-breeding Tools SaskCanola

Methods to isolate and maintain clubroot for improved resistance screening and labeling 

Although planting resistant canola varieties is the primary approach for clubroot management, a growing number of clubroot pathotypes has emerged in recent years that can overcome host resistance, posing a significant challenge for growers. As such, it is critical to identify novel sources of resistance that are effective against these emerging strains of the pathogen. The identification of and breeding for resistance relies on testing host lines by inoculating them with the most prevalent and/or significant clubroot pathotypes on the Prairies.

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Pre-breeding Tools SaskCanola Pre-breeding Tools SaskCanola

Clubroot resistance gene function based on whole genome sequences, genome editing and resistance phenotypes

The proposed research will characterize CR genes based on genome-wide association analyses between clubroot disease data and the whole genome sequence (WGS) data from UA clubroot resistance donors and 28 Brassica hosts available from the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) and Brassica database (BRAD) websites.

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Pre-breeding Tools SaskCanola Pre-breeding Tools SaskCanola

Preserving hybrid vigour through a novel apomixis breeding strategy in Brassica crops

Engineering apomixis, the asexual reproduction through seeds without fertilization, will provide major advances to plant breeding. This is a technology which could quickly capture and maintain valuable genotypes and associated traits without inbreeding depression and help select for traits not available to current breeding strategies.

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Pre-breeding Tools SaskCanola Pre-breeding Tools SaskCanola

Overcoming blackleg disease in canola through establishment of quantitative resistance

Non-race specific resistance against blackleg disease of Brassica napus canola, known as adult plant resistance (APR), is a quantitative trait controlled by multiple genes. The APR trait is highly durable against the blackleg pathogen Leptosphaeria maculans (Lm), although the nature of causative APR genes is not known.

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Pre-breeding Tools SaskCanola Pre-breeding Tools SaskCanola

Towards better understanding of genetics in Leptosphaeria-Brassica interactions via international collaborations to standardize the nomenclature of blackleg resistance genes

The best approach to manage blackleg disease is the use of canola cultivars that are genetically resistant to the pathogen. However, cultivars that contain the resistant (R) gene(s) against the most prevalent pathogen race(s) are more likely to be effective in controlling blackleg disease. Among the various tools developed from this and other similar projects, markers for race determination of blackleg pathogen and markers that determine the type of R gene in canola cultivars have the most practical and immediate benefit for canola farmers by helping them to achieve both goals.

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Pre-breeding Tools SaskCanola Pre-breeding Tools SaskCanola

Increasing abiotic (drought) and biotic (clubroot) resistance in Brassica species (Arabidopsis and Canola) by modifying auxin response

This project focused on increasing our knowledge on plant host-clubroot pathogen interactions by determining if reducing the ability of the pathogen to use the plant hormone auxin (responsible for cell grow, division and expansion in the plant) would reduce clubroot disease progression, particularly at the gall forming stage.

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