Location: Plant Genetic Resources Unit (PGRU)
Project Number: 8060-21000-034-004-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Sep 1, 2021
End Date: Aug 31, 2024
Objective:
Objective 1: Identify priority trait data for critical biotic and abiotic resistances across a broad range of tomato germplasm held within the National Plant Genetics System and include this date into the Germplasm Resources Information Network (GRIN)-Global database
Objective 2: Develop molecular markers to effectively understand the causal relationships between genetic variation in tomato and response to biotic and abiotic stresses and apply population genetics approaches to optimize crop genetic resource conservation and identify duplicated accessions. Capture results within GRIN-Global database to enable further mapping of priority traits in tomato.
Objective 3: Develop tomato cultivars with enhanced biotic and abiotic stress tolerances via application of genome-wide prediction models of priority traits to assist identification of high-value germplasm within the National Plant Germplasm System (NPGS) and expedite tomato breeding efforts for economically important cultivars.
Approach:
This work follows standardized approaches that will be applied to evaluating bacterial wilt, drought, and salt tolerances within USDA NPGS tomato germplasm collections and will conduct genome-wide association studies to identify molecular markers associated with critical priority traits. This work will evaluate 384 NPGS tomato germplasm accessions for bacterial wilt, drought, and salt tolerance via randomized and replicated trials. In addition, this work will apply and assess the efficacy of recent genomic prediction and selection tools within the context of tomato breeding. Further, this work will develop molecular tools to expedite the incorporation of favorable traits into tomato breeding populations for cultivar development by exploiting a larger pool of tomato genetic diversity captured within National Plant Germplasm Repository collections. Applying this suite of tools will offer new genetic improvement approaches to examine genetic control of complex traits in tomato, and the associated molecular markers will enhance effective breeding of new, economically important tomato cultivars.
