Location: Crop Germplasm Research
Project Number: 3091-21000-048-003-N
Project Type: Non-Funded Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Jul 1, 2022
End Date: Jun 30, 2027
Objective:
The objective of this research is to identify and transfer cotton genetic variation for performance-enhancing agronomic traits in Australian and African diploid species for American tetraploid cotton improvement.
Approach:
USDA and the Collaborator will jointly select cotton species and accessions from the Uzbekistan National Cotton Germplasm Collection. The selection is expected for comparative analysis with potential duplicates in the U.S. National Cotton Germplasm Collection. It will include accessions of wild Australian and cultivated African cotton species whose genomes are sequenced for high-resolution analysis. The selected cotton materials will be characterized with classical and contemporary genetic tools including morphological descriptors, molecular markers, and genome sequences. Quantitative trait loci (QTLs) associated with economically important traits will be identified using interspecific F1 hybrid populations and F2 synthetic polyploids, and candidate genes identified using in silico and BLAST analyses of genomic regions that contain diagnostic DNA markers. USDA and the Collaborator will jointly evaluate a core set of characterized cotton accessions for germplasm enhancement and crop improvement of American tetraploid cotton.
