Location: Plant Germplasm Introduction and Testing Research
Project Number: 2090-21000-037-021-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Aug 1, 2024
End Date: Oct 31, 2027
Objective:
The funds will be used to pay part of the annual salary and benefits of a postdoc, and of student laborers, under the supervision of the cooperator, to create and characterize chickpea breeding lines/families and efficient new tools for the improvement of nutritional, functional, agronomic and yield traits. The trait focus using and/or developing high-throughput field and laboratory phenotyping includes: nutritional protein profiles, fiber, mineral and fat profiles; functional traits of flour water-holding and oil holding capacities; and yield component traits of early vigor, days-to-flower, pod counts, plant height, biomass and seed yield. By combining field research and post-harvest laboratory research to work hand-in-hand for rapid selection and speed breeding of superior lines, the time from trait genetic discovery in diverse genetic resources to improved lines for release to cultivar breeding programs will be reduced.
Approach:
This project will build a pipeline and algorithms for high-throughput phenotyping of agronomic traits. The chickpea diversity panel will be grown in Central Ferry, WA, in year 1 (2024) for seed increase and initial high-throughput phenotyping using unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and ground robot, to collect images to estimate stand counts, days to flowering, flower density, plant height, plot pod counts, and biomass. Ground truth data for calibration will be measured in year one on the same materials. The 277 accessions of the chickpea diversity panel will be grown in year 2 and 3 in Central Ferry and Pullman, WA to estimate G X E effects of the studied traits, planted in an augmented design with 5 control lines. The best high-throughput phenotyping protocols identified in year 1 will be used to estimate agronomic traits in these fields. Seeds will be harvested and sent to the Western Wheat Quality Laboratory for nutritional and functional analyses in all three years to measure proteins, lipids, minerals, and functional properties in chickpeas in a high-throughput manner. These will be determined in year 1 using direct measurements in the wheat quality laboratory. Protein and lipid data will be used to enhance existing NIR calibrations for chickpea for rapid phenotyping after year 1. A more detailed analysis of proteins, lipids, and minerals will be conducted in years 2 and 3 to determine exact class and functionality of these components.
Genomewide association study (GWAS) will be run using data collected above, followed by metabolic pathway analysis. Statistics will be generated, including correlations and ANOVA to evaluate G x E for each of the measured nutritional, functional and yield component traits. GWAS will be performed to identify SNP markers, loci, and genes associated with each trait measured. Metabolic pathway analysis will be run with the GWAS results and for genes identified via GWAS and PAST with large phenotypic effects, KASP markers will be developed for marker assisted selection. These large effect genes will also become new targets for gene editing in future research.
