Drought stress in sugarbeet germplasm
- Beta vulgaris accessions have recently been screened for several disease-resistance traits, and for tolerance to the drought stress (http://www.genres.de/idb/beta/)
- Several accessions,
rated as more tolerant to drought conditions, are being studied for the characteristics
of such putative tolerance. Leaf water potential and RWC mainteinance under
drought, electrolite leakage and Injury Index are being evaluated for these
accessions
and compared to the sugarbeet non-tolerant varieties. - Drought stress is applied in controlled environments to plants of different sugarbeet varieties, of different species and subspecies, in an attempt to dissect the components of the drought tolerance and to evaluate the possibility of introgression into cultivated material.
- RNA is extracted from
leaf discs of both control and droughted plants of different accessions
,
and cDNA is synthetized with the aim to study and identify the genes differentially
expressed in the two conditions in different germplasm.
Contacts:
Dr. Giuseppe Mandolino, g.mandolino@isci.it
- Hemp is a naturally dioecious plant, though monoecious varieties (less productive from the fibre’s point of view, but useful for seed or pulp production) have been developed. Italian cultivars are traditionally dioecious, and sex is an important trait to be considered for breeding and selection.
- At ISCI, molecular markers
based on PCR were developed having a 100% association with the male phenotype
,
probably located on the region of the male
Y chromosome excluded from genetic recombination. It is therefore possible
to identify the sex of any hemp plant at any developmental stage, from seed
to maturity. This allow the marker-assisted identification of the male plants
early enough to select the pollinators in a multiplication field, chosing either
the plants with the highest fibre content or quality (Bredemann principle)
or those with the lowest THC content. - The possibility to know
at any stage the sex of a plant also allows the study of the differential gene
expression in the male and female plants. The RNA can be extracted at different
stage in the two sexes (also well before the flowers are differentiating),
and the genes expressed can be visualized by cDNA-AFLP technique
.
- The differentially expressed sequences are than cloned and sequenced and their putative role in the sexual differentiation established.
Contacts:
Dr. Giuseppe Mandolino