Zurich – Plant geneticist Ueli Grossniklaus from the University of Zurich (UZH) is researching new ways of developing more flexible crops for tomorrow’s agriculture and making them more productive. His field of research in this area is epigenetic inheritance for the breeding of crop plants.
Plant populations that have a diverse gene pool prove to be more resistant to changes in their environment. Diversity plays an important role in genetics, according to a press release from the University of Zurich (UZH). But this is not the case for many crops grown around the world today. Maize, rice and wheat have been bred to produce the best yield. The plants were customized to the local conditions. The disadvantage: diversity decreased.
The plant geneticist and co-director of the University Research Priority Program Evolution in Action at UZH, Ueli Grossniklaus, even speaks of a "genetic bottleneck". Climate change is constantly altering the conditions for crop growth, but plants now have little potential to respond.
"Maize varieties that are grown in the USA, Italy or Switzerland today are very different: they have been adapted to the local climatic conditions and are therefore relatively inflexible to major climatic changes," Ueli Grossniklaus is quoted as saying in the press release. The plant geneticist wants to reopen the "genetic bottleneck" and thus enable more productive diversity in the field. He sees the key to this in epigenetics, a kind of link between genetics and the environment. It regulates whether genes are activated or not. In plants, epigenetic changes have the same effect as a genetic mutation. However, these epigenetic adaptations, which can result in an altered flowering time, for example, occur much faster and more frequently than a mutation. It is precisely this fact that the UZH researchers want to use for breeding purposes in order to enable more diversity within a variety and thus make the plants more adaptable. ce/eb