The Speed Breeding journey: from garbage bins to Bill Gates
Event Details
- Date:
- Tuesday, 28 October 2014
- Time:
- 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
- Room:
- Level 3, Large Seminar Room
- UQ Location:
- Queensland Bioscience Precinct (St Lucia)
- URL:
- http://www.qaafi.uq.edu.au/qaafi-science-seminars-2014
- Event category(s):
Event Contact
- Name:
- Mrs Luba Kakoychenko
- Phone:
- 62092
- Email:
- l.kakoychenko@uq.edu.au
- Org. Unit:
- Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
Event Description
- Full Description:
- Presented by Dr Lee Hickey
Research Fellow, Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation (QAAFI)
ABSTRACT
The human population is expected to reach nine billion by the year 2050 and will strain global resources. The onset of climate change and new diseases and pests threaten the productivity of agriculture worldwide. Meeting the future demand for agricultural products will depend largely on developing new cereal cultivars adapted to ever-changing environments. Plant breeders are now targeting durable forms of genetic resistance to diseases as well as tolerance to abiotic stresses such as drought, heat, frost, and other adverse environmental conditions. Unfortunately, annual breeding cycles and other biological and genetic constraints mean that traditional plant breeding is not capable of meeting these demands.
Cereal breeding programs typically require 10 to 15 years or more to transfer novel genes into adapted germplasm. Application of biotechnology is seen as key to reduced delivery times for improved cultivars. Strategies involving the application of DNA markers in breeding programs are still reliant on efficient phenotyping (i.e. measurement or quantification) of lines, hybrids, or cultivars and identification of genotype-phenotype relationships. Nevertheless, continued improvements in crop breeding efficiency are required to meet future demands for agricultural commodities.
Over the past 8 years, at the University of Queensland, we have developed a low-cost management system called Speed Breeding that enables up to 7 plant generations of wheat annually (i.e. seed to seed in just 6 weeks). In this public seminar, I will take you on a guided tour inside our novel Speed Breeding facility at UQ you will feel as though you are actually walking among the rapidly growing wheat plants. I will tell the story of the development of the Speed Breeding technology from rummaging through garbage bins to capturing the attention of the global plant breeding community, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. I will explain how we combined the Speed Breeding technology with high-throughput DNA marker platforms and high-throughput phenotyping systems for the purpose of transferring large numbers of genes into both wheat and barley cultivars within a short timeframe (i.e. 18 months to 2 years). I will provide a taste of our current activities aiming to further develop and exploit the Speed Breeding system at UQ and our next steps aiming to integrate the system with other plant breeding technologies to maximise genetic gains for wheat and barley.
Directions to UQ
- Google Map:
-
- Directions:
- St Lucia Campus | Gatton campus.
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