The short course will consist of a 10 day long combination of classroom lectures, hands on lab exercises, and field research at experimental field sites in Eastern Colorado and Western Nebraska. At the end of this course we will have a 2-day research symposium featuring an international group of speakers on current research in Breeding, Physiology and Genomics of Drought Adaptation.

The lecture and lab material is divided into three modules:

A) Plant Breeding for Drought Tolerance
B) Whole Plant Physiology of Drought Stress
C) Genomics for Drought Stress Tolerance

 

Module A - Plant Breeding for Drought Tolerance
Instructors – Steve Baenziger, Pat Byrne, Scott Haley, Marc Moragues
Overview – The gauntlet of plant breeding
Assessing the target environment
Quantitative genetics review
Heritability, genotype x environment interaction, and stability

Breeding strategies for crop performance under drought stress
Selecting for yield under drought and well-watered conditions
Indirect and index selection
Experimental designs and statistics for plant breeding in stress environments

 Bill Bauerle
Stephen Baenziger

Transgenic approaches to drought tolerance
Utilizing exotic germplasm
Progress and prospects

Labs/field trips for module A

  • Phenotypic evaluation methods for root traits
  • Agronomic and physiological evaluations in managed stress field sites
  • Field tour of Pioneer Hi-bred International’s research facility for drought screening of corn in LaSalle, CO
  • Field measurements in variety trials and mapping populations of Brassica oilseed crops, winter and spring wheat, dry beans, and proso millet in Colorado and Nebraska

Module B - Whole Plant Physiology of Drought Stress
Instructors – Bill Bauerle, Lisa Donovan, Bjorn Martin, John McKay

Soil and water
Soil-plant-air continuum and transpiration
Water use efficiency
Turgor and growth
Review of plant water use physiology (C3, C4, CAM)

Physiology of yield formation under drought stress
Harvest index and plant allocation
Drought escape, avoidance, and tolerance

Root development and function
Cellular responses and osmotic adjustment
Drought effects on gametogenesis and reproduction


Labs for module B

  • Harvestplants in wet and dry treatments to examine leaf and root phenotypes and sample tissue for ABA and RNA
  • Leaf level gas-exchange and carbon isotope discrimination analysis
  • RT-PCR to quantify expression of loci involved in drought acclimation
  • Analysis of the ABA, gas exchange, and field collected phenotypic data

Module C - Genomics of Drought Stress
Instructors - Pat Byrne, John McKay, Marc Moragues

Genomics review
Comparative genomics – theory and databases
DNA polymorphism and divergence

Gene expression and transcriptomes
Single gene and whole genome approaches
EST and expression databases
Drought signal transduction
Functional annotation – forward and reverse

Translation from model systems to crops
QTL and association mapping of drought traits
Candidate genes and networks for drought breeding

Labs for module C

  • Analysis of conservation and diversity of loci in the drought response network
  • Phenotypic consequences of knockouts and knockdowns of drought responsive loci
  • QTL analysis of whole plant and molecular traits