Unlocking Wild Plant Traits Could Help Breed More Resilient Crops

Aberystwyth University researchers will combine chromosome research, seed bank diversity and AI to investigate barriers to transferring useful traits between distantly related plants.

Useful traits held in wild plants could help breeders develop more resilient crops, but biological barriers often prevent those characteristics from reaching farmers’ fields.

A three-year research project at Aberystwyth University will investigate how chromosomes recognise one another during reproduction, with the aim of making it easier to transfer valuable traits between distantly related plants through conventional breeding.

“What attracts one thing to another is one of the great mysteries of life, whether in plants, animals or even humans. This research will not solve all of those mysteries but we hope it will help make crops more resilient to future challenges,” said project leader Dr Andrew Lloyd of the Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences (IBERS).

Overcoming Barriers to Breeding

During reproduction, chromosome pairs find one another and exchange sections of DNA, creating new combinations of traits in the next generation.

In more distantly related plants, differences between chromosomes can prevent that process from working successfully. This makes it difficult for breeders to introduce useful characteristics from wild relatives into crops.

The researchers will draw on Aberystwyth’s plant breeding expertise and the IBERS seed bank, which holds more than 43,000 seed samples from around the world, according to a press release.

“I’m excited about the potential this project holds for unlocking the incredible diversity of useful traits currently held in our seed banks. These collections are a vast and valuable resource. If we can use them to understand the rules governing chromosome recognition, we open the door to harnessing those traits to help crops withstand the pressures of a changing climate,” Lloyd said.

Using AI to Identify Breeding Opportunities

The project brings together researchers from IBERS and the university’s Department of Computer Science to explore how AI could help identify promising routes for transferring traits.

“By working closely with University colleagues in the Department of Computer Science, we can use rapidly developing AI tools to understand and predict outcomes in ways that simply were not possible before. My hope is that this will reveal the most efficient routes for transferring valuable traits between distantly related plants, accelerating the development of the resilient crops we’ll need in the years ahead.”

Funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, part of UK Research and Innovation, the project will also use advances in DNA sequencing and chromosome painting to examine chromosome interactions.

“Until recently we have not had the tools needed to answer these questions. This project will take advantage of cutting-edge DNA sequencing and chromosome painting tools recently developed by ourselves and others to look at the problem in completely new ways,” Lloyd said.

Connecting Computing and Crop Science

Dr. Faisal Rezwan, senior lecturer in bioinformatics in Aberystwyth’s Department of Computer Science, said advances in computing and experimental methods now allow researchers to investigate questions that were previously out of reach.

“Only now do we have the computational and experimental tools required to decode the complex interplay between how chromosomes differ from one another and how they interact.

“By integrating innovations in both computing and biological sciences, this project will address fundamental questions that have previously remained beyond our reach.”