This Partnerships for Innovation project from Iowa State University (ISU) will accelerate fundamental understanding in plant science and breeding with a screening platform that significantly reduces the time and costs for selecting and developing new elite plant varieties. The immediate goal is to build upon and re-engineer a promising near infrared (NIR)-based seed-screening platform to increase its performance and accuracy and broaden its applications. The envisioned platform is based on two complementary components: a) NIR molecular spectroscopy and chemometrics integrated with automated, nondestructive high-throughput screening of seeds and other plant materials, and b) customized development of application methodologies that screen extant plant populations based on biochemical phenotypes. This project seeks to meet the challenge presented by the success of high-throughput DNA sequencing and analysis of plant genomes, by establishing analogous high-throughput technologies to analyze a plant's biochemical phenotype. This capability will enhance the ability of plant scientists and plant breeders to utilize genomics and develop improved new cultivars needed to accommodate the global population explosion anticipated in the 21st century. The proposed phenotype-screening platform will have a significant impact on food, feed, and bio-energy production systems because, for the first time, plant scientists and breeders will have access to a unique research tool that will routinely assess, at low cost, multiple plant traits simultaneously and non-destructively based upon biochemical phenotypes.
The broader impacts of this research are societal, economic, and learning related. At the societal level, plants have a remarkable, multi-faceted impact on economies, jobs, health, fuel, climate change/carbon sequestration, food security, world peace, the environment, and our overall well being. Better understanding of plant biology, improving existing varieties, and developing new ones are all key research areas where biochemical phenotype screening will produce invaluable data for achieving sustainable and nurturing ecosystems for a rapidly changing planet. At the economic level, these improvements will greatly enhance the versatility of the screening platform, expand the user base, and make lower cost screening accessible to more public and commercial plant scientists and breeders. At the learning level, the KEP participants will learn from each other. The project will be a vehicle for Iowa State University faculty and students and small businesses to understand how each other's abilities can be integrated to enable technological solutions to real world-challenges.
Partners at the inception of the project are Brownseed Genetics (Bay City, WI), Genetic Enterprises International (Johnston, IA), Kemin Industries (Des Moines, IA), MTEC BioAnalytics (Ames, IA), Schillinger Genetics (West Des Moines, IA), and Sustainable Oils (Bozeman, MT). Five ISU researchers and these six small businesses will collaborate in a Knowledge Enhancing Partnership (KEP). MTEC BioAnalytics will bring NIR seed screening technology expertise to the project while the other companies have expertise in seed and other plant based products. MTEC BioAnalytics will provide key highthroughput screening platform components (e.g., ultra fast fiber optic switch), engineering design, and the others will provide the use of proprietary and unique collections of characterized seeds that express variation in desirable biochemical phenotypes.
