This action funds an NSF National Plant Genome Initiative Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2014. The fellowship supports a research and training plan in a host laboratory for the Fellow who also presents a plan to broaden participation in biology. The title of the research and training plan for this fellowship to John T. Lovell is "Determining the genomic basis of heterosis and apomixis in Panicum grasses". The host institution for the fellowship is the University of Texas, Austin and the sponsoring scientist is Dr. Thomas Juenger with collaborators Drs. Dan Rohksar (DOE Joint Genome Institute), Jeremy Schmutz (HudsonAlpha Biotechnology) and Timothy Sharbel (IPK-Gatersleben, Germany).
Training objectives include bioinformatics, quantitative genetics and physiology. Broader impacts include the development of undergraduate mentoring programs and the inclusion of underrepresented groups.
To meet the future needs of a growing population, the efficiency of both food and biofuel production must be improved. One widely successful mechanism to accomplish this goal is hybrid breeding. Researchers have greatly improved yield in maize, canola and many other food crops by taking advantage of increased growth and reproduction of hybrid offspring (heterosis). However, these successes have not been realized in switchgrass and other lingo-cellulose biofuel crops despite evidence of high levels of heterosis. Research conducted through the tenure of this fellowship will provide a framework to achieve hybrid breeding goals in switchgrass by addressing two objectives: 1) to determine the genetic basis of heterosis in switchgrass and related species using genomic tools, and 2) to assess the feasibility to fixing heterosis across generations through the induction of asexual seed production (apomixis).
