Targeting the Miscanthus Genome(s) for Accelerated Improvement of a Novel Energy Crop

Miscanthus is a C4 grass native to much of South East Asia. It combines rapid annual growth with minimal inputs with tolerance to low temperatures and is therefore an ideal energy crop for temperate as well as tropical environments. Our research focuses on increasing Miscanthus yields in order to replace fossil fuel usage, sequester atmospheric carbon, and ultimately contribute to climate change mitigation, whilst minimising land take.

Understanding the genetic control of biomass performance traits is required to accelerate breeding. A combination of germplasm characterisation, genetic mapping, transcriptomics and association studies are being deployed to develop trait-associated markers for use within the breeding programme at IBERS. Latterly, this genomic approach has been supplemented with studies of the bacterial endophyte population present within Miscanthus. Initial work has sought to characterise the populations present and work is ongoing to determine whether the endophytes confer any advantage, such as nitrogen fixation or abiotic stress tolerance, to the Miscanthus host.