Competence Center for Doubled Haploid Research

Plant science is faced with the need for better means of rapidly and economically breeding new crop varieties that are adapted to meet the challenges of climate change and food security across the world. DH technology allows production of fully inbred lines in two generations as opposed to the six or more generations by conventional inbreeding. Other advantages include: reduced expenses to produce cultivars, more precise evaluation of phenotypic traits, effective elimination of undesirable genes, trait fixing in haploids using marker assisted selection leading to an effective use of molecular markers, and more efficient combination of transgenic traits. Because competitiveness of breeding programs depends on genetic gain per unit time, use of DH technology has become routine in breeding of the major cereal self-pollinated species, e.g., wheat and barley, and recently has become established in private and public (Doubled Haploid Facility: http://www.plantbreeding.iastate.edu/DHF/DHF.htm) sector breeding of maize and canola. For example, in 2010, Pioneer generated more corn inbred lines via doubled haploid technology than had been produced through inbreeding in the 80-year history of Pioneers breeding program. In canola, Pioneer has used haploids for nearly 20 years. In 2010, nearly all Pioneers canola inbreds were generated through doubled haploid technology. However, in several major crop species including soybean and sorghum, protocols for development of DH lines are not available or are inefficient. Moreover, there is substantial potential for improving the DH production process in crop species like maize. In consequence, there is a need to better understand the molecular and cellular processes involved in haploid plant formation as well as genome doubling and their consequences, including reasons for genetic variation within and between species (Thrust 1). There is a need to establish DH technology, where it is not available currently (such as soybean and sorghum) (Thrust 2), and to make the different steps in DH formation more efficient including automated procedures (Thrust 3). Moreover, there is a need to develop novel strategies based on haploids and or DHs with regard to breeding of various crop species, pre-breeding, management of genetic resources, as well as development of novel types of experimental populations (Thrust 4). We will report on joint efforts of Iowa State University and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign to establish a NSF I/UCRC Competence Center for Doubled Haploids Research (CeDHR: http://cbec.gdcb.iastate.edu/cedhr/).