The plant growth study case carried out within the project had the objective to use the GLOMICAVE platform to integrate data on the root storage crop cassava across the phenotypic, genomics and transcriptomics domains.
Plant growth
PREVIOUS CONTEXT
Major phenotypic traits of agronomical interest include drought/flood tolerance, increased tuber yield, improved pathogen/pest resistance, as well as improved harvesting traits such as root angle.
Even though cassava has a high calorific content which is a favourable trait for a dietary staple food, it does not deliver the same nutritional content as other high caloric crops. As a crop, cassava has some positive traits, like the resistance to drought, but also some negative ones such as the difficulty to harvest.
For this reason, working to identify cultivars or closely related wild species which have favourable traits (agronomical and/or nutritional) can help to accelerate breeding programs.
GLOMICAVE SOLUTION
With the GLOMICAVE innovative platform it is possible to identify biomarkers for yield and, beyond that, potentially new mechanistic insights into storage root formation, both of which could be used to improve yield and to finally generate designer plant.
In addition, the GLOMICAVE approach allows to widen the knowledge in order to answer to which genes and processes are involved and how can markers for yield be developed.
USE CASE LEADERS
