By Cindy Landrum
A new national research project will put Clemson University at the center of an effort to develop corn plants that are less likely to bend or break before harvest, a problem that costs farmers billions of dollars a year.
The work is part of a four-year, $6 million National Science Foundation grant that brings together plant geneticists, engineers, statisticians and artificial intelligence researchers from Clemson, the University of Nebraska Medical Center and the University of Idaho, which is leading the project. Rajandeep Sekhon is the project’s principal investigator at Clemson, which will use its $2 million share of the award to fund work on the genetic and biological drivers of stalk strength.
Together, the researchers will develop a new way to study complex crop traits by tracing them from DNA to the physical performance of the plant.
Major agricultural problem
Stalk lodging is a major agricultural problem. Stalk lodging causes global maize yield losses exceeding $6 billion annually, according to a peer-reviewed study by Clemson researchers and collaborators. When mature plants fall over because of high winds or other environmental stressors, they become more vulnerable to pests and disease and often cannot be harvested, impacting farming operations and reducing food production and crop quality.
Clemson researchers will study what happens inside a corn plant before it falls.
The Clemson team will search for the many genetic variants that contribute to stalk strength and determine how those variants affect the plant at several levels. The work will begin with DNA, then move through plant chemistry, cell structure, cell geometry and mechanical strength.
“It’s almost like reverse engineering the strong plant versus the weak plant back to the DNA, so we can identify the genetic and biological factors that allow a plant to remain standing,” said Sekhon, an associate professor in the Department of Genetics and Biochemistry.
Source : clemson.edu