On the morning of Oct. 22, Edward Buckler, Member of National Academy of Sciences USA and Adjunct Professor of Plant Breeding and Genetics at Cornell University, attended the 40th Crop Science High-end Forum in HZAU. He gave a report titled “Breeding 4.0-Designing New Ways to Feed the Planet” at the auditorium of National Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic Improvement. Prof. Yan Jianbing, the Dean of College of Plant Science & Technology, hosted the report.
Prof. Buckler thought there were three stages for crop breeding history. In the first stage, human chose specific plant as crop according to its phenotype around ten thousand years ago. In the second stage, superior varieties were selected in breeding based on experiment and statistical data. In the third stage, molecular marker assisted selection and whole genome prediction were used in breeding. He thought it was the time for the fourth stage, genome design breeding, and he said it was hard to gather all the superior traits together with the available breeding approaches. However, the superior genes could be gathered at whole genome level breeding, thus optimizing the crop.
Prof. Buckler also pointed out that human’s demand for protein was expected to double in 30 years, but the efficiency of nitrogen synthesis of protein by legume was not high. Consequently, it would be difficult to strike a balance between the surging population and the declining per capita arable land. Hence, he proposed that ammonia, which can be produced by electricity, was expected to synthesize protein through fermentation. Furthermore, ammonia could be used to make fertilizer, through genome design, breeding crop using nitrogen fertilizer efficiently, thus minimizing the use of chemical fertilizer and its damage to the environment.
When asked whether Breeding 4.0 could become a reality, Prof. Buckler said: “This system can be realized in theory but there is still a long way to go.” and he would strive for the whole genome design breeding.
Biosketch: Edward Buckler, Member of National Academy of Sciences USA, PhD in Biology (University of Missouri), was an Assistant Professor of Genetics at North Carolina State University from 1998 to 2003. He has been a Research Geneticist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture since 2003, and he also is an Adjunct Professor of Plant Breeding and Genetics at Cornell University. Dr. Buckler is recognized as a leader in the integration of quantitative and statistical genetics with genomic approaches, whose work has deepened our understanding of the control of crop complex traits, and applying those superior genetic variations to crop improvement. Subsidized by the United States Department of Agriculture and National Science Foundation, he has led the largest maize research team in US, achieving more than 200 periodical publications, including Science, Nature, Nature Genetics, PNAS, Plant Cell, Nature Review Genetics and Nature Communications.
Source: http://news.hzau.edu.cn/2018/1025/52947.shtml
Translated by Zhao Dongli
Supervised by Pan Buhan
