Apomixis, enables plants with a desirable combination of traits to produce many offspring with the same desirable combination of genes as the mother plant
Researchers from KeyGene and Wageningen University & Research (WUR), in collaboration with colleagues from Japan and New Zealand, have discovered a gene that will make it possible to produce seeds from crops that are genetically identical to the mother plant and that do not need pollination.
This phenomenon, called apomixis, enables plants with a desirable combination of traits to produce many offspring with the same desirable combination of genes as the mother plant. Together with researchers from the Japanese breeding company Takii and New Zealand’s Plant & Food Research and Lincoln University, the KeyGene and WUR researchers explain in Nature Genetics magazine how the gene works and the way it influenced the work of the ‘father of genetics’ Gregor Mendel. The discovery is expected to lead to major innovations in plant breeding over the coming years.
The gene found has been given the name PAR, shortened from parthenogenesis, the process whereby egg cells grow into plant embryos without fertilisation of the egg cells. The discovery marks a definitive breakthrough and crowns the research team’s work that started at KeyGene over 15 years ago.
Apomixis is seen as the holy grail of agriculture. Because apomictic plants produce ‘clonal’ seeds from the mother plant, the process allows uniquely superior combinations of a plant’s traits to be captured in one fell swoop. Apomixis can therefore accelerate the breeding of innovative crops, make seed production less costly and bring the advantages of hybrid breeding to a lot more of the world’s crop species.
