BIOFUELS RESEARCH
Biofuels are a hot topic in plant breeding and biology right now, but not many people are sure about the next steps in developing effective and viable biofuels crops. We are trying to answer the question from a genetic perspective. Before people can develop fuel pellets or produce ethanol, they need a source of carbon for their fuel, a biological feed stock. Our association mapping study focuses on two important biofuel grasses, switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.) and reed canarygrass (Phalaris arundinacea L.), capitalizing on recent advances in genomics-based research as well as decades of fundamental whole-organism and population-based research by forage breeders.
 We are using genomics to facilitate selection of the best plants, accelerating the breeding process. Switchgrass and reed canarygrass are both long-lived perennials, so, using traditional selection and breeding methods, it would take farmers several growing seasons to identify and propagate plants with preferred characteristics, such as large mass. Our study uses genetic markers to link desired characteristics, phenotypes, with their genotypes. Instead of spending time, space, and resources to grow out plants that may or may not have the desired traits, we can then select as early as the seedling stage.
Our project focuses on several traits measured on both of the biofuels species we work with:
- Plant and Total Height
- Leaf Length and Width
- Panicle (Inflorescence) morphology
- Flowering Dates (Heading, Extension, Anthesis)
- Leaf and stem quality (Lignin, fiber, ash contents)
Why Switchgrass and Reed Canarygrass?
Switchgrass was chosen by the DOE as their target candidate species, and there are quite a few labs working on this—it’s gaining lots of momentum—because it grows well everywhere. We don’t completely agree that it’s growing that well in New York, but it is a warm season, C4 plant. In the grass world, there are cool season and warm season grasses. Cool season usually have C3 photosynthesis. Warm season grasses have C4, which makes them more drought tolerant. But under the right conditions, C3s produce a lot of biomass too.
 Reed canarygrass has C3 photosynthesis. It is a really good biomass producer and a good candidate for New York and the northeast. We’re the only ones doing genetic work on it thus far. We wanted to
grow these two crops side by side in the same in the same conditions to see how they fared.
Their History
Switchgrass is a remnant of the Pleistocene Glaciation, colonizing prairie ecosystems east of the Rocky Mountains during the past 11,000 years. Colonization may have occurred from three refugia in western Texas, the western Gulf Coast and the southern Atlantic Seaboard (McMillan 1959). As these populations migrated north, they experienced strong selection pressures. Phenotypic data shows they produced more photoperiod-sensitive genotypes with earlier heading, shorter height, fewer nodes, greater cold tolerance, and reduced heat tolerance (Casler 2005; Casler et al. 2004).
In the past 200 years, agricultural and urban development eliminated over 98% of switchgrass’ original colonized area. In contrast, the dominant colonization events for reed canarygrass have been the introduction of European accessions beginning in the late 19th century as well as the invasion of wetlands throughout temperate North America.
Despite its ecological status as an invasive species, reed canarygrass is native to North America, appearing in the botanical record as early as 1825, only 20 years after Lewis and Clark’s first expedition to the Pacific Northwest (Merigliano and Lesica, 1998). Reed canarygrass has a circumglobal distribution in the Northern Hemisphere, and there have been many introduction of the species from European grasslands beginning in the late 19th century. Many ecologists and restoration biologists think that the “invasiveness” of reed canarygrass during the past 100 years could be due to the release and spread of non-native European genotypes or hybrids between European and North American genotypes (Lindig-Cisneros and Zedler 2002).
Cornell Biofuels Field Diary
Switchgrass Diversity
Presentations
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