How we improve the crops
To ensure lead candidate traits identified within CAPITALISE are applicable and useful after discovery they must be validated in high performing crop material (elite lines). This will be achieved by crossing lead alleles into industry elite tester lines of maize, barley and tomato.
CAPITALISE industry experts will assess if potentially improved photosynthesis has any impact on an already highly optimised genotype. Conceivably, the elite lines are either already at the physiological limit for the species or their photosynthesis is already at its limit for that species. This work will be undertaken by our plant breeding partners KWS (Barley), BASF (Tomato) and LIMA (Maize) for further selection into field trials. Backcross 2 lines with a high percentage of recurrent parent genome (>95%) will be selected. These plants will be self-pollinated to produce enough seeds for testing at different locations. The sites available for the field trials are in locations with diverse environmental conditions representing North West Europe (UK), Central Europe (Germany) and Southern Europe (France, Italy).
The field trials will provide early evidence for translating science to improve crop plants.
Read more about
Photosynthesis
Calvin Benson cycle
Kinetics
Tuning Chl
Phenotyping
