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Monarchs on the Move...So Many Mysteries
Monarchs on the move...so many mysteries. Where do Western monarchs go after leaving their overwintering sites along coastal California in February? An observation: They didn't stop in the spring or summer to deposit eggs on any of our four species of milkweed in our...
A tiny monarch egg. Image taken on Nov. 14, 2023 in a Vacaville garden. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
A monarch caterpillar sharing a milkweed leaf with aphids. This image was taken Nov. 15, 2023 in a Vacaville garden. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Two monarch caterpillars sharing a milkweed leaf. This image was taken Nov. 15, 2023 in a Vacaville garden. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
A very hungry monarch caterpillar on the move. This image was taken Nov. 18, 2023 in a Vacaville garden. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Hi, there! A monarch caterpillar faces the camera. This image was taken Nov. 14, 2023 in a Vacaville garden. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Western Monarchs: 'A Great Breeding Season in 2022'
Ready for some good news about our iconic monarch butterflies? The Western monarch population at overwintering sites in California indicates a 2022 "great breeding season," says Washington State University entomologist David James, who researches migratory monarchs and spearheads a tagging...
Overwintering monarchs in Cambria, San Luis Obispo County. This site does not appear on the official list of California's overwintering sites, says WSU entomologist David James. It was home in November to 15,000 butterflies. (Photo by David James, Washington State University entomologist)
A cluster of monarchs at an overwintering site in Bolinas, Calif. (Photo by David James, Washington State University entomologist)
Monarchs clustering at an overwintering site in Pismo Beach, San Luis Obispo County. (Photo by David James, Washington State University entomologist)
UC Davis awarded grant to advance strawberry breeding, genetic tools
The $6.2 million grant centers on protecting crops in the future
The federal government is awarding $6.2 million to University of California, Davis, to study how to use breeding and genetic information to protect strawberry crops from future diseases and pests.
The four-year grant from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) centers on addressing expanding and emerging threats to strawberries, a popular fruit packed with Vitamin C and key to the diets of many Americans.
Enhanced plant breeding, gene editing and other technologies will be key to ensuring strawberry crops are sustainable in the face of climate change and possible restrictions on chemical use, said Steve Knapp, director of the Strawberry Breeding Center and a distinguished professor in the Department of Plant Sciences.
“We need to have the technology so that we can deal with the challenges strawberries face around the world,” Knapp said. “Can we use genetic knowledge to change the DNA in a specific way to get the resistance we need?”
USDA funding
The grant award was one of 25 announced Oct. 5 by NIFA – an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture – as part of the Specialty Crop Research Initiative program, which addresses “key challenges of national, regional and multistate importance in sustaining all components of food and agriculture…,” the agency said.
The strawberry industry has lagged behind crops like tomato and wheat when it comes to genetic and technical innovation, Knapp said, and the grant signifies that “now they want the foot on the accelerator.”
A key priority is identifying whether changing DNA molecules can improve disease resistance and what technologies would be needed. Ensuring some genes are expressed while others are suppressed would be part of the analysis.
“We're trying to build in natural resistance to pathogens through the genes that already exist but could be modified with this knowledge,” Knapp said. “If we were able to edit a gene that improves disease resistance, people would want us to use that in breeding.”
The intent is to produce disease-resistant cultivars and identify better ways to diagnose, prevent and manage disease. The research project will also include an economic forecast evaluating the consequences of production changes and communicating with farmers about the laboratory advances, according to the grant proposal.
Gitta Coaker from plant pathology and Mitchell Feldmann, Marta Bjornson and Juan Debernardi from plant sciences are participating in the research, as are scientists from California Polytechnic State University, UC Agriculture and Natural Resources, UC Berkeley, University of Florida and USDA's Agricultural Research Service.
Researchers identify genes making strawberries resistant to Fusarium wilt
Resistant varieties to be released later this year to growers
Strawberry losses from Fusarium wilt could become less of a threat after researchers at the University of California, Davis, discovered genes that are resistant to the deadly soilborne disease.
The findings, published in the journal Theoretical and Applied Genetics, are the culmination of several years' work, and the discovery will help protect against disease losses, said Steve Knapp, director of the Strawberry Breeding Program at the college.
“What we've accomplished here is important and it's valuable for the industry and it's going to protect growers,” Knapp said.
Strawberries are a key crop in California, where about 1.8 billion pounds of the nutritious fruit are grown each year, making up roughly 88% of what is harvested in the United States.
Finding the genes could prevent a Fusarium wilt pandemic.
“The disease has started to appear more often up and down the state,” said Glenn Cole, a breeder and field manager with the Strawberry Breeding Program. “Once the wilt gets in, the plant just crashes. You have total die out.”
Searching for resistance
UC Davis scientists screened thousands of strawberry plants in the college nursery and took DNA samples. They then used genetic screening and developed DNA diagnostics to identify genes that are resistant to the primary race of Fusarium wilt.
“The genes have been floating around in the strawberry germplasm for thousands of years,” Cole said, but no one worked to identify them.
This latest development brings “strawberry into the 21st century in terms of solving this problem,” Knapp said.
Protecting future crops
This work means breeders can introduce the resistant gene into future strawberry varieties. This fall the program will release new cultivars that have the Fusarium wilt resistance gene. And the DNA diagnostic tools will help breeders respond to new Fusarium wilt variants that develop.
“There will be new threats and we want to be prepared for them,” Knapp said. “We want to understand how this works in strawberries so that as new threats emerge, we can address them as rapidly as possible.”
“If you don't have fusarium resistance, you're done,” Cole said. “The disease could be around more than you think.”
Fusarium wilt hasn't traditionally been an issue but when the fumigant methyl bromide was phased out in 2005, things changed. The disease was in the soil and without the fumigant, instances of wilt increased, especially in areas where crops weren't rotated.
Breeding new varieties
Knapp and Cole have informed the industry about current strawberry varieties that have the resistance so they can select plants with that added protection. The new resistant varieties coming out later this year will be suitable for several growing seasons.
“It's a big deal,” Cole said. “Everything is incremental in plant breeding, but it's a big deal.”
Plant scientists have been breeding strawberries at UC Davis since the 1930s and they have released more than 60 patented varieties through the public breeding program.
All of the work happened at UC Davis. Dominique Pincot, Mitchell Feldmann, Mishi Vachev, Marta Bjornson, Alan Rodriguez, Randi Famula and Gitta Coaker from the Department of Plant Sciences, and Thomas Gordon from the Department of Plant Pathology contributed to the research, as did Michael Hardigan and Peter Henry who are now at the U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service and Nicholas Cobo who is at University of La Frontera in Chile.
The research was funded by UC Davis and grants from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture Specialty Crop Research Initiative.
UC Davis to lead $15 million research into climate-change resistant wheat
The project will also train plant breeders for the future
Wheat products account for roughly 20% of what people eat every day around the globe. As climate changes, wheat crops must adapt to new weather patterns to keep up with demand.
The University of California, Davis, is leading a five-year, $15 million research project to accelerate wheat breeding to meet those new climate realities, as well as to train a new generation of plant breeders.
“Everything is less stable,” said Jorge Dubcovsky, a plant sciences distinguished professor who is leading the grant research. “Everything is changing so you need to be fast. You need to be able to adapt fast.”
The grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture will create a coordinated consortium of 41 wheat breeders and researchers from 22 institutions in 20 states. Researchers from Mexico and the United Kingdom are also participating.
Breeding needs to speed up
“Breeding crops for the future will require new traits, breeding platforms built for quick transfer of traits to elite cultivars, coordination of breeding efforts in public and private domains, and training for current and future plant breeders and researchers,” NIFA said in an announcement about this grant and others related to breeding.
The program involves on-the-ground research, identifying molecular markers and data analysis from multiple institutions to determine genes that will help wheat crops mitigate the effects of climate change. Plant breeding will follow to prove out those findings.
Wheat is unlike other crops in that 60% of the plant varieties — generating about $4 billion in annual production — are developed by public breeding programs rather than private corporations. In many states, wheat growers tax themselves to support basic breeding efforts at public institutions like UC Davis.
Increased coordinated research
The NIFA grant money will lead to more coordinated, sophisticated research. “This grant allows us to do breeding at a level that a good, modern company would do,” Dubcovsky said. “This grant is essential to maintain modern and effective public breeding programs in the U.S.”
The consortium will bring together data and research from across institutions, allowing for more expansive analysis while reducing redundancies. “We can take advantage of the data from everybody,” he said. “By doing that we don't need to duplicate efforts.”
A team in Texas will analyze plant images taken from drones at each institution to extract information about plant growth, water use, nitrogen levels and other data. “Using technology, we can see beyond our human capabilities,” Dubcovsky said. “You can extract a huge amount of information from every plant variety.”
The data from those images will allow researchers to document the plants throughout the life cycle and determine which plants fare better under certain conditions. Genotyping will help researchers obtain information about the plant genome. The combination of these two types of data could speed up breeding cycles, helping wheat crops adapt to a changing environment.
“If we can breed fast, we can adapt to change,” Dubcovsky said. “We are trying to make sustainable improvements in time.”
Training the next generation
The project will also train a cohort of 20 plant Ph.D. students in active breeding programs where they will participate in fieldwork, collect data from drones and DNA samples, and learn to integrate that information to accelerate wheat breeding. The students will participate in online and face-to-face workshops, as well as educational events and national scientific conferences.
Colorado State University, Cornell University, Kansas State University, Michigan State University, Montana State University, Oklahoma State University, Purdue University, South Dakota State University, Texas A&M University, University of Idaho, University of Illinois, University of Minnesota, University of Nebraska, University of Wisconsin, Utah State University, Virginia Tech, Washington State University, and U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service branches in North Dakota, Washington, Kansas and North Carolina are also participating in the consortium.
