Research

RISE-SOY aims to provide knowledge on the plasticity of physiological and biochemical adjustments of soybean to water-limiting conditions associated with yield and quality stability, and to identify digital physiological marker as well as enzymatic signatures indicative of high metabolic plasticity under stressful conditions. This will contribute to healthy food (nutrition) by increasing sustainable, climate-resilient plant protein production, particularly GMO-free, domestic soybean-based protein production under changing environmental conditions. To achieve its goals, RISE-SOY will pursue a novel and innovative approach of functional trait evaluation (drought tolerance) of high-quality food grade soybean including specialty lines such as those with increased levels of spermidine or hypo-allergenicity. RISE-SOY will combine next-generation physiological markers obtained from hyperspectral reflectance imaging and biochemical analyses of enzyme activity signatures to assess metabolic responses important/indicative for drought tolerance with quality and agronomic traits from field and controlled trials. This will significantly advance technologies/approaches to enable a climate-resilient plant-based food production for healthy nutrition in Lower Austria and beyond.

Insect-borne cereal viruses are considered the 'winners' of climate change. Winter cereals, especially winter barley and winter wheat, are under increased pressure for infection with Wheat dwarf virus (WDV), Barley yellow dwarf virus (BYDV) and Cereal yellow dwarf virus (CYDV). Cereal plants are most susceptible to these viruses at the juvenile stage. The viruses are transmitted by sucking insects (vectors): WDV is transmitted by a dwarf cicada (Psammotettix alienus), BYDY and CYDV by several aphid species. The activity of the vectors is dependent on temperature and thus weather conditions. Rising temperatures increase the mobility of the vectors. In particular, longer periods of warm temperatures in the fall, in some years into early winter, which are increasingly common, increase the risk of viruses to our cereal crops. The extent of damage varies depending on the degree of infestation; heavily infested crops can lead to total failure. In the project, the necessary preliminary work (pre-breeding) for breeding 1) new resistant breeding lines will be carried out and 2) effective selection methods will be developed, with a focus on resistance to WDV, because WDV is of increasing importance in wheat in Central Europe. In work package 1, the genetic variation in the current breeding material will be examined in multi-site field trials and selection markers for quantitative resistance will be sought. In work package 2, a highly effective resistance factor on chromosome 6A recently discovered by us in an old Eastern European variety will be introduced into regionally adapted winter wheat variety candidates. Overall, the expected new findings on the inheritance of virus resistance and the newly developed pre-breeding material with improved virus resistance represent an essential step towards future-fit wheat varieties and the sustainable safeguarding of wheat cultivation in Austria.

Durum wheat is a food crop with increasing importance. Durum wheat suffers from increasing stresses partly due to global changes. Two relevant constraints are the fungal disease Fusarium head blight (FHB) and the viral disease wheat dwarf virus (WDV). In this project we will accelerate breeding for genetic resistance against these two diseases and thus make durum wheat more stress resilient by: i) Genetic analysis of a new four parent MAGIC population descending from a combination of modern cultivars with WDV resistance crossed with FHB resistant experimental lines. We intend to identify and map relevant QTL for the traits WDV resistance and FHB resistance. ii) Selection of climate fit durum wheat cultivars by starting with large segregating populations in the F3 generation which will be rigorously phenotypically selected or increase FHB resistance, and subsequently selected for improved WDV resistance to identify new cultivar candidates that will enter the cultivar development program. Selected lines will be DNA fingerprinted and used to explore on ‘reverse’ predictions, means checking for genome regions under selection in response to improved resistance.