The Wonderful World of Plants

When plants experience decreases in a marker called DNA methylation, they become far more tolerant to stresses such as high temperatures, drought, and high light. When DNA methylation is almost completely removed, the plants because highly tolerant to stress but experience a loss in their ability to produce seeds. The plants grown from any seed produced are extremely unhappy and even worse at producing seed, and this continues until the plants are sterile. To make more stress tolerant crops, reducing DNA methylation is an attractive alternative to gene editing, but we need to understand why the plants become sterile for this to be a viable option.

To provide Food Security in the near future is going to be one of the more important global challenges. Increasing population, pollution levels and the unpredictable changes on our climate will deliver serious constraints in providing enough food for our next generations. Different chromosome biology and genetic approaches can offer tools to plant breeders to harness the natural genetic variation available in our planet. This talk will explain some of these advances in chromosome biology and genetic approaches that could be used as tools to ensure Food Security.