Projects

MARTA addresses agronomically and economically important traits in plant breeding to support sustainable and self-sufficient food production in Estonia. We will create novel breeding knowledge together with a toolbox of modern breeding tools (including novel genetic markers, genomic selection and genome editing). Target traits for breeding include climate-resilience, disease resistance, product quality, production sustainability and high yield. We have chosen 7 strategically important crop species for Estonia as prime targets for application of modern breeding tools. Wheat, barley and potato are important in ensuring energy and protein supply as food crops. Nitrogen fixing capability and high protein content (29% of seed dry matter) of faba bean make it a strategically important crop in Estonia’s protein self-sufficiency. Apple and blackcurrant are important horticultural crops ensuring a healthy diet and providing a local supply of vitamin- and antioxidant-rich resources for the industry. Bridging the gap between fundamental and applied plant biology will allow faster translation of research results into breeding. The research questions (Q) addressed in the project range from broad phenotypic and genotypic screening to application of precision breeding and creation of novel genetic markers. The establishment of a pipeline for using genomics and transcriptomics results will speed up and create new possibilities for breeding climate-resilient future crops. Q1 aims to create specific scientific knowledge, data and results for input to Q2 and Q3, which serve to develop modern tools for breeding (e.g. novel genetic markers for disease resistance, pre-breeding material from precision breeding). MARTA will generate and validate a modern breeding toolbox for flexible and sustainable plant breeding in Estonia to ensure food security.

Due to an increase in the consumption of food, feed, fuel and to meet global food security needs, there is a necessity to breed for high yielding crops that can adapt to future climate changes. Perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne) is the dominant forage grass species in Europe due to its high regrowth capacity, rapid establishment, tolerance to frequent cutting and grazing, and high nutritive value for ruminant livestock. However, perennial ryegrass exhibits poor performance under unfavourable environmental conditions compared to other cool season forage grass species, thus the changing climate pose a substantial challenge to perennial ryegrass cultivation in the Nordic/Baltic region. In this project, we intend to utilize unique pre-breeding material, developed by the members of our consortium in the ongoing Nordic/Baltic Public-Private Partnership project on pre-breeding of perennial ryegrass and CRISPR-based editing to validate candidate genes involved in northern adaptation of perennial ryegrass. We will focus on genes involved in the mechanisms of freezing tolerance and biomass growth under water deficit. Moreover, we will investigate changes during abiotic stress periods at the transcriptome level to reveal gene regulatory pathways and networks. This project aims at improving perennial ryegrass for winter hardiness, persistence and biomass formation under water-limited conditions. This will enable us to utilize the gained information in future genomic selection programs to develop ryegrass cultivars with improved freezing and drought tolerance and persistence. It will also help breeders and agriculture in general in the Nordic/Baltic region to prepare for meeting new demands due to climate change and changing societal demands. Importantly, by improving forage production, dairy and meat industries will directly benefit and therefore this project contributes to safe and sustainable food systems.

The aim of the project is to develop an international research network onthe diagnosis and epidemiology of viruses infecting cereal crops to understand the current state of occurrence of cereal viruses and their vectors and reservoirs. Depending on research findings, development of diagnostic methods is planned for the viruses with higher pathogenicity potential.

The project “An innovative platform for Estonia-Norway research-based teaching in bioinformatics and gene editing” will develop tools for teaching two cutting-edge technologies needed in almost all fields of Life Sciences. The project will be coordinated by TalTech and will have as partner NMBU. Group leaders are plant scientist experts in one of these technologies with teaching experience at universities. During the project, material for lectures and practical work in the laboratories will be developed. These tools will be tested in two 10 days long intensive courses for MSc and PhD students. During the courses, students will benefit from interaction with another culture in a different educational atmosphere. The tools developed will be presented at the end of the project in a seminar in TalTech with PhD students presenting their work. A special emphasis will be given to gene editing technologies, including science policy, since this topic is of interest to different stakeholders.

New viral species and strains are continuously emerging over time around the world. They can originate either from fully unknown taxa or related to known viruses that evolve changing their geographical distribution and/or ecological niche. Cereals are the most important crops for human food and animal feed. Therefore, there is a paramount need to monitor carefully viruses able to jump on cereals and to investigate in detail the mechanisms of viral emergence. In this project, our aim is to understand how cereal sobemoviruses and common ancestors emerged from wild plants and diverged to different viral species with different host ranges. Investigating the evolvability of cereal sobemoviruses, we will contribute to evaluate the risk of host jumps and viral emergence on cereals. To fulfill this aim, we plan to implement two parallel approaches: (i) a comparative one using taxonomy analyses based on protein structure alignments in addition to sequence alignments and (ii) an experimental one searching for a common host plant for different sobemoviruses and assessing viral fitness of each species.