Innovative Lotus material to answer ancient questions?
Escaray FJ, Damiani F, Passeri V, Perea-Garcia A, Montenovo E, Cacioni E, Ruiz OA, Paolocci F
In: “VI Taller de Lotus"”. Chascomus, Buonos Aires, 24-27 Feb 2016. (2016)
Improving the quality and environmental adaptability of pastures to marginal areas becomes mandatory to match the rising demand for affordable and safe livestock food products and for decreasing the ecological impact of livestock farming. According to FAO, "With emissions estimated at 7.1 gigatonnes CO2 -eq per annum, representing 14.5 % of human-induced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the livestock sector plays an important role in climate change and the major mitigation potential lies in ruminant systems operating at low productivity (e.g. Latin America)"(1). Finding new ways to a more sustainable livestock farming cannot be procrastinated any longer. To achieve this goal, better practices related to animal feeding need to be exploited. Proanthocyanidins (PAs), also known as condensed tannins, are flavonoids that strongly affect feeding value of forage legumes and animal health (2). Moderate quantities of PAs in forage prevent proteolysis during rumen fermentation; therefore, PAs make the conversion of plant protein into animal protein more efficient, while considerably diminishing methane production and ammonium excretion by ruminants. Unfortunately, the major forage legumes worldwide lack PAs in edible organs; also, the lack of genetic variability for the trait and the complexity of its genetic control have thus far hindered the possibility of building this trait using traditional and biotech-based breeding (3). The interspecific hybrids produced by crossing a cultivated Lotus tenuis accession with no PAs in the herbage, with a wild, PA rich and diploid accession of Lotus corniculatus represent a novel genetic pool to shed lights into the genetic control of PAs in forage legumes and breed superior Lotus germplasm (4). Thus, we decided to exploit the Lotus interspecific hybrids and their progeny to identify - using parallel transcriptional and metabolic analyses - candidate bHLH and R2R3MYB transcription factors for the control of PAs. Preliminary functional data of some TFs will be discussed. References 1) FAO. 2011. World livestock 2011: Livestock in food security. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United 2) Barry and McNabb (1999). Br J Nutr 81:263-272 3) Paolocci et al. (2011). J Exp Bot 62:1189-1189 4) Escaray et al. 2014 BMC Plant Biology 2014, 14:40
