Resilient Oats: Improving Drought Stress Resistance in a Changing Climate

Introduction

Providing food security in the face of climate change and increasingly frequent extreme heat and drought events is one of the greatest global challenges. Drought is the most influential environmental factor limiting crop yields for a growing world population and leading to significant economic losses.

Importance of High-Yielding Crops

To safeguard agricultural production, it is crucial to develop high-yielding crops with improved water use efficiency. Oat (Avena sativa L.) is an emerging crop that offers significant benefits for human health and provides a nutrient-rich plant-based protein source with a low carbon footprint.

Challenges in Oat Breeding

However, oats are sensitive to drought, and progress in breeding drought-resistant varieties, while urgently needed, is limited. The oat genome is characterised by its enormous size, high repeat content, and complex polyploid structure. Therefore, efforts to investigate complex agricultural traits such as drought stress resistance have long been hampered by the lack of genomics resources.

Recent Advances in Genomics

Recently, a fully annotated reference genome sequence of Avena sativa became available, to which I contributed significantly, representing a fundamental breakthrough.

Project Overview: RESIST

RESIST will take on the challenging high-priority task of deciphering the molecular basis of drought stress resistance in oat, providing substantial solutions to secure yields of this emerging, healthy, and versatile crop.

Methodology

To this end, RESIST will:

1. Exploit innovations in plant genomics and, in particular, oat genetics.
2. Employ cutting-edge high-throughput phenotyping methods.
3. Establish gene editing protocols that provide an innovative basis for accelerated and targeted breeding of oats.

Conclusion

RESIST provides the indispensable foundation for the development of better-performing oat varieties under drought conditions to secure oat yields as a sustainable source of a highly nutritious, healthy, protein-rich plant-based diet for billions of people.