Plant Biotechnology

 

In the last few years, projects under INIA's programs have been focused on the efficient use of selection methods in plant breeding. In crops, research proposals are aimed at the identification and validation of functional markers based on sequence information and/or EST-SSR markers of candidate genes associated with limiting factors of production, such as resistance to diseases and abiotic stress. In our country, there are different environmental conditions that seriously affect crop yields; this is the case of the use of radiation in rice or the tolerance to water deficit conditions in soybean.
The establishment of a phenotyping platform for environmental stress in cooperation with groups of the School of Agronomy, the School of Architecture and the School of Engineering allows INIA to incorporate this methodology in the assessment of breeding materials.
The study of the gene expression profile in response to an environmental stimulus through microarray hybridization provides the opportunity to identify associations in various cultured species and those where knowledge of the genome is lower. Biological knowledge also allows for the development of technologies based on heterologous expression of proteins of agricultural interest. Progress has been made recently on knowledge about peptides with antimicrobial activity and immunogenic potential, opening the opportunity for local biotechnological developments.