Development of new sorghum cultivars

Summary

An earlier GRDC funded project with CSIRO demonstrated that down-regulation of one specific gene in wheat grain leads to increases in plant biomass and grain yield in glasshouse pot and simulated field trials of approximately 20% compared to control lines.
This project, GRDC Project Code CSP00118, explored increasing sorghum yield via down-regulation of the same gene.GRDC managed the research project with CSIRO, on behalf of Meat & Livestock Australia and other members of the Feedgrain Partnership.
The aim of this project was to understand if the technology developed in wheat was applicable in sorghum, using both genetic modification (GM), and non-GM approaches. The non-GM approach was unsuccessful, limited by the lack of suitability of the mutagenic populations available in sorghum. The GM approach was undertaken in collaboration with a commercial partner, Chromatin Inc, a US-based company with expertise in sorghum genetic transformation and breeding.
All contracted milestones of the collaboration with Chromatin Inc were achieved in terms of generating and characterising the GM down-regulated sorghum lines. The data on the GM down-regulated sorghum lines indicated that while there was some potential for the deployment of the technology to increase grain yield and biomass, the observed increases were not enough to justify the considerable further investment required to develop, deregulate and commercialise a GM sorghum trait. Therefore, GRDC management recommended no further investment in this program. This position was approved by MLA and the project was concluded at this stage.