NSF Award
9983311
This Small Business Innovation Research Phase II project will establish the feasibility of improving the freezing tolerance of canola and wheat plants. Phase I research has demonstrated that Arabidopsis plants show dramatic improvements in freezing tolerance when expressing the CBF gene. However, constitutive expression of the CBF gene was found to be detrimental to plant growth. This Phase II research will determine whether inducible promoters provide freezing tolerance with normal plant growth. Our Phase I and other published work has indicated this approach is very promising. The project goal is to produce enhanced freezing tolerant canola plants, with commercially efficacious growth levels, and provide the molecular biology tools to similarly engineer wheat plants. Canola with improved winter hardiness would be a new high value crop for the US with a value of at least $300 M, as this amount of canola oil is imported annually, and provide a new winter crop rotation system. The project results will also lead to improved winter hardiness in wheat that would improve wheat yields by $940 M. Applications in additional crops such as corn (1995 frost losses of more than $1 Billion), barley, soy, strawberries, and eucalyptus will likely follow once demonstrated in canola. Mendel has targeted canola and winter wheat for the initial applications of the WeatherGard TM enhanced freezing tolerance technology. Spring canola with increased winter hardiness will be a new winter crop suitable for the southern US. Existing spring canola varieties don' t survive the winters well enough. WeatherGard TM winter canola will have increased winter hardiness that will allow it to be grown in the midwest. Existing winter canola varieties don' t survive midwestern winters very well. One estimate of the value of the trait is that up to 50% of the winter wheat acres or 24 M acres would switch to canola due to its higher profitability and the advantages of crop rotation. Currently wheat is the only widely grown winter crop, so farmers would rotate it with winter canola. The higher oil and protein content of canola creates a higher per bushel value than wheat, translating to a $30/acre increase in value when growing canola. On 24 M acres this higher value crop would create $720 M of new value for farmers. Additional value will be derived from the increased productivity from better crop rotations and the double cropping potential of canola harvested in May. These latter values are hard to estimate in advance but clearly are very large. At a minimum valuation, the US imports $300 M of canola oil annually, so the US canola crop should create at least that much value. Additionally canola is an important crop worldwide (rapeseed) so export opportunities exist as well.<br/><br/>The expected economic benefits of winter wheat are to be in excess of $940 M dollars of extra yield for the US farm economy annually. This assumes that the northern portion of the midwest, particularly North Dakota and South Dakota, that currently can only grow spring wheat, could grow the new variety as a winter wheat with an known 25% yield advantage which represents $500 M dollars of added value. The remaining 80% of the US wheat market should also benefit from increased winter hardiness as sudden frosts after warm spells, very cold freezing temperatures and winter desiccation (essentially drought) are all common problems experienced to various amounts every winter. Improved winter hardiness is estimated to improve winter wheat yields by 10% for an increase in value of $440 M. Thus the combined canola and wheat projects could add over $1.2 to $1.6 billion annually to the US farm economy.
