University of Massachusetts Assistant Professor Madelaine Bartlett, along with colleagues on a research team, recently received $4 million in funding from the National Science Foundation that will allow them to study plant genes and their role in agricultural yield.
“All the plants we eat have been domesticated, that is, selected by ancient farmers to be more convenient to grow and to yield more food,” Bartlett said. “Because of all we know about how evolution works, we’ll use the same tools that nature does to create new genetic diversity.”
The study will examine the genes that regulate plant stem cell biology and work to accelerate the mutation process, allowing the researchers to examine their role with a compressed timeline. Bartlett will receive $812,000 in funding directly.
“We want to generate genetic diversity for breeders, so they have new material to work from,” she said. “Right now, they have to wait for mutations to randomly occur, which of course can take a very long time. We will be like those ancient farmers except we are using more modern tools. From our work, somebody in the future will be able to give plant breeders access to variants they might be interested in for growing bigger fruit and more fruit.”
Alerts Sign-up