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SUMMARY:Understanding and engineering salinity tolerance in crop plants - 
 Mark Tester\, King Abdullah University of Science & Technology\, Saudi Ara
 bia
DTSTART:20140331T150000Z
DTEND:20140331T160000Z
UID:TALK51234@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Helen Mawdsley
DESCRIPTION:Genetics and genomics are powerful tools for gene discovery. I
 n this talk\, forward genetic approaches for discovery of genes related to
  salinity tolerance in wheat\, barley and tomatoes will be described\, as 
 an example for approaches that could be taken for gene discovery in range 
 of areas of plant function\, in particular abiotic stresses such as drough
 t tolerance. Rather than studying salinity tolerance as a trait in itself\
 , we dissect salinity tolerance into a series of components that are hypot
 hesised to contribute to overall salinity tolerance. Na+ exclusion is one 
 such trait\, for which quite a few genes have now been identified. \nThe g
 enotyping of mapping and mutant populations is now highly efficient. Howev
 er\, the ability to quantitatively phenotype these populations is now comm
 only limiting forward progress in plant science. The increasing power of d
 igital imaging and computational technologies offers the opportunity to re
 lieve this phenotyping bottleneck. The Plant AcceleratorTM is a 4500 m2 gr
 owth facility which provides -omic-scale phenotyping of large populations 
 of plants. New genetic loci for components of salinity tolerance discovere
 d using this new approach will be presented.\nThe application of these tec
 hnologies provides opportunities to significantly increase abiotic stress 
 tolerance of crops\, and thus contribute to increasing agricultural produc
 tion in many regions. However\, this needs to be tested in the field. To t
 his end\, work will be described where mapping populations are grown in th
 e field\, and also grown in the Accelerator\, and loci for traits are bein
 g compared with loci for tolerance in the field.\n\n\nMark Tester is Profe
 ssor of Bioscience at KAUST\, Saudi Arabia. He was previously in Adelaide\
 , where he was a Research Professor in the Australian Centre for Plant Fun
 ctional Genomics and Director of the Australian Plant Phenomics Facility. 
 Mark led the establishment of this Facility\, a $55m organisation that dev
 elops and delivers state-of-the-art phenotyping facilities\, including The
  Plant Accelerator\, an innovative plant growth and analysis facility. He 
 also leads a research group in which forward and reverse genetic approache
 s are used to understand salinity tolerance and how to improve this in cro
 ps such as barley and tomatoes.\nProfessor Tester was awarded a Junior Res
 earch Fellowship from Churchill College\, Cambridge in 1988\, a BBSRC (UK)
  Research Development Fellowship in 2001\, and an Australian Research Coun
 cil Federation Fellowship in 2004. Professor Tester obtained his Bachelor
 ’s degree in botany from the University of Adelaide in 1984\, and his Ph
 D in biophysics from the University of Cambridge in 1988.
LOCATION:Auditorium of The Sainsbury Laboratory (Bateman Street)
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