Project
Maternal Haploid Induction
Doubled haploid (DH) production is a widely-applied plant propagation technique in which haploid embryos are generated in tissue culture or through seed after pollination with male or female haploid inducer lines, and then converted into diploid plants by chromosome doubling. Chromosome doubling of haploid plants generates homozygous plants in a single generation, which is considerably shorter than the six to eight generations that are required using classical breeding techniques.
A number of mutant genes have been identified that induce haploid embryo development when used as the male plant in a cross, so-called maternal haploid inducers. This knowledge has made it possible to produce DH plants in diverse monocot and dicot crops. Currently only pollination with dmp mutants can be used to induce haploids in dicot crops after pollination. dmp-induced haploid induction rates range from 1 to 4%, which are sufficiently high for crops with long life cycles, but not for crops where homozygous lines can be generated quickly by propagating multiple generations per year. This project aims to address this bottleneck by identifying novel maternal haploid inducer mutants with high haploid induction rates. These mutants can be used on their own or combined with dmp haploid inducer lines to obtain highly efficient haploid induction. New haploid inducer lines will be identified in a number of different mutagenesis screens in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana and then transferred to crops as proof-of-concept. The broad applicability of dmp and other haploid inducers in model plants and crops suggests that the new haploid inducers identified in Arabidopsis can be transferred easily to dicot crops.