Abstract
In the future, more food needs to be produced with increasingly scarce natural resources. Genomics can play a key role in accelerating yield gains because it helps to improve our understanding of genetic traits and assists in breeding for better crop performance. The scientific muscle of genomics attracted tremendous research investments, but the efficiency with which these investments are paying off is still low. How can we accelerate the application of molecular genetics to our understanding of crop physiology and subsequently to crop improvement? The missing link is a more detailed understanding of the effects of gene function on crop performance at field level under agronomically relevant conditions captured in robust, physiology-based mechanistic models. With such models the most sensitive processes and mechanisms at whole-crop level that contribute to improved crop performance can be identified. To achieve the detailed understanding necessary to build and feed these models, more research on whole-plant physiology and crop ecology is required, with a focus on the complexity of scaling up knowledge from the molecular level to the farmers’ fields and production systems. Such studies assess how the plant is able to integrate the information at different levels of organization into the functioning of the whole plant and predicting the phenotype of transgenic plants engineered for improvement of a complex trait.
More investment is needed in linking whole-plant physiology, crop ecology and crop simulation with molecular biology and genomics. Moreover, long-term progress can be enhanced by the formation of multidisciplinary teams that operate through networks of excellence in developing quantitative tools that integrate complex information and different levels of organization and by the exchange of young scientists between research groups working at different hierarchical levels. On the short term improvement of the characterization of experimental environments (preferably through commonly shared protocols) and of the characterization of parents for creating mapping populations is needed. In addition, joined multi-location trials and advanced physiological and statistical approaches for determining what aspects of the environment are most influential on the genotype × environment interactions are required.
Access provided by Autonomous University of Puebla. Download to read the full chapter text
Chapter PDF
Further Reading
Gutiérrez, R.A., Shasha, D.E. and Coruzzi, G.M., 2005. Systems biology for the virtual plant. Plant Physiology, 138 (2), 550-554.
Hammer, G.L., Sinclair, T.R., Chapman, S.C., et al., 2004. On systems thinking, systems biology and the in silico plant. Plant Physiology, 134 (3), 909-911. [http://www.plantphysiol.org/cgi/reprint/134/3/909.pdf]
Hammer, G.L., Chapman, S., Van Oosterom, E., et al., 2005. Trait physiology and crop modelling as a framework to link phenotypic complexity to underlying genetic systems. Australian Journal of Agricultural Research, 56 (9), 947-960.
Noble, D., 2002. Modeling the heart: from genes to cells to the whole organ. Science, 295 (5560), 1678–1682.
Reymond, M., Muller, B., Leonardi, A., et al., 2003. Combining quantitative trait loci analysis and an ecophysiological model to analyze the genetic variability of the responses of maize leaf growth to temperature and water deficit. Plant Physiology, 131 (2), 664-675.
Trewavas, A., 2005. Green plants as intelligent organisms. Trends in Plant Science, 10 (9), 413-419.
Wollenweber, B., Porter, J.R. and Lubberstedt, T., 2005. Need for multidisciplinary research towards a second Green Revolution. Current Opinion in Plant Biology, 8 (3), 337-341.
Yin, X., Struik, P.C. and Kropff, M.J., 2004. Role of crop physiology in predicting gene-to-phenotype relationships. Trends in Plant Science, 9 (9), 426-432.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2007 Springer
About this paper
Cite this paper
Struik, P., Cassman, K., Koornneef, M. (2007). A Dialogue on Interdisciplinary Collaboration to Bridge the Gap Between Plant Genomics and Crop Sciences. In: Spiertz, J., Struik, P., Laar, H.V. (eds) Scale and Complexity in Plant Systems Research. Wageningen UR Frontis Series, vol 21. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-5906-X_24
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-5906-X_24
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-1-4020-5904-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-4020-5906-3
eBook Packages: Biomedical and Life SciencesBiomedical and Life Sciences (R0)