UK: DNA fingerprinting taro

Published 2021년 10월 21일

Tridge summary

A collaboration between The University of Queensland, UQ's Dr. Millicent Smith, Professor Ian Godwin, and The Pacific Community (SPC) aims to find salt-tolerant taro varieties from Australian wild plants to combat the effects of rising sea levels and protect the food security of Pacific Islanders. Taro, a staple in their diet, is under threat due to tidal inundations, increased cyclone activity, and contaminated groundwater. The project involves screening over 2000 taro samples for salinity tolerance using a high-throughput, low-cost system and DNA fingerprinting to identify the unique genetic sequence of each plant. This effort draws on the learnings from a 1990s taro leaf blight outbreak and the advancements in breeding technologies to develop taro better adapted to the changing climate.

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Original content

The tropical root vegetable taro, known as the 'food of the gods' in the Pacific, is under threat from rising sea levels but wild Australian plants being cultivated by The University of Queensland may help boost food security in the region. UQ's Dr. Millicent Smith, a plant physiologist from the School of Agriculture and Food Sciences and Professor Ian Godwin from the Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation (QAAFI) are working with the Pacific's chief scientific organization, The Pacific Community (SPC), to find wild salt-tolerant taro varieties in Australia."The genetics of wild relatives of taro may hold the key to developing salt tolerant varieties and help protect taro's unique nutritional and cultural place in the lives of Pacific Islanders," Dr. ...

Source: Phys