Transport engineering to enhance nutritional value of crops

We aim at solving an ancient agricultural challenge, which is to eliminate anti-nutritional natural products from edible parts of crops. The principal novel concept behind our approach is to apply transport engineering to achieve this goal.

Recently, we identified glucosinolate transporters in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. Remarkably, knockout mutants in these genes produced glucosinolate-free seeds. As a case study, we will exploit the close synteny between A. thaliana and Brassica crops to initiate translational research aimed at eliminating anti-nutritional natural products from rapeseed, which represent an under-utilized high-value protein source for livestock feed.

The project comprises the detailed characterization of single and multiple glucosinolate transporter mutants in A. thaliana. The knowledge gained will be translated to the rapeseed crop Brassica rapa, where TILLING knockout mutants will be analyzed. In addition, we will screen our A. thaliana cDNA transporter library for transporters of the anti-nutritional natural product sinapine.

The project is expected to generate fundamental new insights into the principle for seed-loading of natural products and to provide a novel generic approach for specifically eliminating anti-nutritional natural products from high-value crop tissues.

Funding

This project is funded by The Danish Council for Independent Research, Technology and Production Sciences (FTP).