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New Insights into the Improvement of Forage Crop Species
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New Insights into the Improvement of Forage Crop Species

A special issue of Plants (ISSN 2223-7747). This special issue belongs to the section "Crop Physiology and Crop Production".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 May 2023) | Viewed by 4749

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Stacy D. Singer

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Lethbridge Research and Development Centre, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, 5403 1st Avenue South, Lethbridge, AB T1J 4B1, Canada
Interests: forage biotechnology; genome editing; climate change resilience; plant abiotic stress response; forage improvement
Dr. Abdelali Hannoufa

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
London Research and Development Centre, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, 1391 Sandford Street, London, ON N5V 4T3, Canada
Interests: plant molecular biology; plant biotechnology; abiotic stress; metabolic engineering; forage crops
Dr. Bill Biligetu

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Plant Sciences, University of Saskatchewan, 51 Campus Drive, Saskatoon, SK S7N 5A8, Canada
Interests: conventional plant breeding; marker-assisted plant selection; plant salt and drought tolerance research; forage agronomy

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Forage crops, which typically include various grasses and herbaceous legumes, comprise some of the most economically important crops globally due to their central role in livestock production. Despite their significance, they have been largely overlooked in terms of research in comparison to cash crops. The demand for ruminant products, including milk and meat, is expected to escalate considerably over the coming years as a result of an ever-expanding population and increased buying power. However, our ability to enhance livestock operations will be limited by a lack of arable land and the stagnation of yields in conventionally bred forage cultivars, especially under unfavorable growth conditions arising from climate change. As such, there is a critical need for the development of forage cultivars with enhanced yields and/or feed efficiencies, particularly in the context of climate change-related environmental effects, as a means of enabling livestock production in the future. In addition to increasing the ability of forages to withstand climate change, there are also potential trait improvements that could conceivably function to mitigate climate change itself, such as those that foster carbon capture or reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Such endeavours will not only require an intensification in breeding efforts, most likely through a collaborative approach involving traditional, molecular-assisted and biotechnological strategies, but also an advancement in our understanding of the molecular mechanisms driving traits such as improved digestibility, enhanced productivity, root development, photosynthetic efficiency/capacity and superior resilience to various abiotic and biotic stresses. This Special Issue of Plants invites the submission of articles providing insight into factors underpinning important traits in forage species, as well as the improvement of such traits utilizing approaches ranging from conventional and molecular-assisted breeding to biotechnology. Furthermore, we also welcome mini-reviews exploring novel research directions in the field of forage improvement, with the aim of contributing to a sustainable future of livestock production.

Dr. Stacy D. Singer
Dr. Abdelali Hannoufa
Dr. Bill Biligetu
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Plants is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • abiotic and biotic stress response
  • biomass yield gain
  • biotechnology
  • carbon sequestration
  • climate change resilience
  • forage crops
  • molecular-assisted breeding
  • omics

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

28 pages, 3488 KiB  
Article
Elucidation of Physiological, Transcriptomic and Metabolomic Salinity Response Mechanisms in Medicago sativa
by Stacy D. Singer, Madeline Lehmann, Zixuan Zhang, Udaya Subedi, Kimberley Burton Hughes, Nathaniel Z.-L. Lim, Rodrigo Ortega Polo, Guanqun Chen, Surya Acharya, Abdelali Hannoufa and Tao Huan
Plants 2023, 12(10), 2059; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants12102059 - 22 May 2023
Viewed by 1450
Abstract
Alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) is a widely grown perennial leguminous forage crop with a number of positive attributes. However, despite its moderate ability to tolerate saline soils, which are increasing in prevalence worldwide, it suffers considerable yield declines under these growth conditions. [...] Read more.
Alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) is a widely grown perennial leguminous forage crop with a number of positive attributes. However, despite its moderate ability to tolerate saline soils, which are increasing in prevalence worldwide, it suffers considerable yield declines under these growth conditions. While a general framework of the cascade of events involved in plant salinity response has been unraveled in recent years, many gaps remain in our understanding of the precise molecular mechanisms involved in this process, particularly in non-model yet economically important species such as alfalfa. Therefore, as a means of further elucidating salinity response mechanisms in this species, we carried out in-depth physiological assessments of M. sativa cv. Beaver, as well as transcriptomic and untargeted metabolomic evaluations of leaf tissues, following extended exposure to salinity (grown for 3–4 weeks under saline treatment) and control conditions. In addition to the substantial growth and photosynthetic reductions observed under salinity treatment, we identified 1233 significant differentially expressed genes between growth conditions, as well as 60 annotated differentially accumulated metabolites. Taken together, our results suggest that changes to cell membranes and walls, cuticular and/or epicuticular waxes, osmoprotectant levels, antioxidant-related metabolic pathways, and the expression of genes encoding ion transporters, protective proteins, and transcription factors are likely involved in alfalfa’s salinity response process. Although some of these alterations may contribute to alfalfa’s modest salinity resilience, it is feasible that several may be disadvantageous in this context and could therefore provide valuable targets for the further improvement of tolerance to this stress in the future. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Insights into the Improvement of Forage Crop Species)
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21 pages, 5172 KiB  
Article
SPL12 Regulates AGL6 and AGL21 to Modulate Nodulation and Root Regeneration under Osmotic Stress and Nitrate Sufficiency Conditions in Medicago sativa
by Vida Nasrollahi, Ze-Chun Yuan, Susanne E. Kohalmi and Abdelali Hannoufa
Plants 2022, 11(22), 3071; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants11223071 - 13 Nov 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1298
Abstract
The highly conserved plant microRNA, miR156, affects root architecture, nodulation, symbiotic nitrogen fixation, and stress response. In Medicago sativa, transcripts of eleven SQUAMOSA-PROMOTER BINDING PROTEIN-LIKE, SPLs, including SPL12, are targeted for cleavage by miR156. Our previous research revealed [...] Read more.
The highly conserved plant microRNA, miR156, affects root architecture, nodulation, symbiotic nitrogen fixation, and stress response. In Medicago sativa, transcripts of eleven SQUAMOSA-PROMOTER BINDING PROTEIN-LIKE, SPLs, including SPL12, are targeted for cleavage by miR156. Our previous research revealed the role of SPL12 and its target gene, AGL6, in nodulation in alfalfa. Here, we investigated the involvement of SPL12, AGL6 and AGL21 in nodulation under osmotic stress and different nitrate availability conditions. Characterization of phenotypic and molecular parameters revealed that the SPL12/AGL6 module plays a negative role in maintaining nodulation under osmotic stress. While there was a decrease in the nodule numbers in WT plants under osmotic stress, the SPL12-RNAi and AGL6-RNAi genotypes maintained nodulation under osmotic stress. Moreover, the results showed that SPL12 regulates nodulation under a high concentration of nitrate by silencing AGL21. AGL21 transcript levels were increased under nitrate treatment in WT plants, but SPL12 was not affected throughout the treatment period. Given that AGL21 was significantly upregulated in SPL12-RNAi plants, we conclude that SPL12 may be involved in regulating nitrate inhibition of nodulation in alfalfa by targeting AGL21. Taken together, our results suggest that SPL12, AGL6, and AGL21 form a genetic module that regulates nodulation in alfalfa under osmotic stress and in response to nitrate. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Insights into the Improvement of Forage Crop Species)
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14 pages, 1193 KiB  
Article
Expression and Variation of the Genes Involved in Rhizobium Nodulation in Red Clover
by Randy D. Dinkins, Julie A. Hancock, Derek M. Bickhart, Michael L. Sullivan and Hongyan Zhu
Plants 2022, 11(21), 2888; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants11212888 - 28 Oct 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1412
Abstract
Red clover (Trifolium pratense L.) is an important forage crop and serves as a major contributor of nitrogen input in pasture settings because of its ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen. During the legume-rhizobial symbiosis, the host plant undergoes a large number of [...] Read more.
Red clover (Trifolium pratense L.) is an important forage crop and serves as a major contributor of nitrogen input in pasture settings because of its ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen. During the legume-rhizobial symbiosis, the host plant undergoes a large number of gene expression changes, leading to development of root nodules that house the rhizobium bacteria as they are converted into nitrogen-fixing bacteroids. Many of the genes involved in symbiosis are conserved across legume species, while others are species-specific with little or no homology across species and likely regulate the specific plant genotype/symbiont strain interactions. Red clover has not been widely used for studying symbiotic nitrogen fixation, primarily due to its outcrossing nature, making genetic analysis rather complicated. With the addition of recent annotated genomic resources and use of RNA-seq tools, we annotated and characterized a number of genes that are expressed only in nodule forming roots. These genes include those encoding nodule-specific cysteine rich peptides (NCRs) and nodule-specific Polycystin-1, Lipoxygenase, Alpha toxic (PLAT) domain proteins (NPDs). Our results show that red clover encodes one of the highest number of NCRs and ATS3-like/NPDs, which are postulated to increase nitrogen fixation efficiency, in the Inverted-Repeat Lacking Clade (IRLC) of legumes. Knowledge of the variation and expression of these genes in red clover will provide more insights into the function of these genes in regulating legume-rhizobial symbiosis and aid in breeding of red clover genotypes with increased nitrogen fixation efficiency. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Insights into the Improvement of Forage Crop Species)
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