The Quest For Superior Spice Crops Gains Ground in Saskatchewan

Source: Saskatchewan Agriculture and Food

Saskatoon’s Plant Biotechnology Institute (PBI) has been in the forefront of the development of new varieties of spices such as dill, fennel, anise and caraway. Now that cumin has been identified as an opportunity crop for Saskatchewan, an Agriculture Development Fund research project (#20050711) will help replicate some of the PBI's success with this new crop, according to Alison Ferrie, a research officer at the National Research Council (NRC).

“We have been doing this work for a number of years now, and we just want to formalize it," she says. "We are producing more and more lines, which is why we needed the extra funding. Dr. Doug Waterer, a plant scientist at the University of Saskatchewan, is looking after the field aspect of this project, and I am looking after the laboratory aspect at PBI."

The PBI's scientists can do the research, but they cannot grow the new lines out in the field, so they have turned to Dr. Waterer, who will collaborate with the PBI to evaluate the new lines. Ferrie says the PBI is now going to move on to cumin, which is an important species for the Saskatchewan Herb and Spice Association. Scientists have begun the lab work to develop a microspore culture double haploid protocol for cumin. Double haploid technology was developed in the 1960s, and is still very useful today.

“Double haploid technology involves taking immature pollen grains—which are microspores—giving them the right conditions and, if everything is right in terms of genotypes, the right donor plant conditions, the right media and the right culture conditions, we can get embryos developing from these pollen grains.

“This is not a normal developmental process," Ferrie explains, "because, under normal development, you would get the immature pollen grains maturing into the mature pollen grain and fertilizing the egg cell. Then you get seed. We are changing the developmental path to get this immature pollen grain to convert into an embryo. Once you get that embryo grown into a plant, you have a homozygous pure line, so if you grow out these double haploids in the field, they all will be uniform. The next generation will look exactly the same.”

In a normal breeding program, explains Ferrie, you would make a cross between two parents that look good and you would have to keep backcrossing and backcrossing to get a uniform line.

“But here, we can develop a uniform line in one generation. This means it can save time and breeding, and that is very important, especially for these herbs, spices and nutraceutical plants, because there is so much variation in them. This results in problems for some of the medical plants, if you are trying to make clinical trials. You may collect samples from this group of plants over here and you get this level of compound that is beneficial in the fight against a disease, and you go into another group of plants and you get this level of active compound and it doesn’t show any beneficial effect. So what we are doing is producing a uniform line.”

Double haploid technology has proven extremely useful for crop development over and over again.

“This technology has been used by most canola breeding companies," she says. "A number of years ago, when I started at the PBI, we did a lot of canola work, and a lot of that technology is being used by canola breeders to this day. For those species, much breeding has been done, so there are many uniform lines out there. But for these herbs and spices, since the active ingredient is so important, this technology is particularly valuable as well."

The ADF funds are going to be used in the lab to develop the lines of cumin, while Dr. Waterer will test all the lines that have been developed so far.

For more information, contact:

Alison Ferrie, PhD
Plant Biotechnology Institute
National Research Council
Alison.ferrie@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca
(306) 975-5993