Food, fuel from flowers

A $10.5 million research project aimed at mapping the DNA sequence of sunflowers could one day yield a towering new variety for both food and fuel. Researchers envision crossbreeding a standard sunflower with the Silverleaf species out of Texas to produce a hybrid with bright yellow flowers bursting with tasty seeds and thick stalks filled with complex sugars that can be turned into ethanol. The wild, drought-resistant Silverleaf is known for its woody stalks, which can grow up 15 feet tall and 4 inches in diameter. "Since it's the closest relative of the cultivated sunflower, it should be perhaps reasonably straightforward to move some of the traits," said Loren Rieseberg, a University of British Columbia botany professor and leader of the DNA sequencing project. The Genomics of Sunflower project is funded by Genome Canada through the Canadian government, Genome BC, the U.S. Energy and Agriculture departments and France's N a t i o n a l I n s t i t u t e fo r Agricultural Research. Its goal is to locate genes responsible for agriculturally important traits such as seed oil content, flowering, drought and pest tolerance. Participants plan to map the genome for the greater sunflower family, known in the science world as Compositae and including more than 24,000 species of sunflowers, lettuce, artichokes, daisies, ragweed, dandelions and other plants. Scientists hope that within four years, they'll be able to develop a basis for a breeding program in which understanding of the plants' genes dramatically reduces the time it takes to develop hybrids. Rieseberg's work with coinvestigator Steve Knapp from the University of Georgia has already been helpful to the i n d u s t r y, s a i d La r r y Kleingartner, executive director of the Mandan, N.D.-based N a t i o n a l S u n f l o we r Association. Their research helped identify a trait that imparts resistance to downy mildew, which destroys plant tissue, and its association with a gene that imparts resistance to rust, a fungus that affects yield and quality, Kleingartner said. "That kind of information is so important so we don't have to go through eight years of grow outs to see if we've got this resistance in this hybrid," he said. "We can just do it on a very molecular basis." The sunflower mapping venture is the latest of several plant genome projects.