Aggie Research Programs

Texas A&M University

Spring 2017 – Heritability and quantitative trait loci for kernel morphological traits in sorghum

Affiliations:
Project Leader: Nicholas Pugh
npugh@tamu.edu
Soil and Crop Sciences
Faculty Mentor: William Rooney, Ph.D.
Meeting Times:
 Spring 2017: (full)
Team Size:
 0 (Team Full)
Open Spots: 0
Special Opportunities:
  • Authorship on papers where the student intellectually contributed (Very good for resumes and C.V.s!).
  • Particularly hardworking students may be offered permanent positions in the lab as part-time undergraduate workers.
  • Gain the opportunity to get some hands-on experience working with actual crop scientistis, and learn more about plant breeding and applied genetics from world-class breeders.
Team Needs:
  • Creativity and the ability to think “outside the box”
  • The ability to work as an equal member of a team
  • That you aren’t afraid to speak up when you have ideas or constructive criticisms of others’ ideas.
  • The ability to work hard for a goal.
  • Careful and precise when acquiring and maintaining data. 6. Be able to work in an independent manner when possible; know when and when not to come to the project leader with questions.
  • Basic knowledge of a discipline related to the research. Examples: Horticulture, Food Science, Biology, Statistics, Agronomy, etc.
Description:
Popped sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) grain is becoming an increasingly more popular snack food in the United States. However, it has not been subject to the amount of research and selective breeding that popcorn has. Popping quality characteristics have been shown to be highly heritable in sorghum; nevertheless, the traits that influence it have not been as well characterized. Morphological features of popcorn kernels, such as the relative amount of hard and soft endosperm and the size of the embryo, have been shown to be important for popping quality; however, these have not been the subject of any such studies in sorghum. These traits are traditionally difficult and time-consuming to measure in sorghum grain. Now, using high-resolution imaging and image analysis software, these differences can be studied in an efficient manner. The objectives of this study are i) to determine what effect, if any, that these anatomical kernel characteristics have on popping quality, ii) to determine whether these characteristics are heritable in sorghum, and iii) to identify quantitative trait loci, or QTL, for these traits so that marker-assisted selection is possible.