Project description:The white button mushroom Agaricus bisporus is the most widely produced edible fungus with a great economical value. Its commercial cultivation process is often performed on wheat straw and animal manure based compost that mainly contains lignocellulosic material as a source of carbon and nutrients for the mushroom production. As a large portion of compost carbohydrates are left unused in the current mushroom cultivation process, the aim of this work was to study wild-type A. bisporus strains for their potential to convert the components that are poorly utilized by the commercial strain A15. Growth profiling suggested different abilities for several A. bisporus strains to use plant biomass derived polysaccharides, as well as to transport and metabolize the corresponding monomeric sugars. Six wild-type isolates with diverse growth profiles were compared for mushroom production to A15 strain in semi-commercial cultivation conditions. Transcriptome and proteome analyses of the three most interesting wild-type strains and A15 indicated that the unrelated A. bisporus strains degrade and convert plant biomass polymers in a highly similar manner. This was also supported by the chemical content of the compost during the mushroom production process. Our study therefore reveals a highly conserved physiology for unrelated strains of this species during growth in compost.
Project description:The use of profiling techniques such as transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics has been proposed to improve the detection of side effects of plant breeding processes. This paper describes the construction of a food safety-oriented potato cDNA microarray (FSPM). Microarray analysis was performed on a well-defined set of tuber samples of two different potato varieties, grown under different, well-recorded environmental conditions. Data were analyzed to assess the potential of transcriptomics to detect differences in gene expression due to genetic differences or environmental conditions. The most pronounced differences were found between the varieties Sante and Lady Balfour, whereas differences due to growth conditions were less significant. Transcriptomics results were confirmed by quantitative PCR. Furthermore, the bandwidth of natural variation of gene expression was explored to facilitate biological and/or toxicological evaluation in future assessments. Keywords: experiment with factorial design factorial design; 2 potato cultivars (Sante, Lady Balfour); 2 fertilizers (dairy manure compost, chicken manure pellets); 3 plant protection treatments (copper oxychloride, comcat, water), 3 biological replicates, 48 samples
Project description:Green manure is widely advocated as a sustainable alternative to chemical fertilizers in crop systems, yet the mechanisms underlying its yield benefits remain unclear. Moreover, vigorous vegetative growth under green manure can elevate lodging risk, undermining yield and harvest efficiency. Here, we describe mechanisms by which hairy vetch–based green manure enhances yield and evaluate the practical value of deploying functionally weak alleles of gibberellin 20-oxidase (GA20ox) in this management context. We conducted field comparisons of green manure and conventional chemical fertilization to evaluate effects on rice productivity, grain appearance quality, and canopy physiology. Green manure significantly increased grain yield and grain appearance quality in the leading Japanese cultivar ‘Koshihikari’, accompanied by higher lodging. By contrast, high-yielding cultivars homozygous for a single-copy GA20ox1 allele and/or a non-functional GA20ox2 allele maintained superior lodging resistance under green manure treatment while improving yield and grain appearance quality, indicating an effective combination of its treatment and genotypes. Physiologically, green manure increased chlorophyll index during vegetative growth and at the reproductive stage, and nitrogen (N) concentration on the whole plant. Furthermore, green manure increased flag-leaf width and tiller number; these canopy changes were associated with reduced panicle temperature at the ripening stage. Green manure treatment induced upregulation of OsNADH-GOGAT2, a known gene associated with increased N loading to grains, and more grain storage proteins, providing a positive link to improved grain appearance quality. Collectively, this study demonstrates that integrating hairy vetch with functionally weak GA20ox alleles can enhance productivity and grain appearance quality while mitigating lodging risk. This sheds light on the importance of aligning green-manure treatment with targeted allelic selection to stabilize performance across intensive-farming systems and reduce chemical fertilizer dependency.