Photo courtesy of Canola Council of Canada
The Brassica project that we are currently working on is part of two oilseed initiatives funded by Genome Canada/Genome Alberta (Designing Oilseeds for Tomorrow’s Markets), and AVAC (Bioactive Oils Programme). The goals of these projects are to use TILLING to identify endogenous mutations that affect oil content, seed coat characteristics and levels of anti-nutritional factors. It is anticipated that the results of this research will enhance the overall usefulness of canola seed, leading to improved meal for food and animal feed applications, and diversified seed oil content for nutritional and industrial uses. We are generating a population of approximately 4000 EMS-mutagenised B. napus lines for TILLING, and have identified mutations in a number of genes requested by DOTM and BOP researchers. The mutation rate for our population is greater than 1 mutation per 100Kb. This should allow the identification of several null or deleterious alleles for each gene screened and we intend to make this resource available to the general public upon completion of this project.
