Natural soil bacteria can play a critical role in plant health. Ontario Genomics is providing seed funding for an academic-industry partnership to identify soil containing these beneficial microorganisms with the goal of enhancing their benefits.

Boreal Agrominerals Inc. (Boreal) specializes in the mining and commercialization of Spanish River Carbonatite (SRC), an agro-mineral fertilizer which promotes soil balance and healthy plant growth. To identify the beneficial microorganisms that facilitate nutrient uptake by native plants and cash crops and to expand the economic potential of its product, Boreal is collaborating with researchers from Wilfrid Laurier University and Algoma University to characterize the distribution of microorganisms naturally found at various mining sites from the SRC deposit, located near Sudbury, Ontario.

The team will further investigate the effects of mining and site characteristics on soil microbial communities based primarily on nutrient solubilisation and plant nutrient availability. Once beneficial microorganisms are identified, Boreal aims to determine the specific functional mechanisms associated with nutrient solubilisation, acquisition, and transfer to plants.

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To improve traits in monocot crops, such as wheat, corn and rice, we need a unique model for both prediction of candidate genes and the validation of effectiveness. Ontario Genomics is providing seed funding for an academic-industry partnership to do just that.

Frontier Agri-Science Inc., an Ontario Agri-Tech company, and Dr. Dario Bonetta (University of Ontario Institute of Technology) are developing and refining Brachypodium as a highly efficient and novel monocot model system for crop development for their industry partner BASF. This project could ultimately lead to the development of plant traits with herbicidal tolerance in key food crops, and a valuable service that Frontier can provide commercially.

This funding has created further opportunities for Frontier to acquire follow-on financing from Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE).

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Synthetic chemical libraries are a common source of drug discovery molecules. The challenge is that these libraries adhere to synthetic structures and biological activities. By contrast, naturally occurring chemicals have a vast diversity of structure, but their industrial or medical uses are limited due to the complexity and inaccessibility of these natural products.

Drs. Eiji Nambara, Peter McCourt (University of Toronto) and Dario Bonetta (University of Ontario Institute and Technology) plan to take these chemical libraries and expose them to a plethora of plant enzymes to exponentially increase the diversity of compounds with the hope of finding novel functions.

The team is using plant genomics resources to create libraries of various chemical compounds for industrial uses. In an effort to produce the advantages of these two systems, this project aims to set up an enhanced system to evaluate metabolic conversion of diverse chemical library by plant xenobiotic enzymes, which will be useful sources to identify chemicals with new functions.

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Plant hormones determine plant growth, and breeding programs designed around hormone action have a big impact on crop yields.

Strigolactones (SL) are plant hormones that stimulate the growth of symbiotic mycorrhizal fungi that help promote plant growth and development. However, SL also triggers the germination of parasitic plant seeds that can compete with key crop plants, especially in the developing world. To better understand how these hormones interact with their receptors in plants, Dr. Peter McCourt (University of Toronto) and his team will use synthetic biology to develop a biosensor for SL activity. With SPARK and additional support from the DOE-Joint Genomics Institute, the team will synthesize over 250 SL receptor variants that will be screened for activity within the plants. This information will be used to develop a toolbox to promote the healthy growth of agriculturally important plants, instead of the noxious plants that compete with them.

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Tomatoes, it is said, are the quintessence of summer in a bite. They are also responsible for more than half a billion dollars in annual farm gate sales and are Canada’s biggest fresh vegetable export. Canadian growers are facing competition due to lower production costs in other regions, leading to difficulties maintaining their market share. Canadian producers need to innovate in order to offer a differentiated product that will give them a competitive edge.

Generally, plant breeding programs focus on production traits such as yield or disease resistance. Drs. Charles Goulet (Université Laval) and David Liscombe (Vineland Research and Innovation Centre) are collaborating to ensure that new tomato varieties possess these traits, and something more important to the consumer – flavour. The team was awarded $1.8 million for this project, co-led by Genome Quebec and Ontario Genomics.

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