Grant: Engage Grants Program

Environment has a great impact of plant performance. It is known for a long time that genetically identical plants grown in contrasting environment will exhibit different phenotypical characteristics that are in part passed into the progeny. Because of this, genetically similar seeds obtained from plants grown in different environments may perform differently on the farmer's fields. It is therefore important to understand what traits are influenced by various environments and what changes in the epigenome are associated with them.Terramax Holdings Corporation is one of the largest hemp seed producers. They have several different geographic locations where they produce seeds and therefore they are interested to learn what traits are influenced by contrasting environment and whether it would be possible to predict which cultivar would be affected the least. For this, the plant epigenetic laboratory at the University of Lethbridge will analyze DNA methylation pattern and trascriptome pattern in several hemp cultivars grown at two different locations. They will identify various changes in DNA methylation pattern - epigenetic single nucleotide polymorphisms or epiSNPs and will attempt to correlate them with changes in plant phenotype (biomass, height, seed yield, oil content etc.) using epigenetic genome wide association studies or epiGWAS. The outcome of the project will allow Terramax to select cultivars that are affected the least by the contrasting environment, thus allowing to obtain more uniform seeds with more predictable performance.