Generation of alfalfa plants with optimized lignin biosynthesis for improved forage quality and yield

Generation of alfalfa plants with genetically optimized lignin biosynthesisfor improved forage quality and yieldAstalake Biosystems Inc.DBA: AFINGEN®The world is facing unprecedented challenges in food systems (i.e. on farm profitability and publicdemand for environmental health) due to climate change water scarcity diminution of arable landsand population increase to nearly 8 billion people. Alfalfa (Medicago sativa) is a perennialnitrogen-fixing legume with tremendous potential benefits to soil health environmental healthand contribution to animal and human nutrition. As one of the world's oldest domesticated foragecrops alfalfa is grown on six continents and is the fourth most important economic crop in theUnited States. Traits such as higher yields stress tolerance and biomass quality (improveddigestibility and nutrient composition) have been targeted by alfalfa breeders to benefit farmerscattle growers and beef/dairy industries. Although numerous breeding and biotechnology effortshave aimed to improve such traits traditional genetic improvement techniques such as constitutivegene silencing methods have had negative consequences when applied to commercial crops. Forexample improving forage quality by lowering lignin often resulted in plants with poor structuralintegrity and diminished biomass yield at maturity. This proposed SBIR Phase I research projectdevelops an efficient approach to fine-tune lignin biosynthesis and biomass composition whileincreasing biomass yields in alfalfa. Moreover an additional feed quality trait enabled by ourgenetic engineering strategy towards mitigating enteric methane emissions has the potential toimprove the sustainability of meat and milk production. Our molecular metabolic and phenotypiccharacterizations of these new engineered alfalfa lines generated in Phase I will represent valuablematerial for 1) future verification at greenhouse/field environments and 2) trait transfer into elitegermplasms via licensing and breeding. If the project demonstrates the abovementioned goals inalfalfa this new biotechnology platform could be applied to other perennial forage/pasture speciesthat currently cover 121.1 million acres in the United States (6% of the U.S. surface area).