In 2021, Canada had the lowest wheat crop yield since 2007[1]. The crop yield from 2021 compared to 2020 was down
This was likely due to drought and increased temperatures. The average annual temperature[2] from 1948 to 2016 in Canada has increased
Our project aims to increase wheat plants’ tolerance to heat stress by introducing three enzymes to wheat plants that will:
All three enzymes will be activated by a heat-inducible promoter.
We built and tested 2 of our 3 enzyme constructs in wheat protoplasts (plant cells without cell walls) as a proof of concept. Our end goal is to engineer a strain of wheat with increased heat tolerance for use by farmers in agricultural land.
We designed, built, and tested a hardware device that can detect fluorescence from plants. This portable device could be used in the field to measure the expression levels of our fluorescently-tagged genes of interest and plant heat stress.
Our team also mathematically modelled heat-inducible gene expression and enzyme kinetics, with a focus on the ACC deaminase and SBPase pathways.
Our Dry-Lab team also conducted a bioinformatics RNA-seq analysis to identify differentially expressed genes and pathways in heat and drought-stressed wheat.
Our Integrated Human Practices team interviewed farmers and visited wheat farms to hear from our potential users about the problems they are facing with increasing temperatures.
Our team also took on initiatives to communicate with the public about our project and synthetic biology through expert panels, a podcast, and volunteering in our community.
[1] Statistics Canada (2022, September 14). Estimated areas, yield, production, average farm price and total farm value of principal field crops, in metric and imperial units (Version No. 1) [Data set]. Statistics Canada. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/cv.action?pid=3210035901
[2] Government of Canada (2019, September 4). Changes in temperature. Government of Canada. https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services/climate-change/canadian-centre-climate-services/basics/trends-projections/changes-temperature.html
[3] World Population Review (2022). Wheat production by country 2022 [Data set]. World Population Review. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/wheat-production-by-country
We chose to work with wheat for our project because it is a major crop in Canada, Canada is the fifth-largest wheat producer in the world[3]. Triticum aestivum is the scientific name for Common Wheat. Our project involves working with synthetic biology to genetically engineer wheat.