About the Project

This is a collaborative project between the John Innes Centre (JIC), the Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le développement (CIRAD) and the West African Rice Development Association (WARDA) funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and CIRAD. This project provides a Fellowship in the area of rice biotechnology, which will enhance the Rockefeller Foundation International Program on Rice Biotechnology. The TAC library will be maintained at the John Innes Centre Genome Laboratory (JGL). Screening service and TAC clone distribution will be offered by JGL as a worldwide service on a cost-recovery basis.

Project Objective

To develop an Oryza glaberrima Transformation-competent Artificial Chromosome (TAC) library.

Expected Outputs

• The library will support the existing breeding efforts to improve rice performance and cultivation in West Africa but also anywhere else in Africa. More specifically, this TAC library will benefit marker-assisted selection breeding programs using O. glaberrima as a donor of useful genes for agronomic traits. 

• The library will also facilitate the cloning of candidate genes in O. glaberrima genome by exploiting existing molecular markers data related to genome regions of interest. 

• The library will bring into the service of mankind the valuable gene pool of O. glaberrima, threatened with extinction, as local farmers tend to replace it by the higher-yielding O.sativa. 

• At the fundamental level, this library will also also contribute to a better understanding of the relationships between rice genome species and their evolution.

Collaborators

John Innes Centre, Norwich, England