Predicting future biomass yield in Miscanthus using the carbohydrate metabolic profile as a biomarker

Abstract

In perennial energy crop breeding programmes, it can take several years before a mature yield is reached when potential new varieties can be scored. Modern plant breeding technologies have focussed on molecular markers, but for many crop species, this technology is unavailable. Therefore, prematurity predictors of harvestable yield would accelerate the release of new varieties. Metabolic biomarkers are routinely used in medicine, but they have been largely overlooked as predictive tools in plant science. We aimed to identify biomarkers of productivity in the bioenergy crop, Miscanthus, that could be used prognostically to predict future yields. This study identified a metabolic profile reflecting productivity in Miscanthus by correlating the summer carbohydrate composition of multiple genotypes with final yield 6 months later. Consistent and strong, significant correlations were observed between carbohydrate metrics and biomass traits at two separate field sites over 2 years. Machine‐learning feature selection was used to optimize carbohydrate metrics for support vector regression models, which were able to predict interyear biomass traits with a correlation (R) of >0.67 between predicted and actual values. To identify a causal basis for the relationships between the glycome profile and biomass, a 13C‐labelling experiment compared carbohydrate partitioning between high‐ and low‐yielding genotypes. A lower yielding and slower growing genotype partitioned a greater percentage of the 13C pulse into starch compared to a faster growing genotype where a greater percentage was located in the structural biomass. These results supported a link between plant performance and carbon flow through two rival pathways (starch vs. sucrose), with higher yielding plants exhibiting greater partitioning into structural biomass, via sucrose metabolism, rather than starch. Our results demonstrate that the plant metabolome can be used prognostically to anticipate future yields and this is a method that could be used to accelerate selection in perennial energy crop breeding programmes.

A new carbohydrate retaining variety of Miscanthus increases biogas methane yields compared to M x giganteus and narrows the yield advantage of maize

“…In previous publications (Allison, Morris, Clifton‐Brown, Lister, & Donnison, 2011; Maddison et al., 2017), the variation in lignin between diverse genotypes was only ~3% DM, which is consistent with our findings. However, previous reports of cellulose variation showed ~5% range between diverse genotypes, but in our study both genotypes increased in cellulose by 5%–7% between October and January.…”

Differential expression of starch and sucrose metabolic genes linked to varying biomass yield in Miscanthus hybrids

“…Therefore, several European breeding programmes are aiming to develop a seed-based crop through recreating the hybridisation event between M. sinensis and M. sacchari orus to produce new hybrids that out-perform M. x giganteus [13,14]. The hybrids produced at IBERS (Wales, UK) exhibited strong heterosis for several traits and have been characterised in previous publications [15][16][17][18].…”

Virginia mallow (Sida hermaphrodita (L.) Rusby) as perennial multipurpose crop: biomass yields, energetic valorization, utilization potentials, and management perspectives

“…Whereas SRC and Miscanthus have amply been discussed in the literature dealing with the cultivation of perennial agricultural crops (Bilandzija et al, 2017;Georgiadis et al, 2017;Hauk et al, 2017;Maddison et al, 2017;Schweier et al, 2017), publications concerning Sida and cup plant are rarer and scattered, although the scientific interest in growing and utilizing Sida has grown considerably during the last decades. Chiefly, this interest is driven by the necessity to find commercially and ecologically attractive biomass sources for alternative pathways of energy production (e.g.…”