Development of a Marker System for Marking of Darnel Gene Allels Aimed at Improving Sustainable Swards

Development of a Marker System for Marking of Darnel Gene Allels Aimed at Improving Sustainable Swards

Implementation period: 2002-2006

Project coordinator: Danish Institute of Agriculture Sciences (presently University of Aarhus)

Participating institutions and persons: DLF Trifolium (Denmark), Herbs and Environment Research Institute (Great Britain), International Plants Research Institute (Netherlands), Agricultural Research Center (Belgium), Hohenheim University (Germany), Lithuanian Institute of Agriculture (Lithuania, habil. dr. I.Pašakinskienė, dr. G.Braan Institute of Natural Sciences (Norway).

Financed by: European Union, ES 5BP project

Purpose of the project: To identify one hundred genes of perennial darnel and to develop molecular markers for marking of these genes. The task of the Lithuanian Institute of Agriculture in the GRASP project was to identify five darnel genes, which possibly were responsible for development of a crawling stem and to develop SNP (single nucleotide polymorphism) markers for marking of these genes. For this research, VIROIZ mutant of perennial darnel induced by means of polyploidization was selected. This mutant forms crawling stems, which are not otherwise characteristic of perennial darnel.