A CONSERVATION GENOMICS PROGRAM TO IDENTIFY CLIMATE ADAPTED GENES IN THE EASTERN HEMLOCK (TSUGA CANADENSIS)

The major goal of this project is to preserve healthy forest ecosystems through conservation of biological resources. Healthy forests are essential for functioning ecosystems that directly support agroforestry and industries that rely on intact and functioning forest ecosystems. Covering over 1.3 million hectares, the eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis) is an integral part of eastern North American forests. Throughout its range, T. canadensis is recognized as a keystone species, providing important ecosystem services for water quality, soil stabilization, wildlife habitat, and economic and aesthetic assets for humans. In 2013, the IUCN listed T. canadensis as near threatened, with many local populations having been lost in recent decades. Climate change threatens more populations, both directly and indirectly. There is a pressing need for conservation in the eastern hemlock system focused on genomics, gene conservation, seed banking, and breeding.Investing in personnel and bioinformatic resources to support tree improvement and gene conservation is a major goal of this work. Tree improvement is an important objective to sustain food and forest resources to meet the challenges of the 21st century. Demand for agriculture and forest products is increasing at at rapid pace. At the same time, challenges facing forests and agriculture from biotic and abiotic sources is increasing too. Scientists with broad training in genomics, population biology, and plant breeding are needed to meet the needs of society. In this grant, a postdoctoral fellow, graduate student, and undergraduate students will be involved in training and research focused on tree improvement. The team will be led by the PDF to generate a reference genome for a species of conservation concern and generate a population genotyping data set.The major achievement of the proposed work is to stabilize T. canadensis populations and to prevent them from becoming a threatened or endangered species. The milestones towards the major achievement will take years and decades. Some of the milestones can be achieved in a shorter time span, e.g. within the time frame of the NIFA fellowship. Other milestones, however, require significant efforts to create breeding populations, test breeding lines for increased stress resilience, deploying genetic resources in a landscape, for example.To achieve the major goals, the following objectives will be performed during the time period of the NIFA fellowship:Create a reference genome for a near-threatened forest keystone species.Create a sequenced population set from a range-wide sample of wild accessions.Identify climate-adaptive genetic variation for gene conservation.Execute training and career development plan.Communicate results to the scientific and conservation communities.