INVESTIGATING THE UTILITY OF FERAL POPULATIONS FOR BRASSICA CROP BREEDING

The PD's overarching career goal is to become a leading agricultural science researcher at a Research-2 university while concomitantly being an excellent teacher and mentor, affording a non-traditional pool of undergraduate students with unique training opportunities. The proposed project aims to expand our understanding of feralization in vegetable crops, specifically Brassica oleracea and B. rapa, to determine the potential of feral crop populations as sources of genetic diversity for combating persistent and increasing threats to food security, such as climate change. The project aims to investigate the frequency and timing, genetic architecture, potential breeding applications, and environmental conditions that drive feralization. To achieve these goals, the project will utilize natural history collections, ecological niche modeling, artificial intelligence methods, and genomics to identify the environmental and genomic signatures of ferality. The results and materials created will act as starting resources for the PD's own research lab and will ultimately contribute to new ways of thinking about paths to innovation for future food security.Objectives - The PD will devote full-time effort (100%) to the project during the course of the fellowship.1. Defining the ecological niche of feral Brassica oleracea and B. rapa.1.1 - Identification of feral populations of crop species.1.2 - Development of ecological niche models.1.3 - Leveraging AI to capture traits not in environmental datasets.2. Comparative genomics of feralB. oleraceaandB. rapa.2.1 - Re-sequencing feral populations.2.2 - Frequency and pathways to ferality.2.3 - Identifying loci associated with feralization and local adaptation.