Project Number: 3622-21000-033-04
Project Type: Reimbursable

Start Date: Jan 11, 2012
End Date: Jan 10, 2014

Objective:
The proposal addresses major challenges in plant yield and lipid metabolism and function. It will advance the development of energy-enriched crops that can be dual-cropped with soybean. The objective of the research is to increase biomass by improving carbon fixation in the leaves and additionally increase oil production in plant seeds by studying the impact of overexpression and/or silencing of enzymes and transporters that will enhance primary metabolism.

Approach:
Develop isotopic labeling techniques to track primary metabolism in plant tissues through operation of central carbon metabolism that enables oil production and increased biomass yield. Mutants in lipid composition in the seeds as well as carbon sequestration in the leaves generated by Co-PI’s will be compared to wild type plant tissues for differences at the level of primary metabolism and to provide signatures for potentially successful or unsuccessful transgenic stacking combinations.